Questionable Content XVI: Yes, Butt

[Traab]

I mean, food tends to be a considerable portion of people's budgets. Also, the landlady from a while ago mentioned conversion of living space to AI "cubicles," so it seems like residing in whole apartments is not necessarily typical.

So far every time we have seen an ai "at home" its been in an apartment. Its entirely possible that there will be some form of ai studio apartment setup where they pay rent for the bare minimum needed, a plug to charge up and a spot to shut down out of the weather. But so far what we have been shown is, the ai characters have actual normal apartments. And really, food is the only thing they dont all indulge in. They wear clothes, they enjoy various forms of entertainment, they rent homes, pay utilities. We dont know what their self maintenance bills tend to be like. Even working a minimum wage job may wasnt making enough to keep up with the cost of repairing herself despite presumably splitting rent three ways with dale and whats her face, im blanking.

[Yuki Akuma]

May's body was explicitly trash that was not fit for purpose and way too expensive to maintain.

[Mechalich]

So far every time we have seen an ai "at home" its been in an apartment. Its entirely possible that there will be some form of ai studio apartment setup where they pay rent for the bare minimum needed, a plug to charge up and a spot to shut down out of the weather. But so far what we have been shown is, the ai characters have actual normal apartments. And really, food is the only thing they dont all indulge in. They wear clothes, they enjoy various forms of entertainment, they rent homes, pay utilities. We dont know what their self maintenance bills tend to be like. Even working a minimum wage job may wasnt making enough to keep up with the cost of repairing herself despite presumably splitting rent three ways with dale and whats her face, im blanking.

We've seen a bit more than that. Bubbles lived in the office when she worked for Corpse Witch, and when she initially moved in with Faye she simply asked for a place to charge. Likewise Momo lives with Marigold and apparently sleeps in a closet or on the couch or something. Melon and the other AI she lives with have a normal apartment, but they also use it as a home office since Melon works as some kind of bizarre fetish-based video personality. Pintsize, of course, has lived with Marten for years and doesn't really have any private space of his own.

May, for her part, has her own apartment. We've seen shots of it and Momo has gone to visit May to avoid loud sex noises from Marigold and Dale. This is somewhat odd since ostensibly she should have downsized to a charging cubicle to save money.

I mean, food tends to be a considerable portion of people's budgets.

Food accounts for about 10% of the average American family budget.

Relevant to May's case, is the cost of Health Care, which is about 6% of the family budget (that's not the insurance cost, which is in a separate category, that's the actual out of pocket cost, including for over-the-counter things like Tylenol). However, there's obviously a lot of variability. May's case is comparable to someone with a chronic long-term health problem, one that's curable through an expensive surgery. Really, embodied AIs ought to be carrying insurance for their bodies in lieu of health insurance in some sort of combination of car insurance and the injury insurance policies some athletes use.

[dps]

Food accounts for about 10% of the average American family budget.

That's pretty variable, though, and tends to be a significantly higher percentage for lower income groups. While we don't really have a firm grasp on my how much any of the characters make, we do know that May has a low-paying job, so it's an entirely reasonable assumption that not having to buy food saves her a good bit of money compared to a human with a similar income.

[Mechalich]

That's pretty variable, though, and tends to be a significantly higher percentage for lower income groups. While we don't really have a firm grasp on my how much any of the characters make, we do know that May has a low-paying job, so it's an entirely reasonable assumption that not having to buy food saves her a good bit of money compared to a human with a similar income.

True. As a convenience store clerk May almost certainly makes minimum wage. Current Mass minimum wage (as of Jan 1, 2021) is 13.50 an hour, as part of a graduated increase towards a $15 minimum wage. Assuming May works full time and factoring in some extra money from holiday pay, figure she makes around 30K per year. There's a question of what her take-home pay would be. She probably doesn't pay any net federal or state income taxes at that level, but do AIs still pay social security and medicare taxes? It's not like they can reach retirement age or get sick.

