The Concept
My Guy Trump Cards started as just a silly idea and turned into a satirical AI powered art project to cope with the bizarre reality unfolding throughout the 2024 presidential election cycle.
In December 2022 former president, Donald Trump, announced one of the most pathetic grifts I had ever seen. He was selling NTFs of cheap photoshop and AI images (if they weren’t AI, that would be even worse) to his followers at insane prices. I saw an opportunity to dunk on him so I immediately bought the ".store" domain for their website. They sold out of their initial run in days and made a killing! It blew my mind how something so stupid could have sold so well. I knew I had something great in my hands, but struggled to think of what to do with the URL that I could really rally behind, so I let the idea simmer. A few months later, they did another run of the same dumb looking braindead cards. This time, I knew I could create something better using less than 10% of my brain, so I came up with the concept for My Guy Trump Cards. It's a satirical card-battling game that’s undeniably silly, with only a hint of cynicism and, most importantly, worth collecting and sharing with friends. The concept was pretty fleshed out, but my heart wasn’t in it enough to put in the work of starting production. Recently, they did another run and something sparked. I HAD to do this. I had to make something stupid myself, but in a completely different way. You know, the good kind of stupid!
The Process
Putting a creative human to the task of creating many images of Donald Trump is a tall order. Finding someone with the talent then putting them to the task is almost too cruel to oversee. Even if this person existed and could complete the objective, would they be fulfilled? Would they look back on the hours they spent fondly? No, probably not.
From the initial run of Trump’s cards and while I was mulling all of this over AI was starting to carve out a contentious space in the art community. The reality is that AI steals its creative source from people who have dedicated their lives to their art and puts it in the hands of anyone with a keyboard. I read recently someone put it something like, ‘AI puts skill in the hands of the wealthy and robs the skilled of the opportunity to wealth’. On principle, it's despicable, but, like it or not, it's not going away. There are three basic paths. Abstain from using it at all, swing your mouse around like a wand and pretend you're creating magic, or pick up the sword and learn to wield it as a tool. My Guy Trump Cards are bit of options B and C. If I was ever going to finish this project AI was the best option. I asked the same questions as before. Would it be fulfilled? Would it look back on the hours they spent fondly? The answer is still no, but who cares? No one, not even the AI.
My Guy Trump Cards are a mix of AI generated images collaged together, by a human, into playing cards. The imagery is the only AI generated piece. All of the writing was done by humans. AI was used purposely to generate silly garbage images that inspired the My Guy Trump Cards project and save humans from being robbed of their time laboring over images of Donald Trump.
The Grift
If you sell shit sandwiches, don't be mad when someone makes a tastier one.
My Guy Trump Cards is a satirical art project to show that even with just 1% of creativity you can elevate a grift to an actual product, like a pinch of salt. It was also incredibly fun to make! So much so that I encourage anyone to do the same. There is no intellectual property here. Everything is derivative, from the AI images to the first product that inspired it all. So go ahead, copy and create your own garbage and package it into a real product. Make something for yourself you can be proud of. Make something that will change you as you create. If neither of those happen, at least you made something and maybe you made a buck off it.
Lord willing, AI will, one day soon, be regulated and controlled in a manner that benefits the people it couldn’t exist without. This will hopefully be something I can look back on years from now and say “Yeah you definitely couldn’t get away with that now.”
For now, I hope you pick up a set of cards, get a good laugh and share some silliness with the people close to you. We can all take ourselves a little less seriously right now.
That’s all, patriots. See you at the polls and on the battlefield.
Forever, your deep state puppet master,
Cody