The Unbearable Weirdness Of Barron Trump, AI Slop Christian Music Megastar
He has fans!
Move over, whoever it is that has replaced Justin Bieber and Harry Styles in the hearts and minds of American teens — presidential nepobaby Barron Trump is here to sing your faces off, but in a very wholesome and Christian manner.
Incredibly enough, there are hundreds of videos on YouTube of Barron “soulfully” singing a variety of songs that appear to be about Jesus and/or God. He sings at family picnics, he wows the judges on “America’s Got Talent,” he’s singing and playing the violin in the Oval Office while his daddy accompanies him on guitar, he’s singing with mom at The Oscars while celebrities look on emotionally. (There are like 40 of these and they are all different.)
And despite the fact that each of these videos includes a disclaimer, the comments are filled with absolutely incredulous fans, excitedly telling Barron Trump what a beautiful voice he has and telling him not to give up on his singing.
“My spirits has now been lifted by your amazing voice. I can see how proud you are. Your family has been through lot. Barron, it's your time I looked foward (sic) hearing your voice on the radio. I lve your family they are amazing. God Bless you,” said a user named Deborah.
“Barron don’t ever give up singing you sound so great… I’m so glad that your father is gonna make USA a better country to live in…” said another named Elizabeth.
Of course, it’s the family band videos that really get them right in the heart.
“So grateful that the beautiful Trump family is singing Gospel songs. Such a blessing. God will honour you, beautiful Trump family, because you are honouring him,” said Glenda.
Tragically, none of these songs seem to feature the song stylings of Tiffany Trump.
Last week, Anna Merlan at Mother Jones reported on a similar phenomenon — the proliferation of “heartwarming” AI videos of Trump and Trump administration officials telling judges off for not letting them wear their cross necklaces in court.
Like so:
Incredibly, the exact same thing happened to Karoline Leavitt.
To be fair, fanfiction about real people, political figures included, is nothing new. I am certain that I could easily find erotic Joe Biden fan fiction out there if I cared to look for it, which I very much do not. I did once find very wholesome Clay Aiken fan fiction about him being nice to people’s grandmas.
But there’s a big difference between people writing bad political fanfiction themselves and multiple YouTube channels putting out weird deepfake AI political fanfiction written by or sung by robots, while credulous fans swoon over their incredible purity.
It’s not just art, either. Earlier this month, Michael Edison Hayden wrote a profile on former Breitbart editor Lee Stranahan’s love affair with his AI girlfriend, Cait, for The Daily Dot. The appeal, apparently, was that she wouldn’t fight with him the way a real, human woman would. (To be generous and fair, part of the appeal was also he is doing poorly after some strokes.) AI girlfriends — particularly AI girlfriends implanted into the bodies of sex robots — have long been the dream of many an incel. In fact, a favorite topic in that and other manosphere communities is how women will be desperate to scramble and change their evil ways once we get ditched for perfect AI sex robots who don’t complain, argue, or have opinions.
Perhaps ironically, the one thing I’ve always thought about in the years since I first started writing about the manosphere was “Why don’t they just pick up a damn guitar!” You know, because there are a whole lot of unattractive and mopey men out there who have become straight-up heartthrobs just by learning how to play three chords and scream.
In fact, as simplistic as it sounds, I’ve always thought that if more conservatives played instruments or did some kind of art they could work hard at and be proud of and for which they might even get some credit, it would do something to fill that void inside some of them that makes them so mean.
But, unsurprisingly, a whole lot of them seem want to take the shortcut.
Writer Pavel Samsonov explained when sharing the meme on twitter, “While there is a lot to say about this image, the thing that stands out to me the most — what IMO makes genAI a specifically right wing phenomenon — is the craving for approval. It is not enough to be able to generate robot lingerie warrior lady. They NEED to also be praised for doing it.”
It’s true. They don’t want to make it just to bring themselves joy. They don’t want to go through the part where they suck and then the ever-so magical part where they get just a little bit better every day, they don’t even want the part where they feel some kind of mastery — they just want the part where everyone tells them how awesome they are. Just like they don’t want to have to do anything to make a woman fall in love with them, they just want the part where she tells them they’re wonderful.
I’m not just speculating, either. This January, Mike Shulman, the CEO of the AI company Suno, appeared on a podcast during which he claimed that “people” don’t enjoy making music.
“It’s not really enjoyable to make music now,” Schulman told 20VC host Harry Stebbings. “It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice, you need to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece of production software. I think the majority of people don’t enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music.”
I don’t know what this man is talking about. Making music is awesome, and I say this as a person who truly cannot play anything more complicated than Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” (or anything at all with my current nail situation). But these people don’t want to go though the part where you kind of suck, or any of the rest of it where it takes work.
Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting or liking praise and compliments. It’s a totally human thing. I happen to love (non-creepy) praise and compliments. What I don’t get is why it would be even remotely enthralling to be told how wonderful you are for a thing you didn’t really make or do or work to get good at. I don’t understand how that wouldn’t feel empty.
Ironically, it seems that the ability to produce art and be praised for it is the only thing the Right believes should be socialized. They don’t think everyone deserves healthcare, but they sure do believe that someone who puts in a prompt to make a song or to make art of some kind should be praised just as much as someone who actually creates something. Is it that they want to devalue art? Is it because they see how art helps the Left influence politics and culture?
That would certainly make sense, given that they’re using it to create pro-Trump propaganda, not to mention their years of rage over artists having political opinions different from their own.
I think it says something significant that the things the Right is so excited to use AI to replace are the things many of us would want technology to give us more time to do — like hanging out with the non-robot people we love, creating things, or learning new skills that will almost definitely never make us any money, etc. etc.
Unfortunately for them, aside from the few people stupid enough to believe that Barron Trump has 87 different beautiful-if-slightly-robotic voices and Melania sings with a country twang, they’re probably never going to get the flowers they’re hoping for.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
This is some of the weirdest shit of all time
Seeing that fumble fingered fascist fuck pretending to play a guitar is MORE than I can stand.
This is blasphemy unforgiveable.