Hookup Culture Is Destroying Romance

By Sean Siapno Focal point Editor

The dating scene has taken a turn for the worse with the current Generation. Today, it seems that people have to go through so many different phases in order to simply earn the title of someone’s partner, girlfriend, or boyfriend. The concept of a significant other might be dead. What happened?

Hookup culture.

Securing a stable relationship has become an afterthought to exploring and keeping your options open. The fear of commitment has led people to reside in gray areas like: situationships, friends with benefits, or mutual exclusivity. No matter how strong the connection or time spent with one another, people simply do not want to label their relationship.

However, the prominence of physical intimacy has remained a clear objective of modern dating. In fact, it’s heavily desired, shifting the narrative of romance. Everything is more surface level and we seem to be okay with it. A possible love interest is now determined by someone’s physical appearance rather than their personality.

Dating apps are the leading cause of promoting the dominant social norm that hookup culture has become.

After all, this is the era of Tinder and Bumble.

Dating apps are the centerfold of hookup culture. Even if their purpose is to help people connect, it primarily revolves around the superficial aspects. Apps such as Tinder or Bumble fuel the current trend, inserting the idea into young people that casual hookups are the social norm while simultaneously making them overly accessible. The media exacerbates the issue as these kinds of engagements seem to be encouraged. By watching our favorite characters perform steamy scenes, the drive for a similar experience is continuously sought for.

California needs to standardize IGETC for all California Public Universities

Dating should not only be defined by physical intimacy. People tend to overlook and miss out on the “butterflies” that come from a slow and well developed relationship. It’s an amazing feeling seeing the person you like take you on a picnic or going on walks at the beach together. Sadly, people won’t experience any of this if hookup culture continues to dominate the dating scene.

While love never really has a clear path for anyone, the issues that we claim to deal with today are outrageous.

Is it really that hard to call someone your girlfriend, boyfriend, or partner if you truly like them?

Is it too much of a hassle to get to know someone before taking it to the next level?

If you’re not ready to be committed, the answer is simple. Come back when you are. Labeling a relationship does not equal an immediate hand in marriage. So, in the proclaimed “month of love,” where is the love? Romance is fleeting and it’s disappointing to see our society reduce the richness of love to the mediocrity of hookup culture.

AI is stealing from artists

By Graham Breitbarth Digital Editor

Content creators are being destroyed by new AI generation tools.

Recently, AI-generated content has been running rampant through the digital creator space. The question is, why? Artificial Intelligence is rapidly making more tools accessible in various fields.

There are plenty of people who would agree that AI is revolutionary technology that can help more than hurt people.

Artificial intelligence is only as smart as we can program it and only as talented as the examples it’s given. In order to improve further it must work with more than what the programmers are able to give it. AI is then fed stolen work, including art, music and even scripts that it collects from the internet.

How exactly is it stealing?

from those who input ideas into it.

AI art functions similarly. It searches the internet for keywords relating to what the user requested. Those keywords lead the program to compile other artists’ work, which the software then uses to compose a new piece made from thousands of original works.

Apps like Lensa and MidJourney are two of the top AI art apps out there. They’re able to generate images based on the work of other artists for just a few dollars and sometimes even for free. It pulls from the work from hundreds to generate something new.

Artist Lauryn Ipsum reported seeing the signature of another artist in an AI-generated portrait. She referred to it as “...the mangled remain’s of an artist’s signature…”

By Nishad Karulkar Opinions Editor

California needs Cal-GETC.

California needs this single standardized series of courses for community college students to directly transfer to both the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) systems.

While California higher education has historically made efforts toward bridging the economic gaps within its institutions via effective and transparent community college transfer pathways to four-year universities, the system is still gravely flawed.

More prestigious institutions like the UCs remain costly for a majority of community college students. And the CSUs continue to be underfunded with major budget deficits.

Furthermore, economics aside, the concrete pathways for community college students interested in higher education is even worse off.

First, although both are designated California public schools in name, the CSU and UC applications are separate. One of the initial steps to combating inequality in California’s lower income and marginalized students is to simplify its students’ processes by creating a single application for all California public universities.

This can be implemented very similarly to how each of the distinct applications are already set up for their respective systems. If you want to apply to UC Irvine and UC Davis, you can do so through one UC application. Similarly, if you want to go to San Francisco State or Sonoma State, it is under one CSU application.

My question is, why were these applications ever separate to begin with? The separation between the more internationally recognizable UC brand and publicly accessible CSU one demonstrates an inherent level of entrenched classism between the two University systems.

The UCs have historically been, and still are more expensive institutions to attend than the CSUs.

Despite increased access to the UCs through its IGETC course pattern, most students from community colleges like Skyline are more likely to attend the CSUs than the UCs, not because they aren’t smart enough for the UCs, but because the schools are simply out of their budget.

While community college students are intelligent, they shouldn’t be forced to shoulder the burden of academic bureaucracy to attend the best available public avenues toward higher education.

Califormia is home to over 2 million community college students who seek to economically elevate themselves and their circumstances via education.

Artificial Intelligence has to learn from somewhere; take ChatGPT for example, an AI chatbot writing software that learns

In the ever evolving digital world there will always be new programs coming around. It’s up to those who use them to be responsible with them.