It's worth noting that hardly any of the characters in the comic are financially secure. Sven makes the most (I'd estimate he might pull down 150-200K per year). Second place is actually Steve, since he's a Special Agent for some unnamed three-letter agency, which means he's probably a GS-11 and makes around 100K per year. Dora's probably in third place, I'd guess she makes somewhere between 60-75K a year. Beyond that, most of the main cast is likely to hover around the 30-50K range.

[Max_Killjoy]

True. As a convenience store clerk May almost certainly makes minimum wage. Current Mass minimum wage (as of Jan 1, 2021) is 13.50 an hour, as part of a graduated increase towards a $15 minimum wage. Assuming May works full time and factoring in some extra money from holiday pay, figure she makes around 30K per year. There's a question of what her take-home pay would be. She probably doesn't pay any net federal or state income taxes at that level, but do AIs still pay social security and medicare taxes? It's not like they can reach retirement age or get sick.

It's worth noting that hardly any of the characters in the comic are financially secure. Sven makes the most (I'd estimate he might pull down 150-200K per year). Second place is actually Steve, since he's a Special Agent for some unnamed three-letter agency, which means he's probably a GS-11 and makes around 100K per year. Dora's probably in third place, I'd guess she makes somewhere between 60-75K a year. Beyond that, most of the main cast is likely to hover around the 30-50K range.

I can easily see legislators and administrators requiring AIs to pay into programs they'll never use, that's a bean-counter's dream.

[dps]

Assuming May works full time

If someone is a conveince store clerk, without any other evidence, it's a fairly safe assumption that they DON'T work full-time.

[Vinyadan]

I can easily see legislators and administrators requiring AIs to pay into programs they'll never use, that's a bean-counter's dream.

That's a good question, robots and humans could have completely separate tax plans, or pay the same things, so that they cover services for the other kind.

[dps]

do AIs still pay social security and medicare taxes? It's not like they can reach retirement age

Acting, on thinking about this, do we actually know that for sure?

[Vinyadan]

Also a good question, and something that might really be on Bubble's mind, for example.

[DaFlipp]

She probably doesn't pay any net federal or state income taxes at that level, but do AIs still pay social security and medicare taxes? It's not like they can reach retirement age or get sick.

As someone who worked as a federal student loan advisor during the 10 years between Public Service Loan Forgiveness being created and the first people actually qualifying for it (since it required 10 years of qualifying payments before you could actually get it), I guarantee you 100% that, at least for now, the official government position on this issue is most likely "Ummm.... f***, no idea how that works. Well, I probably won't be in office anymore by the time AIs get old enough that they should theoretically qualify for SS, so I'm just... going to let someone else deal with the implications of that."

[Wraith]

Likewise Momo lives with Marigold and apparently sleeps in a closet or on the couch or something.

May, for her part, has her own apartment. We've seen shots of it and Momo has gone to visit May to avoid loud sex noises from Marigold and Dale. This is somewhat odd since ostensibly she should have downsized to a charging cubicle to save money.

Momo is Marigold's full-time room mate. She has her own bed, taking up 'full person' residence after Angus moved out.

Meanwhile, May lives with Dale. She moved in after leaving Robot Jail and admitting that the halfway house was too cramped for her liking, hence how she tripped on one of his swords and carved her face off. Despite hanging out together all the time, Dale and marigold haven't reached the point where they live together full-time.

[Gez]

I mean, food tends to be a considerable portion of people's budgets.

Food is energy. It's just that organic bodies have this whole system to extract chemical energy from matter. Robot bodies have to make do with batteries and connecting to the power grid.

Also: batteries have a limited lifetime. With each charge cycle, they store a little less energy, until they become basically useless and need to be replaced.

AI may not need to budget for food, but they're still gonna need to budget for their power bills and battery replacements.

[Vinyadan]

Yep, our ability to regenerate ourselves for decades just eating and drinking and breathing is very different from how AIs live. It's possible that they would end up needing more money than we do to keep their body functional, even in the absence of accidents.

I guess that a very earnest world builder could try to realistically imagine this world with two markets -- the human food market and the AI chassis market. Besides pricing and so on, would the chassis market be considered a commodity market for long, or turn into a health service with all related ethical duties? I think that, in the end, laws would need to consider three sort of citizens, rather than two: humans, disembodied AIs, and bodied AIs.

