because the machine must break (true empowerment in the age of AI tools) – The Candybox Blog

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because the machine must break (true empowerment in the age of AI tools)

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August 2, 2026

tools

A while ago I got an email from someone saying they found my work while looking through recent "vibe-coded and AI-built games"… And they wanted to feature my games on this AI website.

You can imagine the bout of panic. Vibe-coded?? How did they jump to that conclusion? Based on what? I make everything myself. No "artificial", I’m just "intelligent"!!

Oh god, is this the beginning of being canceled yet again-again-again-again??

I never used any vibe coding or AI tools. I have no intention of changing that.

I used to be, and still am, a fan of classic pre-AI era AI… before gen-AI, and data scraping, and this modern rendition ruined it. I loved my AIML bot, that I customized myself, with data that I wrote myself. I love procedural generation, using code I write myself, based on rules I create myself… It’s sad to me how AI has become an umbrella term for all things wrong in tech when it has existed so long in games and computers.

All that said, I wrote the email off as phishing but generally this fear has been on my mind a lot… thinking about how anti-AI accusations, and all the social media outrage this entails, actually just seems to help normalize AI.

Thankfully a lot of my work predates modern "AI tools". It is impossible to accuse, and invalidate, most of what I’m proud of… but I can’t imagine what absolute paranoia hell it must be for new digital artists starting out.

It would be easy to accuse anyone of "using AI", and as a result of enough online relational aggression, blackballing them from their own communities or support.

It’s easy to do that to people anyone might be jealous of. It all just strikes me as another clout chasing strategy for social media.

My most recent observations… I think all this helps normalize AI (Yes, I will repeat that a lot).

We’re seeing the discussion change that you can’t really do anything "that cool" without using AI, so therefore AI must be involved.

I see so much over X (occasionally I peek in, because it’s a good litmus test for where tech bros are at) where a person will say "I was able to finally make something amazing as a solo-dev with AI!"

The gist of it is that a solo-dev doesn’t have the advantages of a team, and the only way to make something good is to use vibe coding. "You can’t possibly do it all yourself." So we are seeing this idea creep in that good work is something only teams, or advantaged people can make. AI tools are empowering to disadvantaged individuals. (This being the ghist of arguments…)

I don’t agree. (In bold, so I’m harder to misinterpret.) I am a solo-dev. I pride myself in doing everything on my own, including making my own tools.

I also understand the cultural nitpicking that comes with calling myself a solo-dev because "people never truly make everything/something on their own. You didn’t build your own computer, make your own OS, or build your own engine… then you are not a solo-dev...