If you only care about the material and physical utility of the product, you can order the sweater from AliExpress for 5% of the cost and no time spent.
The same way that the AI generated podcast about knitting, or engaging in consumption is enjoyable for many people and a form of stress relief, which was the point that the comment above was criticizing.
So the conclusion is that the utility of the activity is subjective, and if most people spend their time listening to AI factually incorrect podcasts about knitting and enjoying it, it's no different than knitting yourself and enjoying it. The blog was poor in this disambiguation, and pushed a more Aristotole-like ontological view of what is meaningful, which is more common view in engineering/hard-science dominated fields.
They are not the same. One is a passive thing (viewing) and the other is active (physical creation). We should not mistake one for the other. It is like the difference between listening to music and making it.
It is fine though if people who don't knit enjoy knitting podcasts, but this is not that. Somewhere between the producer/consumer relationship there should exist some actual knitting. Otherwise (in cases like this) it's just plain exploitation.
That's completely your subjective opinion that ignores reality. If people feel like they are participating in something, or they feel like their identity is based on something they consume passively, it's as valid as the physical thing.
If people did not feel good from passive consumption, no-one would be listening, following or looking at things, people would just make and create all the time, which is obviously not true.
If what you say is true, there would be no value from AI-generating blogs in question, or AI-generated movies/youtube films. Yet both have millions of downloads, views and listens, as the article mentions.
Reality involves physical objects you can hold in your hands, not abstract experiences. Abstract experiences are subjective not objective most of the time.
Knitting is not just entertainment, it's a means to produce useful things as well as artistic projects.
Many people are either lazy or have been discouraged from creativity by a consumer society and the education system. I've watched plenty of online content. I have nothing from it but feelings (the very subjective opinion you talk about), and very occasionally a tiny bit of new information. Knitting creates clothing which can be used to keep out the cold (objective) and so on. In fact this very winter, I wore things my friends knitted me. Gloves, hat, socks, snood, scarves... They served a practical function beyond entertainment or just looking good.
Seriously? You can't get the feeling of satisfaction of wearing something, or having someone wear something you made from AliExpress. My point is your sense of feeling and validation is extremely distorted if you have no knitted material to show for it?
Completely subjective take by you with similar epistemology around value as the blog author.
People might not care. I might identify as a runner because I bought a little jacket, expensive shoes, and wide-purple-tinted sunglasses, do I have to run? Not necessarily if the objects and my identity gives me the feeling of completion and satisfaction.
If your premise was true for all people, and the sense would be distorted, we would not see these phenomena, and people wouldn't listen or engage with AI-content. But the biological reality and the path of least resistance seems to prove us otherwise.
