They Can't Do What We Do, And They Hate Us For It

How the creator of "Mad Men" gave us a glimpse of the future

There’s a scene from Mad Men that sticks with me. Showrunner Matthew Weiner talks to the audience through the character of Don Draper, as he tells Peggy why corporate managers are always trying to influence the creative department.

He explains:

“They can’t do what we do, and they hate us for it.”

To anyone who works in entertainment, Weiner’s clever modern parallel is obvious. Rather than rely on the mystical powers of remarkable storytellers, the higher-ups at Sterling Cooper want a cut-and-dry explanation for why certain stories (or advertisements) resonate more than others. Like any dutiful corporate overlord, they want a slam dunk guarantee, every time. Don’t get me wrong, data and statistics are undoubtedly useful for targeting a demographic.

All I’m saying is these attempts to categorize and predict the success of narrative arcs often fall short because the strategic wisdom of marketing doesn’t necessarily translate to the emotional wisdom of storytelling.

This is why studio executives today scratch their heads when the next sequel or prequel to a major franchise flops, but a viral trend referred to as “would you still love me if I was a worm?” makes waves across social media platforms, even creeping into video content and pop culture.

Peggy is adamant when she arrives in Don’s office. She’s convinced that “sex sells,” and suggests they take a woefully obvious direction with the ad they’re designing: something reductive that plays to the carnal instincts of the customer, with nothing deeper or more meaningful beneath it. In this moment, Peggy has become a jaded worker bee, mistakenly assuming her creative work can be simplified into a cookie-cutter assembly line (as any CEO would have it). Don masterfully steers her away from this idea, reminding her that “you [as the viewer] having a reaction — that’s what sells.”

This scene between Don and Peggy is brilliant because, sure, the characters are technically talking about the advertising world of the 1950’s, but Weiner is actually using this as a thinly veiled metaphor to reveal the timeless resentment CEOs and other corporate managers feel towards writers and other creatives.

And of course, nothing has changed today. Perhaps ironically, artists utilizing AI are proving that without a doubt, human talent and experienced storytellers are still necessary, no matter how fancy the new tools get, and no matter how hard anyone tries to replace us. Starburst’s generative AI “Different Every Time” brand campaign, which allowed for hundreds of variations on the same ad, still employed a large team of crucially-needed creatives. Among the community of filmmakers and VFX artists currently using AI tools to enhance and create video content, the fearful rumor that artists can be replaced has already vanished.

Yesterday, The Simulation (formerly Fable Studio) announced its text-to-episode TV show creator, “Showrunner.” The creation of this “tool” was inevitable, and as a writer, it doesn’t scare me at all. In fact, I’m happy to see it. I haven’t used Showrunner, but I’m willing to bet it’s a training-wheels version of prompt creation with limited control, a super-user-friendly application that might even hook a few curious minds deeper into the AI filmmaking world. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see short clips from users playing around with this app going viral. And I wouldn’t be surprised if we eventually see new talent emerge, skyrocketing from total obscurity into signing meetings with big agencies and mentions in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, same as the TikTok stars whose millions of views per video caught the eyes of casting directors in recent years. User generated content (UGC) such as this is a mutual solution for platforms that crave engagement and users who crave hands-on interactivity with media content.

Aptly explained by Peter Frelik on the Virtually Everything! Podcast with Peter Bittner last week, UGC was a hot topic at TV upfronts this year. In simple terms: companies know for a fact that average users can generate quality video content and accumulate their own large followings, in turn driving engagement to their platform.

This poses an interesting question: If users will happily create content for these platforms for free, in exchange for likes and follows instead of money, why would they pay experienced writers, directors, or designers to make content at all?

From a business standpoint, it’s a valid query. And it reveals what some of us have realized by now: even the most creative social media influencers don’t work for themselves, they work for the platforms on which they are immensely popular. Find success on TikTok or YouTube, and soon you will find yourself bound to TikTok or YouTube, subject to their insatiable craving for endless new content. But even this is changing, because we’ve already seen creators successfully migrate from one platform to another, shedding a few thousand followers in the process, but surviving nonetheless.

User-generated content made by people in their homes exploring these new tools will never replace entertainment designed by experienced storytellers, and there is no fundamental conflict between the two.

Here’s why.

Consider how you were trained to think about money. Recall the scarcity model of economics, for a moment. We are accustomed to viewing everything in our world as a limited resource. In spite of living in a naturally regenerative, cyclical ecosystem, we designed our food and manufacturing industries to deplete natural resources at a constant rate, artificially fabricating actual scarcity. This trick, which keeps us in a “consumer” mindset, has crept its way into our perception of art. All too easily, we become paranoid that one artist’s success comes at the expense of another, that there couldn’t possibly be room for all of us — which leads to reductive and inaccurate assumptions about artists who use AI.

This urge to make villains out of anyone breaking away from the patterns we’re comfortable with is understandable in the context of a deeply divided world where an “us vs them” mentality dominates our discourse.

Someone will always hate artists, whether it’s corporate managers scheming to replace us, or other creators who believe embracing technology is the enemy of art.