Thinking about it, are disembodied AIs software or hardware? If there is a blackout, do such AIs die, or come back later? Do AIs like May's old bank job live in the place they work, or do they do smart working from some AI-dedicated server? If they live in the company's computer, do they get special rights, and does the working place get precise duties towards them?

Also, there could be a specialised market for housing of such disembodied AIs, if they live in servers like in a condo. Except you can't really evict them without killing them, I guess.

[Mechalich]

So...apparently Marigold struck it rich as a streamer. I find this highly implausible. I mean, yes a very, very, small number of elite streamers do make lots of money, but even most pro streamers (which are something like 5,000 people globally and considerably less than 1% of all streamers) are making somewhere between 3-10K per month between streaming payments and ad revenue. Now, 10K a month is a 120K a year salary, which isn't bad for being paid to play video games, but it is not a stupidly large amount of money, especially when considering what you might make over a few months.

I could certainly buy Marigold becoming a successful streamer, and that could certainly vault her from whatever modest salary her father was paying her to do website maintenance into the upper middle class (120K is right around the entry point into the top ten percent in the US currently), but it wouldn't make her a fortune.

[georgie_leech]

So...apparently Marigold struck it rich as a streamer. I find this highly implausible. I mean, yes a very, very, small number of elite streamers do make lots of money, but even most pro streamers (which are something like 5,000 people globally and considerably less than 1% of all streamers) are making somewhere between 3-10K per month between streaming payments and ad revenue. Now, 10K a month is a 120K a year salary, which isn't bad for being paid to play video games, but it is not a stupidly large amount of money, especially when considering what you might make over a few months.

I could certainly buy Marigold becoming a successful streamer, and that could certainly vault her from whatever modest salary her father was paying her to do website maintenance into the upper middle class (120K is right around the entry point into the top ten percent in the US currently), but it wouldn't make her a fortune.

I'm gonna submit that upper 10% of earners for someone who had been living the moderately successful millennial lifestyle of "rents an apartment" is still probably an amount of money they were neither expecting nor fully prepared to deal with.

[John Cribati]

If her fanbase is thirsty enough...

[Mechalich]

I'm gonna submit that upper 10% of earners for someone who had been living the moderately successful millennial lifestyle of "rents an apartment" is still probably an amount of money they were neither expecting nor fully prepared to deal with.

Right, but it's Hannelore, not Marigold who says that it's "a lot. Like, a lot lot"' and she has an appreciation of much bigger numbers than Marigold does. I mean, if Marigold's been making 10K a month as a streamer for six months she might have around 50K in the bank if she's not yet paid any taxes on that income (which would be a significant amount btw, especially in Mass, which has a fairly high state income tax). That's 'I could buy a new car' income, not 'omg I need to talk to a financial planner right now income.'

[Max_Killjoy]

So...apparently Marigold struck it rich as a streamer. I find this highly implausible. I mean, yes a very, very, small number of elite streamers do make lots of money, but even most pro streamers (which are something like 5,000 people globally and considerably less than 1% of all streamers) are making somewhere between 3-10K per month between streaming payments and ad revenue. Now, 10K a month is a 120K a year salary, which isn't bad for being paid to play video games, but it is not a stupidly large amount of money, especially when considering what you might make over a few months.

I could certainly buy Marigold becoming a successful streamer, and that could certainly vault her from whatever modest salary her father was paying her to do website maintenance into the upper middle class (120K is right around the entry point into the top ten percent in the US currently), but it wouldn't make her a fortune.

What was Marigold's income before, do we have any idea?

Outside of NYC, San Fran, and a few other places with grossly bloated Cost of Living, 120k isa lot.

120k is 90th percentile US income.

[The Glyphstone]

Hanners also has a surprisingly well developed sense of empathy and perspective for someone with her background. She's more than capable of recognizing the difference between 'a lot lot' of money for her and 'a lot lot' of money for Marigold, and smart enough to not point it out.

[Stevesciguy]

It's difficult to get an estimate because the numbers are pretty out of proportion. A quick check on a twitch streamer I watch with a similar concurrent viewer count gives 4600 subscribers and 350,000 followers.

