Imagine two identical spoons. One is hand-wrought from silver by a skilled metalworker. The other, a base-metal facsimile, was mass-produced by a machine. Which would you value more? Most of us would say the handmade spoon.

In 1899, more than a century ago, American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen used this very example to explain how we assign value, or his theory of conspicuous consumption, in which he contended that bourgeois consumption was driven primarily by a desire to display wealth to others. Even if these spoons were indistinguishable, explained Veblen, the hand-made spoon, once identified, would be more highly valued.

This is in part because “the hand-wrought spoon gratifies our taste, our sense of the beautiful, while that made by machinery out of base metal has no useful office beyond a brute efficiency.” But for Veblen there is another factor more important than any aesthetic judgment: costliness.

The hand-wrought spoon is preferred above all, Veblen suggested, because it is a means of demonstrating wealth. However, as we enter a world in which almost anything, including art, writing and music, can be machine-wrought, it seems that Veblen may have misjudged his spoons.

We don’t value human creations solely for their beauty or their price tag. We also value them because they embody deliberate labour and expertise.

AI-generated writing is judged differently

Our own research has shown that even highly trained writing educators cannot reliably distinguish between AI-generated and human-written essays. In fact, one study has shown that general audiences may actually prefer blander AI-generated poetry over more difficult, human-written poetry.

But while public taste may favour the simple and formulaic, the disclosure of artificial authorship is enough to make most people recoil.

In a recent study involving a series of experiments, participants were asked to compare pieces of AI-generated creative writing, including poetry and fiction. In each case, they were told that some passages were human-written and some were AI-generated. Across 16 experiments, respondents consistently devalued the writing labelled as AI-generated.

The authors of the study call this the “AI disclosure penalty.” It is possible to conclude from the study that audiences unfairly judge AI-generated content, but we disagree. This bias towards human creation is inherent to our relationship with art. When people believe something was made by a machine, they like it less.

Some argue that AI can democratize creativity by lowering barriers to production and enabling more people to participate in cultural expression. But the evidence suggests that when authorship becomes effortless, perceived value declines.

The importance of effort and experience

Art costs something. Both John Milton and James Joyce believed that their writing had cost them their eyesight. John Keats believed that the emotional exertion of writing poetry would worsen his tuberculosis and cost him his life. They kept writing anyway. We resent the machine because its creations cost it nothing.

When an algorithm generates a story about heartbreak or an essay on human struggle, it is trading in stolen emotions. AI has never felt pain, suffered a loss or wrestled with the frustration of a blank page, so its output, no matter how technically smooth, feels fundamentally deceptive.

People hate the idea of being moved by a parlour trick. In addition, many of us have a deep, instinctive revulsion to the industrialization of our inner lives. As Joanna Maciejewska observed, “I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.”

We happily accept machines stamping out our car parts and toasters because efficiency is the goal, but applying that same cold logic to human expression strips away the vulnerability, risk and stakes that make art mean anything in the first place.

This becomes more consequential as AI-generated content floods the digital media landscape.

Why human work is becoming more valuable

Our media ecosystem has evolved so that paying directly for much of the content we consume is optional. In an era of streaming music, television and film, we rarely own the product we consume, and creators receive pennies on the dollar compared to previous economic models.

To make matters worse, media companies are increasingly pushing AI-generated content in the form of tens of thousands of social media posts, books, podcasts and videos every day and encouraging artists and content creators to supercharge the quantity of their output by relying on AI.

Much of this output is highly formulaic — produced at scale and designed for rapid, low-engagement consumption. It is an endless, flavourless paste of clichés and nonsense, meant to be mindlessly consumed by doomscrolling thumbs and immediately forgotten. Despite working in an era in which payment is optional amid a deluge of slop, many artists, journalists and writers are making a living because enough of their audience chooses to support the work of real human creators.

The “AI disclosure penalty” reminds us that the consumption of art is not tied to purely aesthetic considerations but involves a need to connect with and appreciate the effort and labour of others.

Consumers have long been willing to pay more for goods labelled “handmade,” “handcrafted,” “artisanal” or “bespoke” on the understanding that those goods were made using traditional techniques that took more effort and human skill.

As generative AI turns writing, art and digital media into frictionless, infinitely replicable outputs, human cognitive effort is undergoing a profound shift. It is becoming an artisanal good that consumers must choose to support and value.

