Luann by Greg Evans and Karen Evans for April 06, 2024

Who in their right mind would pay to be branded by a couple of college students??

People brand themselves with their own actions. They’re known to be kind, reliable, funny, good, mean.. etc

.

Do they think since Bets says AI is involved.. we’ll suddenly think this a good idea?

Looks like they’re on a roll.

Setting up fake lives and personalities for people? Gosh, whatever could go wrong with that?

Bets all you need is R2-D2

This might be the first storyline in years that just didn’t interest me. Guess, I’ll just wait it out.

Thanks, Tiff. That’s the best offer I’ve seen lately.

New arc after they rebrand Stef. I always hear my mom in my head saying “why buy the cow, when the milk is free”.

Who would want to be branded? Politicos so-called influencers. .

I fear “Luann” has jumped the shark and been eaten by same.

You’ll be sorry, Tiff!! To be continued.

OK – Start with Tiffany. The computer will likely crash.

There was a company on South Park that did that for people, CumHammer was the name. Everyone shared one trait in common, being a victim.

Booooring……

Honestly- I cannot deal with anymore of this….

AI generated? A Storyline where Tiffany morphed into Tiffany 3.0 ?

Personal skills? Image? Values? Goals? College students are not finished products. They are still developing personal and professional skills. Their image is changing continually throughout the course of their studies. Their values and goals represent aspirations, but not capabilities. The summation that an AI platform might produce could be considered a “wannabee” resume snapshot at some given stage of development. That might be useful to a student for self-evaluation about what changes may yet be desirable. One might envision providing a service to input “what if” data in order to observe its impact on the resume. Thus a student might consider the effect of particular proposed future choices. But it would likely be inadvisable to allow such a resume to become publicly accessible as a “brand” label. Further, there are many questions to consider about the values embedded in the AI itself. AIs are not one fixed capability. They must be developed and characterized. They are not objective, and they may not even be consistent because they may be constructed to use new inputs as developmental rules for subsequent results.

There is a possibility of developing a marketable service to the student population from the idea that Bets is trying to envision. But it needs work. It’s not yet sufficiently developed and ready for application.

…just read your horoscope…every thing old is new again…

Tiff: ‘Well I’ve just been re – created by AI, but at least my boobs are still real..’

I think Bets is talking about something that is already invented. Called career planning or transitional survey. I’ve used them with my high school students for their post secondary planning. Perhaps Bets and Tiff never took them and are unaware they’ve been around. Not all students take them. Some already know where they’re going after high school and didn’t take these assessments. Community colleges and universities also use them. For free through their career services

Calm down, Tiff.

We all know that you’re doing that NOT so much for the the passing grade as you are for the likes, the attention and Kippe-Po.

Besides, Bets may be your pal-o but she seldom does anything for free. ;-)

They should start by rebranding themselves. It gives customers confidence if they see that it works. Would you trust a workout system advertised by a weakling, or a diet plan promoted by a person who was morbidly obese?

Unfortunately, for me, this has been the least interesting arc of this comic in at least the last few years. To me, the premise is inane. The “due date” for the original class assignment is long past with no completion of the project, and much of what has been spoken by the characters this week reads much like a word salad that has been over-tossed and dressed with a corn”y” based dressing for imbued with “artificial” sweeteners.

I am HOPING this concludes the arc, but I am afraid it will continue next week.

My only GUESS … is that perhaps this is a set-up for G & K to build the opportunity to perhaps display some AI generated “art” of the main characters … perhaps because G & K were having fun messing around with the technology and wanted to show us the silly / interesting images of folks that were generated. So, I am going out on a limb to suggest this may be the actual purpose of this current arc.

The premise of college students being “branded” seems quite odd to me. As a college professor, I can state that none of the thousands of college students I see appears to be walking around being a “brand”. Hell, most are just getting through the day like most folks, and some are very driven, some are more social /party focused.

Being “branded” seems MORE important in the realm of social media and trying to be an “influencer” or some such similar thing.

Branded! Called by a coward’s name…

“Well, it says that first you leave the iron in the campfire until the end is red hot…” “Hey, Stef, wanna go camping?”

this has gotten SOOOOOO boring!!!!

I would brand Tiffany as “Former Queen Bee”.

What could go wrong?

Be the “BRAND” not the person.

Bets wants to add artificial intelligence in with this… Have you seen some of the crap that A.I. puts out?

It really sad, everyone nowadays need to impress or be someone they aren’t just to fit into society, to bad we can’t be who we are. Social media is going to be the downfall and it will be to late once people realize.

Figuratively of course not literally.

I am doubtful that machine learning is anything more than a passing phase. OTOH, I am scared to death about AI. There’s more truth than fantasy in the movie “I Robot”.

