Colby the Computer, who has the entire Bible programmed into his memory.

This very very cute stuffed anthropomorphic computer is called Colby. This particular version (bis) is a rendition by hyperreal artist Prognoz Pogodi, using an array of mysterious AI tools including ElevenLabs and Kaiber Superstudio. There is an incredibly comprehensive overview of Pogodi's previous social media activity and artistic endeavours written by Shel Raphen. I will be referring to this text extensively so I recommend a short skim before continuing. The objective of this article is to first provide a review and (mostly positive) critique on Prognoz Pogodi's more recent work. The second concerns the future of art in a world of hyperreality and simulacra.

Colby's full name is Colby the Computer. Colby is the - titular - mascot of the 1990s cheesy Christian TV show Colby's Clubhouse. As per Wikipedia, Colby has the entirety of the Bible "programmed" into his memory. The show itself isn't very noteworthy, it aired on Saturdays from 8:00 to 8:30 PT on the televangelist owned Trinity Broadcasting Network, and often featured life lessons about God and how to respond to "contemporary" situations as per the enlightening Lord's way. You can easily find episodes on YouTube. If you do, you will notice that the original Colby doesn't look identical to (bis) Colby, who is an AI generated version. CathodePlyer made a 3D Blender model, faithful - lol - to the original, available on ArtStation. Pogodi's AI generated version looks more like a Barney suit than the original, and has the words - 科比 - written on his screen, Chinese for Kobe or Colby. Xiaohongshu!

It is now appropriate, I think, to explain what is it exactly that Pogodi does. Prognoz Pogodi is a Self Media: a TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter account that posts absurd Reels. We will delve into the specifics later, but it essentially consists on characters, one of such being Colby, narrating videos of assorted origins in English, with overlayed Chinese and/or English captions. The character is physically present in the video, with their voice and appearance being AI generated. As the grammatical category implies abundance, there are other performing protagonists in Pogodi's creation. The one that brought them 1 most relevance was Fiveish, a five dollar bill, mascot to an Orthodox Jewish kiruv organization called Oorah. You will now notice the conspicuous Abrahamic knot that couples these characters together. Following the YapDollar fiasco 2, Pogodi introduced Gerbert, the puppet mascot of a - you will never guess - Christian show called Gerbert. It is August 20, 2024. From the YapDollar thread we can find Pogodi's reddit account i24News. They reveal in one comment that a considered replacement for the esteemed Fiveish could have been Elmo's father Louie. Pogodi opted to continue both the puppet and the religious subtext with Gerbert. Colby was introduced on September 27, 2024, whom you all now know and adore. This Colby looks quite a lot like the original.

We are now of course missing a muslim puppet to complete the trifecta. Maybe Adam's World? Maybe Prognoz respects aniconism. We know that Brother Colby aka Omar had a Muslim spiritual awakening that shook his beliefs to the (multi) core. We also know Colby and Gerbert tackled the hurtful use of the n-word within the context of Islam in the very famous Quran Corner. By now I hope you have seen at least a couple of these videos. Pogodi's hyper Decadent Post-Internet style re-represents jarring artificallity: beautiful untrue beings and sayings of anxious design. Tracing back their accounts, especially on reddit, we can find that Pogodi is a devout follower of the Cum Town podcast and all their fellow ironic associates. The Cummiverse (The Adam Friedland Show, Red Scare, etc) podcasts have over their unfortunate existance recieved many quirky guests, some of whom end up in Pogodi's videos. They are, images of themselves, imitations cretaed on human instruction by inhuman devisings. In a society in which both the rate and speed of consumption accelerate, the seventh art cycles back to its original forms via indeterminate flashes. Our minds percieve the outside world through screens who seek to imitate the nature of thought: infinitesimal sensations and images. And, building a bridge, religion is the primordial image - nobody has seen or talked to their gods. Whenever we converse with divinity, we converse with the image we have created in place. The gods are the images where we find them in. Where we place them. As I will explain later, images are crucial in our understanding of this type of undertaking. It is then not a surprise, no wonder, that religious figurines are protagonists of the ironic social media fabrications of Pogodi.

