[yterdy]

It's a bit of a stretch to call musical instruments - which are often handcrafted and not manufactured because an object that produces a particular sound requires tolerance that shift with the source material and that are difficult to generalize to a machine process - "soulless". On top of that handcrafting, they're objects made specifically to tap into one of the deepest parts of the human psyche (again, by hand, ephemerally). It's hard to think of something less soulless.

[ncr100]

Seriously, true.

Mother's heartbeat. The woosh of her blood stream.

We get months of this auditory performance.

[ThrowawayTestr]

Do you think hand crafted instruments were used for the ad or cheap Chinese shit?

[yterdy]

https://youtu.be/XL7Wxqr2ZRk

https://youtu.be/0SvfNhMlnBE

Even "cheap Chinese shit" is made by hand.

[filleduchaos]

I'm not sure how to articulate it but there's a deep irony in how people are scoffing at the emotional reaction to this ad, when the sentiment in it - that all things can be done/subsumed by Computers™ - has infiltrated the public consciousness as deeply as it has.

There is so much that is still only doable at least in part by hand, from making certain musical instruments to things like crochet. There are even more that use machines but are nowhere near as automated as people believe they are (see e.g. practically all tailoring, where even mass produced articles still need a skilled hand to guide the cutting and sewing machines).

But people love the fiction of some sterile production line that spits out all the cheap things they buy, in no small part because acknowledging that even "cheap Chinese shit" is made by the skilled hands of actual human beings would require acknowledging the gross exploitation that enables you to buy their work for absurdly low prices.