Leave other folks alone you two. As Mr. Wizard told Tooter Turtle, “Be just what you is, not what you is not. Folks what do this has the happiest lot.”

Brand, brand, brand, brand, brand, brand, brand, I’m outta here!

The idea is good, but I’m afraid using an AI to interpret the results, instead of them doing it using logic, could ruin everything. It seems like an evolved version of those “Soulmate finding” agencies that said they would put all your data into a computer, as if that was a guarantee the results would be exact. But probably, saying you are using an AI will attract more curious people. I want to see what Tiffany comes up with and I hope Bernice will become their 1st client.

I have heard the saying “What other people think of you is none of your business” I quite agree, I’ll just be me and do the best I can.

So now instead of a rant on social media, G&K are going to treat us to a new opinion piece about artificial intelligence. As soon as this became another one of their “lessons” I lost interest. They are obviously just using the Bets character to voice their personal opinions and social commentary.

Do you think AI are writing these storylines?

Hope this is the last of this arc. Move on please.

Didn’t they make multiple movies in the 80s and 90s about people rebranding themselves and then ultimately realizing that they were better off as they were? Is this really a concept we need to revisit?

This arc has legs. We have not gotten a lot of Tiff & Bets doing things as a duo. We also know that both of them have a special place in a certain young man’s heart. This branding exercise could very well serve to establish just which of the two of them really belongs with Gunther. While I’ve been one to predict the strip ending with Gun & Lu at the altar, I have also been one to say that he would go through Tiffany first, before arriving at (and ending up with) Luann.

It’s rather fun to look at the longer arc, right now. Toni & Brad have a new dimension to their family planning. Bernice is coming into her own as a counselor; we know that Piro is just a foil who would never have the time or patience for her. We’ve not seen or heard from Kip in 6 months, but he has apparently not pulled the breakup trigger with Stef. Ox has been MIA for even longer, but could still be Tiff’s end-game. It may be about time for Jonah Montana to land that elusive big role, or perhaps meet with tragedy. Frank & Nancy continue to age, as we all do, and Mrs. Horner redefines senior vibrancy, but is the next probable funeral. It does almost feel like we could be due for a return of a past character or two, even if it amounts to a mere cameo appearance. Some event with a live band might see Knute and (or) Crystal playing in it, for example.

I learned when I first started work at a supermarket that was part of a chain in the D.C area that the store brand was just a good as a recognized brand name product because, in most cases, it was made by the same company. When shopping for OTC drugs, I look at the label on the back for the active ingredients and then compare brand named drugs and the knock-offs. I save a lot that way.

SUNDAY : Brad and Toni rebrand their relationship!

“Do me!” “Sure, but then we need to get to work on this new business.”

Not sure how you could do an in depth study of a person’s skills, values and goals if you don’t know them. Would you expect them to provide an unbiased list of those? If the person already knew those things about themselves, they would not need the services of Bets.

If you know what your skills are and you have goals, you are halfway to success on your own. The hard part is figuring out what you are good at and what you want to do with your life.

A lot of instagram followers ….

Well, if you insist…

People brand each other all the time, every day. They pin stupid nicknames on others, use actions, values, image (especially image) et cetera ad nauseum to gossip about others and treat them as per that brand. Usually not with kindness, and never with fairness.

Ah, yes, the “Do Me” brand. I can imagine the t-shirts would be very popular

The ‘branding’ I can see as necessary for college kids when it comes to the job or grad school application process. How do middle-aged office workers like myself ‘rebrand’?

Hopefully this thread is shorter than Brad and Toni. He needs to go back to them

This has been around forever – branding. People have been asked about their interests, their hobbies, family, morning or night person, etc, etc — all the data is compiled and a list is generated about what types of work might be most suitable for them.

A good beta test would be the geekest man on campus – Gunther.

For those of you with a “sprinkling” of grey hair, you could be “Branded” like Chuck Conners was in “Branded”. (No not Rifleman, that was later.)

Fantasize much Bets?

Rephrase that, Tiff.

The imaginative nature of artificial intelligence being the key to success.

seems like Bets will have to do some survey work, i.e. create an online questionnare for the students. Is she going to actually carry it out or just present it as a proposal for her class assignment? Is she creating a single brand for the college to use as a marketing tool or will each student receive (in exchange for filling out the questionnaire) a branding which they can use on graduation to get a job or go to graduate school? all this is not clear to me.

“Do me” means different things in different contexts.

of course you can brand yourselves, just use a very hot iron and a steady hand B bar G would work, or Lazy T,

I’m glad they’re delving into AI. That’s a very hot topic in higher ed.

If they want to make money as an influencer, as many in that generation do, I could see then falling for this ploy.