The Industrial Revolution transformed hand-made furniture and hand-woven textiles into premium markers of craftsmanship and authenticity. The AI revolution is doing something similar for intellectual and creative labour — audiences are beginning to place a premium not necessarily on the competent execution of a poem or an essay, which a machine can generate in seconds, but on the invisible friction, the lived experience and the deliberate toil of the human mind behind it.

In a landscape increasingly saturated with instant content, the verified effort of a human creator is shifting from a baseline expectation to a highly coveted, bespoke quality. Ultimately, what we value about art is not whether it’s perfect, but its ability to connect us with another human being.

Nathan Murray has received funding for his research from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Elisa Tersigni has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

When the world shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, another crisis quietly grew behind closed doors. Reports from around the globe suggested that violence against women and girls was increasing. Governments, nongovernmental organizations and advocates began referring to the phenomenon as a “shadow pandemic.”

To determine whether these headlines and informal reports reflected reality, we led the first-ever comprehensive review of studies tracking violence against women and girls during infectious disease outbreaks across low- and middle-income countries. We focused on those regions because less research on the topic has been done there, and women and girls face specific risks, such as child marriage, that are less prevalent in wealthier nations.

Our findings, published in BMJ Global Health and co-authored with UNICEF, are both clear and concerning: Violence against women and girls tends to increase during outbreaks, and the very measures used to control disease spread can lead to that rise.

Across 53 studies measuring changes in violence against women and girls in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the majority found increases, with some studies showing no change and relatively few showing declines. This pattern held across different types of violence – for example, physical domestic violence, sexual domestic violence, psychological violence or online violence – particularly committed within the home.

But even more striking was how little evidence there was from other infectious disease outbreaks. Despite the growing frequency of global health emergencies, only one study examined violence against women and girls during an outbreak other than COVID-19, specifically examining violence in Sierra Leone during both Ebola and COVID-19.

How outbreaks contribute to gender-based violence

Infectious disease outbreaks do more than spread illness. They can disrupt economies, burden health systems and reshape daily life. These shifts can amplify existing inequalities and, in many cases, increase the risk of violence.

Our research identified five key pathways through which outbreaks contribute to violence against women and girls.

First, job loss, reduced income and financial stress were the most consistently identified contributors to violence. When households experience economic strain, tensions rise – and women and girls often bear the consequences. In some contexts, economic stress was linked not only to intimate partner violence but also to harmful practices like child marriage.

Second, movement restrictions like lockdowns and quarantines can trap women and girls with abusive partners or family members. While these outbreak response measures are designed to reduce disease transmission, they can also isolate women from social networks and limit opportunities to seek both formal and informal help.

Third, deeming certain services as nonessential reduces people’s access to support. During COVID-19, many health, social and legal services were scaled back or became harder to access. School closures also meant that girls in some contexts faced increased risks of exploitation, early pregnancy or forced marriage.

Fourth, perpetrators may use women’s and girls’ fear of infection to control or manipulate them. For example, men sometimes discouraged their partners from leaving the home or seeking care in order to avoid disease risk.

Finally, women’s and girls’ past experiences with health systems can influence their intention to seek services in the future. In settings affected by earlier outbreaks, such as the 2014 Ebola outbreak, mistrust of health services discouraged some survivors from seeking care after experiencing violence, especially if doing so might lead to quarantine or mistreatment.

These pathways are not isolated. They often interact and reinforce one another, creating conditions in which violence becomes more likely during crises.

Building better evidence

Public health emergencies are becoming more frequent, and measures like lockdowns and limiting access to schools, clinics and other services can have unintended consequences. Our findings show that protecting women and girls needs to be part of how public health experts respond to outbreaks from the start and not something to address only after violence has already increased.

Tracking the issue in different types of outbreaks – such as cholera, influenza or Ebola – could help determine which policy responses are most protective.

But even within COVID-19 research, we uncovered important limitations. First, most studies focused on adult women, with far less attention to girls. And second, many studies relied on metrics such as the number of hotline calls or clinic visits, which can be misleading. A drop in reports does not necessarily mean a drop in violence; it may reflect reduced access to services or greater barriers to reporting.

Despite the data gaps we uncovered, our study already points to targeted strategies that can protect women and girls: reducing households’ financial stress, making services safe and easy to reach, ensuring girls’ continued access to school, and building stronger community support.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Voters in Wales will soon go to the polls to elect members of an expanded Senedd (Welsh parliament) under a new proportional voting system. As the campaign has developed, public service broadcasters have sought not only to report events but to educate, inform and engage audiences with an unfamiliar electoral process.