I want to delve depper into the artform. Pogodi usually takes original Reels - recipes, farm life hacks, etc. - from various sources, TikTok or Xiaohongshu, and extracts the script of said video. If the original video is in chinese, then they translate the script into english. I suspect and agree with Raphen that Pogodi tampers with these a little to make them seem more spontaneous and rile. They then have these fun characters recite the script, Colby, Gerbert, Dasha, Steve Harvey, OJ Simpson, Eric Adams, the NYU guy, and other characters from Cummiverse bits. On top of the video you will find captions for what they are saying in chinese, and usually english captions as well. These videos are all parts of a compilation called the Prevue Guide Channel. I am particularly interested in reviewing a subset of videos from this collection. On April 4, 2024 3 we were introduced to (bis) Colby in a video that reveals that the Annunaki removed chromosome number two, and fused it together with two telomere caps. I want you to notice a couple of things. This (bis) Colby has only ever appeared in these types of videos, and another one that I will mention later. The common theme here seems to be awakening. All sorts of conspiracies are involved, usually involving consciousness, aliens, planes of existance, spiritual unity, and other esoteric machinations. Much like their other videos, these scripts are not of original deisgn. However, all of these videos have been taken from english speaking conspiranoids and charlatans. I have downloaded four sets of examples so you can see what I mean. The tone of the original videos and the Pogodi replications is very different.

My girlfriend loves to tell me that great artists steal all the time. I have also always thought this to be good practice. She has the Steal Like An Artist book and we once tried an unsucceful poetic exercise by taking lyrics from songs that we like as verses. This was a complete failure, but no matter. All of art is self referential - think of intertextual literature for instance, Ulysses, Borges, The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye, etc - and to create is to reinvent what has already been created with the lense of contemporary context. Jonathan Lethem writes The kernel, the soul — let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances — is plagiarism. This phrase is taken from a Mark Twain letter to Hellen Keller. And yet, its meaning is transformed into something else: a different purpose. and prognoz as the musivc artist. jarring but beautiful. why do people hate AI art.

by believing -commenters video will cause psychosis they are diagnosing retroactively psychosis in a society were these are original thoughts from the people who posted the originals, and widely exposed. Idea of socialism is perfect competition in contemporary discourse. Symbol over meaning e.g hypercontrarians, clearly dasha 4 trump bc of the image and not idea. Society of symbols bc of how fast content is created -> rate of consumption goes up -> image is processed instantly and defined a cultural moment, over any text or music or video that require attention and discernment. Double steal: idea that red scar is psyop -> prognoz being doing schizo content all their life -> retroactive steal by making videos that present themselves as psyop.

Leftist symbols + Nword video + behind the scenes video. Who is Prognoz? i24 news reddit account Anthony Morrison, who seems to be the spiritual grandfather of figures like Gary Vaynerchuk or Tai Lopez, who themselves influenced the likes of Andrew Tate. How similar are these people to the dirtbag left podcasts? There is no intuitive resemblance. Can i like pogodi if theyre not the same ideology as me? The role of chinese ideology, geopolitical situation with us. political undertones.

What happens to reality when the symbols it worships do not have a referential origin? Baudrillard describes hyperreality as a meticulous replication of the real, through reproductive medium. For instance, I am more enamored with the pictures and videos and portrayals of x celebrity than the person themself. What AI presents in text or audiovisual outputs is not reproductive but transformative This picture is not a picture of Colby the costume from the TV show. It is a picture of Colby, the animated product of a prompt by Pogodi, edited to perfection over different backgrounds. What is there left but to create a new reality, to rebel against the real, when the cyclical nature of progress is revealed. C'est désormais la carte qui précède le territoire.

The artist is not the one who creates the work.

Public perception is negative. Drake CLB, kdiddy, being attributed revolutionary ideas. GOATS are commerciable but do it again, so not dance monkey but yes tay swift. Losers whose biggest achivement is a 1.9k thousand reddit comment on r/aviation talking about quality over quantity as if they have a single clue. prognoz genius by making it all about the image. art reflects society, its not about the nic emusic, or the content (bc if it was wed just watch og videos) its about the image on top. Contrarianism appears in culture especially in rebellious youth -> gen Z hates sex and is super puritan while still believing themselves to be against their elders bigotry -> against boomers + against the image of woke millennials creates a cultural oxymoron that mirrors the capitalist condition: ie it is both true that is not immoral to eat an animal vs it is immoral that meat factories exists (waste and poor allocation). Pogodi regularly interacts with followers in the comments, thus not only presenting an image to society, but allowing it to become real within the walls of the viewer's mind. We are all invited to participate, we are all friends of Colby and Gerbert and by taking the other's words, we are in a sense talking back to the self in communion.