Weird (Gaming)

by Robot Chickens, Wednesday, October 28, 2026, 23:52 (12 hours, 16 minutes ago) @ Vortech

Did painters go away after the invention of photography?

Yes? Yes. Almost entirely, yes. The idea of a portrait got democratized out the wazoo, but it effectively killed the industry. It's now seen as a hobby, not a serious way to memorialize people and things, which was mostly its purpose before Photography. They had to invent shit like surrealism, dadaism, abstract, etc. just to find blue ocean in the aftermath.

I read a book chapter at one point in my life with the thesis that new forms of media almost never destroy the old- rather they change the meaning of it. Cinemas didn't get rid of performance theater productions, but they did make them a hobby for the elite. Email didn't kill the handwritten letter. Instead it made the effort of writing a letter by hand take on new meaning as a sign of effort or affection. In the case above, you're correct that photography changed the entire meaning of what it meant to get a painting done. It also meant that painters lost their jobs as the market demands shifted around those new meanings.

I've found the observation to be largely true. I suppose we never get telegrams anymore...