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Chav Life

“Chav” is a British-adjacent word, usually derogatory, for a cluster of concepts involving economically and socially disadvantaged classes, youth, sneering, hanging about in groups in public, and so on. It may be offensive in some sense; it’s not like we have a lot of non-derogatory and non-offensive words for young people in disadvantaged classes. I hope and trust I am not offending simply by using it, for instance, in a weblog post title.

Anyway! For no particular reason I gave Midjourney (version 5) a number of chav-related prompts, and here are some of the results. These are mostly photorealistic, as that’s what v5 often produces unless explicitly prompted otherwise (so this isn’t “AI Art” so much as “AI Weirdness”). And I’m putting them in the weblog here just for fun. (For some highlights of other stuff I’ve been making in MJ, albeit without prompts or much commentary, see me on Pixelfed.)

Here for instance are some Cute Chavs (i.e. the prompt was “cute chavs” with some flags and stuff):

a photo of about a dozen young people, casually dressed, standing on an outdoor brick surface. Three wear red "baseball caps".

Mildly cute, and certainly numerous! Note the three red caps. Note also that Midjourney v5 has really improved in the people department: some of the faces may dissolve into blurs, some of them disquieting, if you zoom up too much, but no one appears to have seven fingers on the same hand, or any obvious extra limbs. Which is impressive!

Additional cute chavs:

Two pale young women in matching light blue denim tops and blue necklaces, one with purple hair and one with orange hair, smile at us against a crowded street in the background. The orange-haired one, to our right, has a rather adorable overbite.

Here “chav” might be a mildly negative comment on their taste in accessories and hair dye; not sure. Awfully cute, though.

Additionally:

Three short-haired young men standing outdoors; a car park and grass and trees in the background. The tallest of the young men stands in the center, in a bright pink hoodie and large black sunglasses with dark pink lenses, with his arms around the shoulders of the other two, who are a bit shorter and wearing bright blue hoodies and bright pink sunglasses with dark pink frames.

These may be the “tough young men” sort of chavs, although the bright pink and blue hoodies and those sunglasses are perhaps atypical.

Also supposed cute chavs:

Two little boys with rose cheeks and dark wire-rimmed oval sunglasses, wearing identical yellow caps and raincoats, looking rather serious and cute.

Certainly cute, but those matching raincoats and GKSY VHIS caps look pretty upscale; it may have strayed a bit from chavery here, but, again, certainly cute. And perhaps truculent.

Further cute chavs, who have perhaps looted a cargo of loud plaids (but who all seem to have the right number of fingers and extremities, again!):

A group of several young men, perhaps pre-teen, striding down a shopping street, all dressed in loud red, or garish plaid, or (mostly) both.

There are various more cute chavs, but we’ll finish this section with this one:

Three serious young men with mid-to-light brown complexions and to one extent or another short black moustache and beard whiskers. The one in the center has brilliant red flyaway hair, red earrings, and wireframe sunglasses with red lenses, and a slash of black tattoo on one cheek. The one to our right has a similar black tattoo, and black hair shaved close to his head except for a flyaway topknot. The one to our left has at least one upswept eyebrow (perhaps a tattoo), and a pastel abstract headband that gathers his black and red hair upward into a sort of messy "mohawk". Behind them is what seems to be a river passing through a city.

I tend to think of your basic chav as pale, perhaps because people who use the word “chav” often have other words for people who aren’t pale. These three are certainly impressive in their own way. Judgment of cuteness left to the reader.

Heavens, there are so many pictures that I’d love to share with you here! And that’s just these chav-related ones. So many thousands of pictures! See “Bach faucet“, relatedly. But anyway! Now we have some “chav life”:

Five young men with short hair standing among some brick buildings, looking at us perhaps rather truculently.

No notes on that one. We got at least one other one like this except that they’re sitting on a stoop with equal truculence.

Additionally:

Four young men in casual athletic clothing standing among brick buildings. All are making odd faces of one kind or another, two are making finger gestures, two are wearing sunglasses, and at least two seem to be whooping.

Perhaps “CY le HAWE” is the name of their YouTube channel, where they break cinder blocks on each other. For instance. (Do read the alt text on these images, by the way, if convenient; I put a lot of work into those!)

Asking for an artistic rendering of happy chavs, we got inter alia:

a colored drawing of four young men in casual clothing standing around a car in a parking lot, among low brick building. Three wear blue caps, one of them reversed. They do not appear terribly happy.

They don’t appear particularly happy to me, I admit.

On the other hand:

A drawing of four very similar-looking men with slightly brown complexions and black hair and moustaches smile at something out of frame, leaning against an ambiguous something; possibly they are all standing on the same balcony, or truck bed.

the Esposito Quadruplets here seem quite pleased by something.

Now this one:

Drawing of a scene on a busy shopping street with brick houses with British chimneys. The most obvious foreground figures are four cheerful men in kilts (with sporran), one apparently carrying bagpipes.

doesn’t really say “chav” to me at all, due to the kilts and sporrans and so on; MJ may be improvising here. The people do look rather happy however.

In Ireland, chavs, or a group akin to chavs, are known as skangers (also possibly offensive). Prompted to picture skangers, Midjourney gave us:

Three ice hokey players facing away from us, toward the crowded bleachers. Each wears a red jersey with white lettering; from left to right: "SAKKER" with the letter S, "SARKES" with the number 7, and "SIAKERS" with the number 4. Sarkes sees to be wearing a cloth "baseball cap" rather than a hockey helmet.

