There's noone all the way down
I recently saw this tweet that went something like, "Having a really rough day, words of affirmation would really be appreciated," and the replies were, amidst AI slop, some well-meaning messages from people on how OP was like a really nice human being and how they'd get through it, and blah blah. I'll be damned if Twitter shows me a tweet I already saw, so you'll just have to take my word for it.
Reading the whole thing felt pretty nauseatingly fake. I think there's something sad about having to seek love and reassurance from people on the internet, publicly. I think it'd have been ok if it were a private GC of friends, maybe, but a CTA tweet where people are to sing praises about how you're basically the second coming of god is a strange thing to want. Fwiw, even claude tells you to go talk to a human, so even an AI is probably better at this.
Social media makes humans presuppose their life is the most interesting one going on out of all the 8 billion concurrent ones, and it's a human rights violation if we're not waterboarded with every waking moment of their lives. If you follow me on instagram though it's different because my takes are clearly funnier, nicer, and of a higher status than others.
I think what is going on is that we humans are misunderstanding these social media companies' desires to learn more and more about us as actual curiosity expressed by real living humans. We misinterpret the post button as an incessant siren, for we haven't updated the world about what has changed in the last 5 seconds. This is != what actual people care about.
Once we've internalized this, it's easy to see how we've gotten ourselves here. The platform acts like your 24/7 best friend who needs to know everything about our lives, and we treat it like that. It's not that asking for love and being confident enough to be vulnerable is something to be mocked, but rather how asking an audience that was manufactured to look like it was listening is.
Michelle Goldberg knows what's up
I think I've seen manifestations of this belief show up in certain places, especially online chatrooms(big word for discord lol) where people are trying to one-up others on who has the more sensational or interesting life, so everyone can focus their attention on them. It's like we're talking past each other, lmfao. Whenever I see this happen, I want to ask them if there's anything they can think of other than themselves, although I suspect this room they're now in trained them to be this way.
'But utkarsh, like you said, all these platforms incentivize creation, they reward you for POSTING, not READING. There is no incentive for someone not to post his/her take and instead read what others have said!'
Yeah, I'm aware of this, and it's a shame. Im not sure what it'd take for a user to think twice before posting slop? Fwiw, slop doesn't only refer to AI output here, it refers to any banal cliche people repeat for useless internet points.
But I digress. And to all the random people on the internet posting into the void looking for validation, here's what I have to say:
Don't. jk but go talk to real people you know or are close with, either offline or in DM's. I know sometimes you may not have people who get you IRL, but even DM'ing people who you know and who care for your well-being is probably a better use of your time than reading what AI4N0bodyCommie4000 thinks about your character. Please don't let the Moloch's fake interest consume whatever feelings you experience that make you human.