Shame is a Weapon
If anti-AI activists want to win, they have to grow fangs
When I was a kid, my mother had a fur coat.
It was the early 90s and, yes, it was the style at the time. As a toddler and then child, I loved this coat. I remember petting its warm fur, remember how it felt to be carried in her arms in all that softness. I also remember one day, her putting the coat away in a closet, never to be taken out again. She was so sad, and I remember asking why she would never wear it again.
“I’m afraid someone will throw red paint at me.” She said “I can never wear this out again.” She closed the door, and that was it.
She was referencing one of the more iconic direct action tactics that rose to prominence in the 80s and 90s, where anti-fur and animal rights groups would throw red paint on people wearing fur coats in public. This form of protest became so infamous, it’s entered into pop culture, with references in shows like Sex and the City and 30 Rock, and celebrity fashion statements from the likes of Khloe Kardashian. If you have heard anything about organizations like PETA, you’ve probably heard about the red paint thing.
This form of protest is a bit legendary. Yes, activists have literally thrown red paint at people wearing fur in the past, and sometimes still do today, but it is far from a frequently used tactic. It’s far more common for animal rights groups to storm runway shows, stage protests outside of retailers who sell fur, and douse themselves with red paint to make a point. If you wear fur in public, the closest you will probably get to red paint being thrown at you is a mob of people following and harassing you.
The thing is though, most people don’t know that. Most people think the streets of major cities in the 80s and 90s were filled with activists with tiny cans of red paint in their pockets, just ready to throw it onto the first person they saw wearing fur. It created a sense of fear, paranoia, and it worked. My mother never did wear that fur coat again out of fear, and I’m guessing you don’t know too many people who will wear a fur coat out in public today.
You may think the tactics of animal rights are cruel themselves, you might think their belligerence and single-mindedness is a turn off to potential allies, you might even think wearing fur isn’t a big deal and shouldn’t be abolished, but you can’t argue with results. Animal rights groups have racked up an insane number of major wins. Their activism has seen fur banned from the pages of major publications like Vogue and all Hearst subsidiaries, erased from retailers like Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue, and have pressured major brands worth billions in total to drop fur, including Rick Owens, Marc Jacobs, YSL, and Oscar de la Renta, to name just a few. This, all while facing immense repression from the federal government and FBI.
Why am I talking about this? Is this a piece about the ethics of fur? No, this is a piece about AI, and how to fight it.
There is no reason to use generative AI, especially for “artistic” and “creative” purposes. There are many reasons not to use it. Those that use it for art are lazy, uninspired hacks who should feel ashamed for being publicly associated with the technology. They need to be made to feel uncool, and unwelcome in public as long as they proudly and publicly use AI.
AI should be banned, but it won’t be, at least not any time soon. Baring that, it’s anyone’s guess when the AI bubble will pop, and even more uncertain what that will look like and what will remain of AI when the money runs out. This is scary, because it is the only thing outside government regulations (which will not happen for at least another 4 years, if we even have another election) that seems capable of reigning all this idiocy in.
In lieu of any government regulation, financial repercussions, or other outside force stepping in to reign in AI, people have to step up and make it a socially shameful and financially ruinous thing to be associated with. I believe we can look to the tactics and methods of anti-fur campaigns for inspiration here. Posting AI art, hosting AI art at a gallery or space, screening films made with AI, should fill people with the same fear and shame that made people hang up their fur coats thirty years ago.
I debated writing this for a long time, because I’m essentially advocating for bullying. Further, I do worry about artists and creative people wrongly getting labeled as using AI and being smeared for it. This is uncomfortable, confrontational, and divisive at an already very heightened time, but I just don’t know what else to do.
AI is not popular. Statistics bear out that most people do not like it, do not want to consume it, and do not want the infrastructure to run it anywhere near where they live. This has resulted in local protest movements against data center construction, many of which have been successful. The activists and community leaders at the local level pushing back against data center construction are smart and deserve praise, but this all needs to be bigger. Being anti-AI needs to become an actual, national, political movement.
There have been glossy profiles written on so called neo-luddite groups, collectives like NYC based S.H.I.T.P.H.O.N.E., and people keep insisting “the kids” hate “the phone”. These are great developments, and I hope these groups and movements grow, but right now my fear is that these will remain aesthetic movements, rather than political ones. In December of 2025 Sam Altman was a guest on The Tonight Show, which is filmed in New York City, the city where all these luddite groups are supposedly biggest. With weeks of advance notice to plan something, why was there no mass action around this event? Where were the activists stuffing the crowd to shout him down and disrupt the broadcast? Where were crowds of people ready to picket Altman outside the studio, as well as outside the hotel he was likely staying at in Manhattan? Where were the people with paint cans?
AI is not inevitable, but neither is its opposition. With numbers on their side, it is time for those who oppose this technology to move from an aesthetic, personal consumer choice to a confrontational, political movement.
I'm all in on this take. We have to make it embarrassingly unpopular on every level