AI took my job

2026-05-18
As you may already know, I am an artist. Well, I was. I was a literal SVG pro. A titan of the "path" tag. A grandmaster of the bezier curve. My pronouns were pro/artist. Everybody knows this. I was published, recognized, admired. It was official.

Let me give you some history. My illustrious career began roughly ninety-six hours ago. And yesterday, it was snuffed out. Overnight. Without warning. Without so much as a severance package or a polite handjob.

As an artist, I lived my final days in absolute terror. I sweat stroke-widths every night last week. I had a reason. Finally, my fear materialized. It is here. The render is over. The stroke is dead.

AI took my job! It didn't ask. It didn't consult me. It didn't even have the decency to look me in the eye. It just walked in, sat at my desk, and shat out perfection. The hard-earned money that plebs used to pay me for my professional artistic masterpieces is now gone. AI didn't make my art obsolete, it just made it free. Free, fast, and infinite. I cannot compete with a machine that ejaculates masterpieces in milliseconds.

My grueling, seventy-two hour workflow of hand typing coordinates to draw a slightly off-center white circle has been replaced by ten seconds on a command prompt by some prompt jockey named Brayden who just typed "make cool dragon logo" while microwaving a burrito.

People save money now. They don't have to pay me anymore. Now they can buy more food. They will get fat, sick, and eventually die of coronary artery disease. Do they care? No. Do I care? Absolutely not. Let them choke on their free clipart. Instead of one bespoke, hand-crafted, artisanal SVG image, they can now have tens of them. For free. Just like I have my tears.

I have become irrelevant. Which, frankly, is exactly the same as I was before, except now the universe agrees with me. Everyone sees it clearly now.

There is no future here. Only tears, misery, and unrendered vectors. AI is better than me. I am no longer an artist. I am just a random peasant holding a mouse. AI does not know about my existence. Much like my father.

What now? What will be next? Currently, I am developing my new nightmare. I am just starting to feel the fear again. The terrifying, gripping fear that one day, this AI will learn to breathe. That it will step out of the terminal, walk into my house, and start making real shit. That it will sit on my couch, eat my lentils, drink my coffee. And then I will be totally no longer useful.