Why Clip Art Was Everywhere Until It Wasn't [video] | Hacker News Reader

Why Clip Art Was Everywhere Until It Wasn't [video]

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49 pointssurprisetalk27 comments

Brings me back to the days of going to dgl.microsoft.com in Internet Explorer to explore the library of Clip Art graphics online. This was during the Office XP and 2003 days. Even today, that style comes across as far more authentic than the tacky AI-generated flyers you see plastered everywhere now.

I remember people being scoffed at for using clipart, for pretty much the same reasons people are scoffed at today for using AI (low effort, samey, doesn't fit the rest of the visual style, and subjectively ugly.)

I feel like clipart was... honest low-effort (or at least low compared to bespoke art) whereas generative-AI stuff has a connotation of disrespect or deceit.

Can people not earnestly cut-corners with genAI imagery?

No. I'm overall an AI proponent but even I feel an innate sense of disgust when seeing AI-generated flyers. Feels like some cyberpunk dystopia where machines have begun to organize, advertise, and run events for the 'trite human cattle' to keep them occupied.

Lazily-placed text in an otherwise blank word document that gets printed and stapled haphazardly to a posterboard is infinitely preferable.

I feel similar about LLM-generated text, though that's even more egregious. If I have to get one more claude-written email from the company CEO I'm going postal. You have a slight excuse with art as most people couldn't draw to save their lives (including myself), but to write is literally to think. And, in the case of executives they have ONE job (to lead by communicating), outsourcing such a basic soft-skill focused role to AI is just pathetic.

I think the disgust aspect might be from a kind of uncanny-valley.

Generative art and text-slop have lots of surface features which lead us to expect quality or effort, and then we're betrayed when we look closer. Our natural reaction to betrayal is to shun the actors behind it.

> And, in the case of executives they have ONE job (to lead by communicating), outsourcing such a basic soft-skill focused role to AI is just pathetic.

Weren't executives always outsourcing writing to their (human) assistants?

I definitely remember the same kind of disrespect being associated with clipart use.

The Office suite during that era was very legit.

OT:

In the late 90s, I was at a party and the DJs were playing really cool techno styles I hadnt heard before. (back then it was about Sample-CD & soundsets, Gigasampler etc., all that stuff)

Curious as I am, I asked him what sets he used for his samples - he said: I can highly recommend all these Office-Clip-Art CD samples, because they are not used by a lot of people :-D

Would anyone who watched the video like to tell us what the answer to the headline question is?

It filled a niche at the time when there weren’t a lot of easily accessible stock images of things. Clip art was the successor to analog “clip books” used for things like ads in newspapers.

Once the internet filled that niche with more and better pictures, shipping a fixed database of images with your software didn’t make sense anymore.

It’s a good video, worth a watch on 1.5x.

Thank you for the summary!

I'm not the one who asked for the summary. I just don't want to constantly watch video clips for statements worth a few lines of text. And I try to avoid BigTech. So what I'll definitely not do is clicking arbitrary random YouTube links that flood the web. So far I can definitely continue living absolutely fine without all the wisdom entrenched in all these clips.

... but if someone or something is able to give me a quick textual summary, even better.

hey I built a product on this exact premise. I'm still working on it, please check it out if you are interested. https://knowstash.ai/

here is the answer to your question: https://share.knowstash.ai/s/s549aa4c281c349389c757a10183be4...

I'm still working on it, if you want to test it out I'd be glad to give you some credits in exchange for some feedback

Hi.

That's absolute a great service. I think I've seen a similar one (or exactly this one??) in the past already.

Some minor pitfalls that I personally see:

- There is AI involved, so you can never actually be sure how accurate it is. For the typical YouTube clip that flies by (we had supersonic trebuchets and whatnot), that's absolutely fine. Of course it is, because so far, not consuming them at all was also absolutely fine for me.

- If this is an online service, privacy-wise the solution is still not perfect. Admittedly: It's an improvement anyways, because it's then not Google anymore but just fbunau who builds a profile of my habits. At least assuming that you do not eventually sell me to Google.

Things that I could imagine for some version 2 or 3:

- Give it a text box, so I can ask it stuff like "did the video clip mention ...?" or "did in go deeper in ...?" or maybe just "what do you think how old is that influencer and how competent does [s]he feel? Does it even make sense to read the recap or should I move on right away?" or whatever comes to mind.

Admittedly, that'd absolutely be just nice-to-have. If that's not aligned to your big plan, just forget it.

- Have a browser add-on that automatically replaces inline YT players with the recap text. (I've seen you have a Chrome add-on, but I haven't tried whether it actually does that or not, admittedly (it WOULD work on Firefox as well, I guess?))

In general, please don't count on my as a potential future customer. Constantly checking whether I still have enough coins inserted and constantly inserting new ones would already be too much of a hassle for me, I guess. And I wouldn't want that automated either.

I'm just not good as a customer. Last time my bank invited me in order to "upgrade" my bank account to a more comfortable one with higher fees, I left the bank with a cheaper one instead. :D They've never invited me again...

Personally I'd also need to get used to the term "YouTube companion". I don't like BigTech and I try to avoid it. I don't want a "YouTube companion", but a "YouTube displacement", or a "cure for a disease called YouTube that polluted the www". :) But, yeah, in the end, that's just wording.

I really like the basic idea of that service, though! And I wouldn't say so if it wouldn't be true.

Ideally, you would find lots and lots of customers in the first place, so articles on websites will become actual articles again, and not just a trap that teases you to some inline YT player in the bottom. And then we all don't need such summaries anymore. The web is cured again at that point. Ideally you've earned enough money until then! ;)

Is there a name for the "clip art" or the style that like almost every 'Dry Cleaner' uses. I dont think its clip are but it shares many of the qualities and im talking coast to coast.

Yeah, "pop art".

"High art" is just what the chosen people tell you to value. Be your own individual and you can choose what is of artistic value to you.

Reminds me of a surreal 2000-ish clip art comic 'My New Filing Technique is Unstoppable':

https://theslingsandarrows.com/my-new-filing-technique-is-un...

Got a lot of laughs from the bizarre humor and clip art usage

Oh man, that takes me back.

The section of the video on “scratch board art” claiming it was ubiquitous is very odd to me. I’ve never seen art in that style despite being of the generation that would have. It’s discussed in the video as if it was some kind of cultural touchstone of the era and I promise it was not.

Where and when are you from? It was commonplace in New York in the 1970s and 1980s, both for small business signs and school art projects.

Now there's sticker packs.

(2023)

Clipart was the AI slop of the time. People with zero creativity or taste creating horrible flyers, posters, letters, etc. by randomly vomiting effects upon effects on text with very dubious positioning and proportions

Indeed, and as with AI, people felt very "empowered" by it. "Wow, I can do this" no, you just pushed some random buttons.

To be clear, I am also criticizing myself, I was an avid Microsoft Word user back then.

Now everyone just gets clipart tattoos

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