If QC subscribers are like Twitch subscribers, Aurelia would have a 7 digit income even before considering donations or ad revenue. But her concurrent viewer count be extremely low relative to that sub count if that's the case.

If QC subscribers are more like Twitch followers(as I suspect is the case), then it's a lot more difficult to predict. We would need to know her advertising habits, and the extreme follower:concurrent viewer ratio would indicate a highly dedicated audience(perhaps unsurprisingly) which might result in higher than average donations.

Either way, the answer is "yes, she is making enough to live off of this, probably comfortably."

I'm gonna point back to this real quick.

We still don't know how Jeph defines these things in his world, but given that we know that Marigold's sub count(whatever subscribers are in QC) is 5 times that of Aurelia's, it's entirely possible that the numbers Marigold is showing to Hannelore are "a lot lot" by almost anyone's definition.

[Gez]

I'm gonna point back to this real quick.

We still don't know how Jeph defines these things in his world, but given that we know that Marigold's sub count(whatever subscribers are in QC) is 5 times that of Aurelia's, it's entirely possible that the numbers Marigold is showing to Hannelore are "a lot lot" by almost anyone's definition.

For every human subscriber there's probably like a hundred AI ones, so the subscription count is massively overinflated compared to the real world. At the same time, that would also logically reduce the amount of money earned per subscription, since most of these AI viewers are probably chassis-less and without much effective purchasing power. Just getting bored in the infosphere and living vicariously by watching streamers.

[Mechalich]

Counts variability aside, people don't just spontaneously become rich streamers. Like any job that depends on fan interaction and support it's a hustle. It takes a lot of work and effort to build the kind of fanbase willing to fork over large amounts of money on a regular basis, including attending events beyond just streaming and putting yourself out on social media like crazy.

Aurelia, actually, has the kind of personality I imagine one needs to achieve success in this field. She's personable, shameless, unconcerned with things like age barriers, and gossipy. Her ability to acquire a reasonably remunerative position as a lead streamer for a fetish community is unusual, but not outside the bounds of possibility.

Marigold, by contrast, is none of these things. She's a skilled and knowledgeable gamer, but she's also massively introverted to the point that she was practically a shut-in for a considerable period. I can't see her putting in the kind of highly public effort necessary to build a massive streaming following (nor can I see her attempting to monetize her sex appeal, she remains very uncomfortable about her appearance in many ways), especially not without her friends both knowing about it and actively supporting her.

It just seems poorly setup.

[Shadow of the Sun]

Counts variability aside, people don't just spontaneously become rich streamers. Like any job that depends on fan interaction and support it's a hustle. It takes a lot of work and effort to build the kind of fanbase willing to fork over large amounts of money on a regular basis, including attending events beyond just streaming and putting yourself out on social media like crazy.

Aurelia, actually, has the kind of personality I imagine one needs to achieve success in this field. She's personable, shameless, unconcerned with things like age barriers, and gossipy. Her ability to acquire a reasonably remunerative position as a lead streamer for a fetish community is unusual, but not outside the bounds of possibility.

Marigold, by contrast, is none of these things. She's a skilled and knowledgeable gamer, but she's also massively introverted to the point that she was practically a shut-in for a considerable period. I can't see her putting in the kind of highly public effort necessary to build a massive streaming following (nor can I see her attempting to monetize her sex appeal, she remains very uncomfortable about her appearance in many ways), especially not without her friends both knowing about it and actively supporting her.

It just seems poorly setup.

Since she's working as a vtuber, the sex appeal issue isn't quite as much of a problem. Similarly, having an avatar in front of the social interaction might make things easier for her - the anonymity kinda thing.

I think Jeph just wants a vtuber storyline.

[Wraith]

Not gonna lie; It would have been great to see a story about Marigold deciding to get into streaming, and then either slowly making a business of it over many months or suddenly 'striking it rich' when people decided to stick around after an unexpected Raid from a much bigger streamer. The former shows her growing and evolving from shy and insecure to famous and comfortable; the latter gives us a story about her suddenly being thrust into the limelight and having to deal with it.

