Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CharacterAI/comments/1eqsoom/guys_we_have_to_do_somthing_about_this_fi%D3%8Ft%D0%B5r/
This community pops up on /r/all every so often and each time it scares me.
Sometimes I see kids games (and all games really) have ultra-niche, super-online protests that are like "STOP Zooshacorp from DESTROYING K-Smog vs. Batboy Online", and when I look closer it's either even more confusing or it's about something people didn't like in the latest update. This is like that, but with an awful twist where it's about people getting really attached to these AI girlfriend/sex roleplay apps. The spelling and sentences make it seem like it's mostly kids, too.
Archive link? The post was removed
post still seems up here. try
old.redditif attempting to view from mobile (the "new" reddit site is remarkably rabid on mobile)There's a link to what appears to have been a picture (reddit.com/gallery) but it's dead. If you go through "new" Reddit it just says "removed by moderators".
I can't really tell what this is about from "we HAVE to do something about this" when "this" is an empty space :/
Oh whoops, I should have archived it.
There were about 7 images posted of users roleplaying with bots, all ending with a bot response that cut off halfway with an error message that read "This content may violate our policies; blablabla; please use the report button if you believe this is a false positive and we will investigate." The last one was some kind of parody image making fun of the warning.
Most of them were some kind of romantic roleplay with bad spelling. One was like, "i run my hand down your arm and kiss you", and the bots response triggered the warning. Another one was like, "*is slapped in the face* it's okay, I still love you". There wasn't enough context for that one, so the person might have been writing it playfully (?), but that subreddit has a lot of blatant sexual violence regardless.
It's really funny that this was probably the closest thing to a killer app powered by genAI to exist.
Wonder if they're getting rid of this stuff because they realized it's actually a liability to mine these ERP convos for data and they're burning money on every conversation as it is.
Yesterday I saw a link to some podcast/post float by, of an interview with some genml company “discussing people falling in love with, having relations with, and even wanting to marry”, where the ceo is “okay with it”. didn’t click because ugh, but will see if I can find it
and ofc all these weird fucking things will pop the moment their vc runs out or openai raises prices or whatever. bet you they don’t have any therapy contingency for helping people with their ai partners suddenly getting vc-raptured
I remember 15 years ago when I read about a Japanese man marrying a character from a dating sim game (source, archive link).
The internet clowned on him, but he was very serious, and it was the first time when I realized that these “anime waifu” people probably aren’t all just taking the piss.
There’s a whole socio-economic angle there, of course, which I don’t think I wanna get into here, but to me this whole “AI girlfriend” market really seems like a low-effort take on “dating sim as a service” with as much game removed as possible but the exploitative nature turned up to fucking eleven.
The weird thing, is. From my perspective. Nearly every, weird, cringy, niche internet addiction I've ever seen or partaken in myself, has produced both two things: people who live through it and their perspective widens, and people who don't.
Like, I look back at my days of spending 2 days at a time binge playing World of Warcraft with a deep sense of cringe but also a smirk because I survived and I self regulated, and honestly. Made a couple of lifetime friends. Like whatever response we have to anime waifus, I hope we still recognize the humanity in being a thing that wants to be entertained or satisfied.