Our analysis suggests they are increasingly doing so through digital platforms. We analysed all election news content produced online and on social media by major broadcasters between April 8 and April 24, including BBC Wales, ITV Wales, S4C, Channel 4 and Sky News.

The findings point to a move towards formats designed for audiences who are more likely to encounter news online than through traditional television.

This matters because people increasingly come across political content passively, through algorithmically curated feeds rather than actively seeking it out. In that environment, the type of content produced – and how it’s presented – can play a decisive role in shaping public understanding of the election.

One prominent feature of digital coverage has been the use of explainers. These aim to demystify the election by breaking down how the Senedd works, how the voting system has changed and which policy areas are devolved to Wales or reserved to Westminster.

Many of these explainers adopt a more informal and accessible tone than their broadcast equivalents. They’re designed to cut through in fast-moving social media feeds where political information competes for attention.

A significant proportion focus on policy. Of the 19 explainers identified in our analysis, seven centred on specific issues, most commonly immigration. This reflects persistent public confusion about where responsibility lies.

Read more: Voters in Wales face Senedd election amid confusion over who holds power over what

Our recent survey found that nearly a third of people in Wales did not know immigration is controlled by the UK government. Against that backdrop, broadcasters have often made this distinction explicit. In 82% of online and social media items mentioning immigration, journalists clearly stated that responsibility lies with Westminster.

Broadcasters have also used explainers to clarify changes to the electoral system. This includes the move to a closed-list proportional system. Public awareness of this change remains low, however. Only 7% of respondents in our survey correctly identified the system, while 58% said they did not know.

Meet the leaders

Alongside explainers, broadcasters have used digital formats to introduce audiences to the leaders of Wales’s six main political parties. This has reinforced the campaign’s increasingly presidential tone, with party leaders dominating media appearances.

In a devolved context, this is not always straightforward, given the presence of both UK-wide and Welsh political figures. But digital formats have provided new ways to foreground Welsh leaders.

Short, one-to-one interviews have become an important feature. Formats such as the BBC’s Quickfire Questions and ITV’s Chippy Chats mix light-touch prompts – like “What song have you got on repeat?” – with more substantive questions about policy priorities.

These formats inject personality into political coverage. Leaders are presented not only as decision-makers but as people with interests and personalities. This is particularly significant given relatively low public awareness of Welsh political figures.

Our recent survey found that fewer than half of respondents could identify the leader of Plaid Cymru, Rhun ap Iorwerth, despite the fact he could become the next first minister.

At the same time, the informal tone has not entirely displaced scrutiny. In ITV’s Chippy Chats for example, the Welsh Liberal Democrat leader Jane Dodds was challenged on her voting record in the Senedd. It’s a reminder that accountability can still be built into more conversational formats.

Informing voters in a digital campaign

Taken together, these approaches suggest broadcasters are using digital platforms in distinct and complementary ways. Explainers aim to address gaps in public knowledge. One-to-one interviews make political leaders more visible and relatable.

This reflects a broader transformation in how election coverage is produced and consumed. As more people encounter political information online, public service broadcasters play an increasingly important role in countering misinformation and improving understanding of politics and public affairs.

The challenge is now to strike the right balance. Broadcasters must produce content that engages audiences. But they shouldn’t lose sight of the need to inform them and to scrutinise the claims made by political parties.

Keighley Perkins receives funding from AHRC for research into broadcasters' impartiality.

Maxwell Modell receives funding from the AHRC for research into broadcasters' impartiality.

Stephen Cushion has received funding from the BBC Trust, Ofcom, AHRC, BA, ESRC and Welsh Government.

Eighty-one years after Adolf Hitler died by his own hand in a Berlin bunker, a viral video on TikTok shows an AI-generated vision of the Nazi dictator standing in Antarctica, shoulders broad and face smiling, sipping a White Monster Energy drink while Men at Work’s iconic song Down Under plays.

It’s an absurd image, but one that makes sense in the context of the “Agartha” trend on TikTok, which is quietly bringing white supremacist narratives into the mainstream to be seen by millions of users.

The modern myth of Agartha, a supposed utopia hidden inside the hollow Earth, was constructed from older pieces by esoteric authors after the second world war. It blends “Aryan” white supremacist themes with ideas of an occult SS and Third Reich spaceships.