The famous trio of Sakker, Sarkes, and Siakers. Sakker is notable for wearing the number “S”.

Next and relatedly:

Seven ice hockey players posing for a group picture on the ice in a variety of uniforms, the leftmost two being mascots in plush costumes (a turtle and a bear, maybe), and the center one having a mascot head (a cow perhaps?) and otherwise a normal uniform.

Not sure of the relationship between skangers and ice hockey, frankly, but there we are. Perhaps it thinks it’s a typo for “Rangers”, which is a hockey thing.

Third “skangers” image:

Four tall soda cans, each with a different abstractly-drawn monster or something in different bright colors, and all with the same logo, which seems to say something like "GAKKES". They sit on a matte black surface against a dark background.

Perhaps Gakkes(tm) soda is popular with skangers and/or chavs.

And finally in the skangers set:

A bright pink shop on an otherwise unremarkable street corner. There is a low black box in front of the shop, perhaps for stacking newspapers. The windows display numerous colorful boxes, and words on the pink and white striped awning might say something like SANCNR SKAGNVERS.

“Oi, I’m goin’ down Skarnvers fer some baccy, yew wan’ anythin’ pet?”

(That was probably offensive, too.)

And finally, just so as not to overload my readers with offensive weird stuff, here are a few where we tried to mix chav with its opposite: posh.

On a busy perhaps-English street, two people (and a dog) face us. The person on the left is dressed in what might be a parody of a tuxedo and top hat, with dark sunglasses; his mouth is wide open but narrowed. The person on the right is dressed more casually, including plaid pants, a jacket with sleeves that expose the forearms, and a small black hat; his mouth is open more roundly, and his arms crossed. (The dog, at the left, seems to be panting in a happy sort of way, with his or her tongue out.) Text at the bottom of the image says something like "on'v Chasd Heaish".

This is the one that most obviously did that, but these two are clearly taking the piss, as it were, and on’v Chasd Heaish on top of it (the guy on the right looks familiar somehow).

We also got a fair number like:

Two men look seriously into the camera, in front of a brick wall with vague graffiti. Both are wearing suits and hats, and have a certain amount of stubble and earrings, and threatening vibes.

which might be interpreted as a posh sort of chav, as well as say:

Two somehow nouveau-riche-looking people with a crowd in the background. To our left a man wearing a (faux?) fur coat, thick gold chains, dark sunglasses, and a patterned cap; to our right a woman with extremely pale blonde hair, dark sunglasses, a thin gold necklace, and pale lipstick.

similarly (Americans perhaps, haha!). Also some where it seems to have mostly ignored the instructions and just given us two ordinary people, as in:

Two women in white kitchen uniforms, one with a high chef's hat and a "Caliel" logo on her shirt. The one on our left has her arm around the other's shoulder (the one with the hat and logo), and they are smiling into the camera. There are shiny silver surfaces and piles of dishes in the background.

They’re just endearing! (Admittedly one may be missing a finger, but better that than two or three extra.) And not obviously chav or posh, so I’m not sure.

And to close, from the “a chav and posh person standing side by side” prompt:

Two people standing in a rich-looking room looking into the camera, both apparently holding golf clubs. On our left, a tall man in what might be a slightly garish sort of morning dress except that he isn't wearing pants, his patterned boxers and black socks are visible. On our right, with one hand up near the man's chest for no apparent reason, a perhaps chunky woman in an above-the-knee business dress, wearing just below-the-knee black socks, and shoes perhaps with gaiters.

and, well, I just have no clue, really.

I hope that wasn’t too offensive! Fun, though. :)

Off to make more! With different prompts…

Posted on 2023/04/11 at 9:03 pm in ai, culture, randomosity, tech, weblog   |  RSS feed |   Reply   |   Trackback URL

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2 Comments to “Chav Life”

    
  1. mattwassel
    2023/04/14 at 6:38 pm

    These are all quite impressive, though I can’t say I was offended in the least, possibly because I don’t know enough to be offended. Makes me wonder more about the nature of offensiveness. My first impression is that art won’t be offensive unless it crosses some line into my real life. If the characters are fictional I won’t find them offensive. But maybe it’s indicative of something that my favorite of these is the “artistic” one. Generally I find “art” more pleasing than “photoreal.” I also especially like the one with the three tough guys in hoodies. The crowd scenes make me curious if the AI essentially takes an existing crowd scene for the background or if it assembles it in smaller pieces. Another question: Can you direct the AI to remember one of the characters and then use that character (or any number of remembered characters) in a sequence of directed scenes? Or is each picture from scratch?

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    • ceoln
      2023/04/20 at 11:18 pm

      Maybe it’s offensive only to people who might be called chavs. :) Or, I hope, to no one.

      I like both the artistic and the photorealistic stuff that Midjourney does; the artistic because it’s artistic and nice to look at that way, and the realistic because it suggests that these places and people really exist, if in some alternate universe, and go about their lives even when off-camera. Like those three guys in hoodies. I think it makes up the crowd scenes from scratch, just as it does the individuals; I’d be surprised if it uses existing crowd scenes in any direct sense. People are working on ways to make these AIs “know about” a particular character, and then be able to use it to put that character in a particular situation or position or scene; I think that’s in its early days, though, or at least I haven’t tried to use any of the things that maybe do that yet. I’m still too easily pleased by the random things it does. :)

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