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A coffee shop owner used AI to make a menu poster. Then came the angry DMs

82 points · 316 comments · TMWNN

  1. sleepybrett · · focus · HN ↗
    My basic stance these days is 'if you were too lazy to do this yourself and handed it off to ai then why should i be motivated to engage with it'

    This primarily, for me, has resulted in me ignoring a lot of long winded tickets.

    the user a generate's email/documentation/whatever via claude > sent to user b > user b uses claude to summarize it ... loop is shitty.

    This applies less to me for code as long as you are reviewing it throughly and 'sculpting' it throughly to make it readable/maintainable.

    Care about your work if you want me to care about your work.

    1. nrmitchi · · focus · HN ↗
      > My basic stance these days is 'if you were too lazy to do this yourself and handed it off to ai then why should i be motivated to engage with it'

      The issue comes when you (or someone, not you personally) dig way to deep into what "it" is, there is always something that someone was, to quote you, "too lazy to do yourself". You might not like the result, and that's fine, but you're phrasing it as if the other person is just being unnecessary-lazy.

      They probably bought their display stands instead of designing and building them themselves. They also probably bought the cheap ones from Amazon (instead of building them themselves, or hiring a local artisanal carpenter to build them).

      Do you refuse to engage with a pastry stand because the owner was "too lazy to do it themselves"? If you're at a friends house and they order food, do you refuse to engage with it because "they were too lazy to cook it themselves"? Where do you draw the line?

      Your point as it applies to something that takes a sufficient portion of your time is valid, but this conversation is literally about a menu sign at a coffee shop. If you spent substantial time engaging with a coffee shop sign, I have questions (and wouldn't want to be behind you in that line).

      1. aogaili · · focus · HN ↗
        Too lazy?

        I bet anything you never ran a small business of any sort.

        1. sleepybrett · · focus · HN ↗
          I have actually and even a small retail place, what made it successful was the care I put into curating the product, building out the space and attending to the customers. When you clearly do not care is when you lose customers, they can smell it. When you take a very visible (everyone looks at it, especially new customers) aspect and use very obvious slop it sends a message.
          1. aogaili · · focus · HN ↗
            The owner clearly cares, but she has a new born baby and looking for way to speed up things without adding extra admin overhead and expenses. She is now forced to go back to a manual process.

            She wasn't aware of the slop-shaming online, she saw a good enough sign and used it.

            If people don't like the coffee shop because of an AI sign, they go buy somewhere else, but they can spare the shaming, ideological lectures, projections and death threads. I bet you anything this is the same crowed that is lecturing people about pronounces and shaming them, a form of power exertion.

            1. nrmitchi · · focus · HN ↗
              "she saw a good enough sign "

              The additional thing is that it... isn't a bad sign. I have seen a ton of terrible AI-slop food signage. This sign does not try to be "hyper-realistic", and end up in an uncanny-valley, or look like fake food. It's not fully of spelling mistakes and things disobeying the laws of physics.

              Does it have maybe too much information shoved on it? Sure. Does it use a font that is definitely "AI-popular". Ya.

              But there are tens of thousands of worse examples of AI menu usage out there. It seems people decided to pick on this one because it's not horribly done. A local artist looked at it and, instead of thinking "wow that looks soo fake", they thought "that's basically the same thing I would have delivered, and 99% of people wouldn't have been able to tell the difference! I should have been paid for that!"

              Reference: the sign in question: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.instagram.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;DdBgsgnNDaC&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.instagram.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;DdBgsgnNDaC&#x2F;

              1. aogaili · · focus · HN ↗
                Agreed! now that I see the sign, it is actually really decent and fits the theme of the shop. Someone felt threatened by it I think or it could be someone wanted to attack the coffee shop&#x2F;owner for some reason.

                This is shaming&#x2F;bullying of the crowd and it is hurting a small business owner and a new mother.

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