But, no. She's successful and rich now - even by the reckoning of Hannelore, who grew up on a space station as the daughter of Openly Evil Jeff Bezos - so don't ask questions, just roll with it.

[EDIT] Also; this was like, a week to 10 days ago in-comic time. Marigold was so hard-up to find $100 to donate to May's body-fund that she was going to sell off some unique hentai out of her collection... despite apparently rolling in Hannelore-is-impressed amounts of money from her 200,000 Twitch subscribers. Just... bwuh?

[Keltest]

Not gonna lie; It would have been great to see a story about Marigold deciding to get into streaming, and then either slowly making a business of it over many months or suddenly 'striking it rich' when people decided to stick around after an unexpected Raid from a much bigger streamer. The former shows her growing and evolving from shy and insecure to famous and comfortable; the latter gives us a story about her suddenly being thrust into the limelight and having to deal with it.

But, no. She's successful and rich now - even by the reckoning of Hannelore, who grew up on a space station as the daughter of Openly Evil Jeff Bezos - so don't ask questions, just roll with it.

[EDIT] Also; this was like, a week to 10 days ago in-comic time. Marigold was so hard-up to find $100 to donate to May's body-fund that she was going to sell off some unique hentai out of her collection... despite apparently rolling in Hannelore-is-impressed amounts of money from her 200,000 Twitch subscribers. Just... bwuh?

It would be weird, but its not entirely out of the question that some rich AI or something donated an improbably large amount within the last week or so, hence Marigold's "well what do i actually do with this?" issue. I personally dont know what twitch donations count as for the purposes of taxes, and i suspect Marigold may not either, so this is actually a genuine, if unlikely, problem that she would need actual professional (or at least educated) help for.

[Traab]

For every human subscriber there's probably like a hundred AI ones, so the subscription count is massively overinflated compared to the real world. At the same time, that would also logically reduce the amount of money earned per subscription, since most of these AI viewers are probably chassis-less and without much effective purchasing power. Just getting bored in the infosphere and living vicariously by watching streamers.

Im not sure why you think bodiless ais wouldnt have purchasing power considering most of our money might as well be digital anyways. Im pretty sure we have seen comics talking about them and how they also do work and get paid for it. Probably mainly online only stuff like data protection and whatnot but still, they get money, they get bored, they have disposable income to drop on amusing vloggers, possibly more than normal human beings would have. So it honestly wouldnt shock me to learn that in this world vloggers can make notably more money because there are always ais looking for something interesting to watch with all this money piling up thats basically mostly discretionary funds to them. And bored people are more likely to buy interesting things so at best all that changes is what is more commonly advertised on these sites. Maybe they dont want to buy ridge wallets, but raid shadow legends is probably making a killing there.

[Max_Killjoy]

Good points on the lack of buildup and suddenness of this delvelopment.

Given the way Jeph has done other story lines, I say flip a coin on whether this becomes a heavy-handed finger wag about how being wealthy is evil.

[Gez]

Im not sure why you think bodiless ais wouldnt have purchasing power considering most of our money might as well be digital anyways.

Effective purchasing power. What's the point of buying merch if you don't have somewhere to put it? If they have money, they can contribute to Patreon-like schemes, but as a demographic group for advertisers, they'd be nearly useless.

[Traab]

Effective purchasing power. What's the point of buying merch if you don't have somewhere to put it? If they have money, they can contribute to Patreon-like schemes, but as a demographic group for advertisers, they'd be nearly useless.

They can buy entertainment, such as games, watch vloggers, download stuff like books to their own equivalent of a kindle, netflix, the need for entertainment doesnt vanish with the lack of a body. All that changes is what they would be interested in having. Maybe buy new hardware and software to give them more virtual space to work with, All this is just random ideas with 30 seconds of consideration. There is a reason i name dropped raid shadow legends as an example, one of the more common low end advertisers for up and coming youtube channels, the ability to play a game like that online could be fun for them. Maybe they would like the nord vpn or security services to protect their virtual spaces from viruses better. As I said, the only thing that might change are what goods and services get targeted through the vloggers, and with the additional market in the form of ais, both embodied and not, there are even MORE commercials for us to click skip on after 4 seconds.