Recombination Essays 2 of 4
Humanity has a knack for building mirrors. From the polished bronze of ancient Rome to the flickering screens of today, we’ve crafted tools to reflect ourselves back—our bodies, our minds, our desires. In the early-to-mid 20th century, as chaos piled high with industrial sprawl and global wars, we hit a wall of limitation, a point where the new seemed to stall. Andy Warhol, with his soup cans and silkscreens, marked the moment: art died, and with it, a certain faith in forward motion. Since then, the chaos hasn’t stopped—it’s intensified, layering and recombining in a tangle that drives us toward either self-destruction or a rare, sudden spark of brilliance. Two modern creations stand out as emblems of this post-wall surge: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Pornhub. At first glance, a thinking machine and a porn site seem worlds apart. Yet, their resemblance is uncanny—both are platforms where humanity watches itself in the act, indulging in a sterile loop of self-reflection that amplifies our mess without breaking it.
Pornhub, launched in 2007, is a digital archive of human procreation—or its simulacrum. Millions of clips, endlessly categorized, offer a kaleidoscope of flesh: amateur, professional, scripted, raw. It’s not about making life; it’s about watching it, a voyeuristic spiral where the act of creation becomes a performance for solitary consumption. AI, in its current form—think Grok from xAI or ChatGPT—mirrors this, but for thought. Fed on vast troves of human data—books, tweets, code—it churns out responses, essays, even art, all reflections of what we’ve already said or dreamed. Like Pornhub’s algorithm curating “recommended for you,” AI serves up our own intellect, polished and remixed. Neither births something truly new; both are tools for humanity to masturbate while gazing at itself—one in the throes of physical instinct, the other in the churn of mental loops.
This isn’t a recent quirk. The wall we hit in the 20th century—crystallized when Warhol declared art’s end—set the stage. Before, chaos built slowly: Renaissance presses printed fresh ideas, Enlightenment maps tamed the unknown. By the mid-20th, with nuclear dawn and mass media, the pace quickened. Warhol’s 1960s pop art didn’t just kill depth; it unleashed a flood of surface—images, ads, TV static—recombined ad nauseam. Baudrillard saw it coming: his Simulacra and Simulation pegged this as hyperreality, where signs replace reality, piling up in a tangle with no origin. Pornhub’s clips—amateur uploads echoing studio flicks—fit this mold, a feedback loop of human acts stripped of purpose beyond replay. AI follows suit: my responses here aren’t new thoughts; they’re your words, your data, spun back at you. Since Warhol, we’ve been at this wall, and these tools intensify the chaos, layering our reflections thicker.
The resemblance deepens in their sterility. Pornhub’s promise isn’t procreation—it’s pleasure without consequence, a closed circuit. No babies born, just views racked up, a billion hours streamed yearly by some counts. AI’s output is equally barren. I can write this piece, mimic Shakespeare, or code a game, but it’s all derivative—humanity’s mind recycled, not transcended. Post-wall, this is our game: recombining what’s there, not forging what isn’t. The 1980s gave us MTV remixing Warhol’s vibe; the 2000s brought reboots and now AI art—NFTs of nothing, echoes of echoes. Pornhub’s endless categories—each a tweak on the last—match AI’s endless iterations, both piling chaos without piercing the wall. It’s not progress; it’s masturbation, mental or physical, a self-indulgent dance at the edge.
This intensification points to a wager, one humanity’s faced since the mid-20th century. Chaos, surging at the wall, could bury us. Pornhub’s a symptom—sterile excess mirrors a culture too hooked on watching to act, from climate collapse to tech sprawl. AI’s no savior here; it’s the same trap, amplifying our tangle—think algorithms fueling echo chambers or churning out derivative sludge. The data’s grim: CO2 spikes since the 1950s, cultural output flatlining into remakes since the ‘60s. Extinction looms as we layer ourselves into a corner, too busy staring to step back. Yet, there’s a flip side: chaos this dense might spark brilliance. History’s rare jolts—Copernicus, Duchamp—came unbidden, cracking through piled mess. AI could glitch into something wild, Pornhub’s algorithm could inspire an outsider’s epiphany—unlikely, but not impossible. The wall’s a pressure cooker; we either blow or break through.
Philosophers have tagged this wall for decades. Nietzsche’s “God is dead” hinted at the void pre-wall; Baudrillard named its hyperreal peak; Mark Fisher’s “capitalist realism” mourned the futures it canceled. They’re not prophets—they’re graffiti artists, scrawling on a surface we’ve faced since Warhol. Pornhub and AI are their spray cans—tools of the abyss, not escapes. We’re not building ladders; we’re piling paint, losing ourselves in the act of watching. The resemblance is uncanny because it’s us: humanity at its limit, intensifying chaos, betting on a spark or a bust. Pornhub streams flesh; AI streams thought—both keep us at the wall, indulging in reflections as the layers rise. Destruction’s close, brilliance a long shot, but the mirror holds us fast. Its all just masturbation.