Literal belief in hollow-Earth myths or Nazi UFOs is not the point. Instead, it’s an aesthetic – one that can host both coded far-right messages and explicit ones, fused with pop-cultural references such as the White Monster Energy meme.

Mainstreaming through borderline content

Agartha videos on social media are “awful but lawful”: the content is objectionable but legal. It allows extremists to embed their narratives into mainstream social media spaces, without triggering moderation or outright rejection by the audience. As a result, they can reach large, young audiences.

To understand how the underlying esoteric myths are used, we analysed a network of more than 43,000 Agartha-related TikTok videos and closely studied selected examples. This analysis is part of an ongoing project led by researchers at Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences in Germany. The goal is to understand how extremists abuse platform features to carry radical narratives into the mainstream.

We identified four key mechanisms which far-right actors use to push radical narratives to unsuspecting audiences: aesthetic camouflage, dog-whistles and split-second glimpses, network building, and weaponised irony. Let’s unpack each of these terms.

Aesthetic camouflage

Moderation systems on social media platforms aim to remove overt extremist propaganda. These systems work imperfectly, but overt propaganda is unlikely to reach mass audiences before being removed.

Instead, far-right actors often use generative AI to mask racial ideology behind seemingly benign tropes from science fiction and fantasy. This allows a “de-demonising” of their ideas. Elf-like depictions of the “Aryan” inhabitants of Agartha, or footage of an underground utopia, make the idea of a white ethnostate seem palatable.

The engaging aesthetic keeps people watching longer. In turn, this triggers the algorithm to push the video to wider audiences.

Dog whistles and split-second provocations

Far-right actors infuse their content with dog whistles that communicate to a certain audience without triggering moderation.

Our research identified recurring visual symbols in Agartha videos. “Raw milk” signals white supremacy. The number 271, which appears in hundreds of the videos, is a code for Holocaust denial.

Agartha videos also sometimes include overt extremist markers such as the Hakenkreuz (the Nazi symbol of the “hooked cross” or swastika). They are often flashed for only fractions of a second.

This is a calculated provocation. It tests and pushes platform boundaries, normalising the presence of far-right markers and slowly desensitising viewers. At the same time, successful inclusion of forbidden symbols in videos with viral reach serves as a badge of honour within the in-group.

Building network bridges

The Agartha community is not an isolated echo chamber. Our analysis shows the Agartha network connects to others on TikTok. Around 87% of these connections come via the inclusion of mundane, mainstream hashtags on Agartha videos.

Extremists may deliberately “hijack” benign, high-traffic hashtags, such as #roblox or #loganpaul, to push their content into everyday feeds. Agartha is also strongly connected to gym and fitness content. Hashtags such as #gymtok serve as a bridge, potentially funnelling users towards radical narratives.

Here, we also observed targeted appeals. Agartha videos would commonly include hashtags associated with “looksmaxxing” – a trend for extreme physical self-optimisation – to push their videos towards audiences seen as potentially susceptible, such as insecure young men. Well-known looksmaxxers were also sometimes depicted in Agartha videos.

Weaponised irony

As the example of Adolf Hitler drinking a Monster Energy illustrates, Agartha videos rely heavily on absurd situations, frequently co-opting mainstream social media trends.

Because White Monster Energy is a popular meme within non-extremist spaces, users familiar with the trend are particularly likely to get algorithmic recommendations fused with extremist narratives.

Similarly, actors superimpose mainstream figures into Agartha to force association, such as YouTuber Logan Paul or actor Mads Mikkelsen.

Such co-opting is also done through music, with many hollow-Earth edits set to Men at Work’s 1980s hit Down Under. The track serves as a darkly ironic nod to the subterranean utopia.

This increases the chances for algorithmic amplification while providing creators with plausible deniability. Criticisms can be dismissed as a misunderstanding of dark humour or current trends.

Recognising the threat

Agartha is more than just a digital resurfacing of fringe occultism. It is a blueprint for how to design extremist content for algorithmically curated short-video platforms.

It’s also a reminder that extremist content on social media does not exist in isolation. Instead, it lives in what researchers call “hybridised spaces”, where users move in and out of extremist discourse. In such spaces, borderline content, outright extremism, mundane trends and humour blend seamlessly – and participants may find their mainstream interests lead them to radical narratives.

Marten Risius receives funding through the Distinguished Professorship Program via the Bavarian Hightech Agenda from the Bavarian Ministry of Sciences and Arts.

Christopher David does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.