I think that part of what irks me about AI being used even for “small” stuff like meme graphics (aside from all the larger problems obviously) is like…. the time spent on it was part of the humor. “this is a silly inconsequential joke but I had to stop everything and spend 5 minutes making it” was, at least for me, part of the joke. Someone really took time out of their day to make me look at something silly they took time out of their day to make. Now it’s like someone took time out of my day to make me look at something no one even made. Stop wasting my time if you aren’t wasting yours too.
this makes me think of that post arguing over whether Europe and Asia should count as separate continents, and someone said the big mountain range between them is a good reason for the separation, and then someone else replied with a (clearly very painstakingly done) custom-edited map separating the North American continent into several different labeled “continents,” divided by the mountain ranges, and someone else said something like “did you make that just to be petty,” and it all would not have been anywhere near as funny if there was a possibility they could have just prompted a LLM to generate the map in a matter of seconds. The time and effort matters. Even when it’s a silly little joke. Sometimes especially.