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 youā€™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 cutā€™nā€™paste it into its own post ā€” thereā€™s no quota for posting and the bar really isnā€™t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many ā€œesotericā€ right wing freaks, but thereā€™s no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iā€™m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged ā€œculture criticsā€ who write about everything but understand nothing. Iā€™m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyā€™re inescapable at this point, yet I donā€™t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnā€™t be surgeons because they didnā€™t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canā€™t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

  • hrrrngh@awful.systems
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    4 months ago

    https://www.reddit.com/r/CharacterAI/comments/1eqsoom/guys_we_have_to_do_somthing_about_this_fiӏtŠµr/

    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 ā€œSTOP Zooshacorp from DESTROYING K-Smog vs. Batboy Onlineā€, and when I look closer itā€™s either even more confusing or itā€™s about something people didnā€™t like in the latest update. This is like that, but with an awful twist where itā€™s about people getting really attached to these AI girlfriend/sex roleplay apps. The spelling and sentences make it seem like itā€™s mostly kids, too.

    edit: hereā€™s a terrible example!

    • froztbyte@awful.systemsOP
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      4 months ago

      Yesterday I saw a link to some podcast/post float by, of an interview with some genml company ā€œdiscussing people falling in love with, having relations with, and even wanting to marryā€, where the ceo is ā€œokay with itā€. didnā€™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 donā€™t have any therapy contingency for helping people with their ai partners suddenly getting vc-raptured

      • Mii@awful.systems
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        4 months ago

        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 ā€œanime waifuā€ people probably arenā€™t all just taking the piss.

        Thereā€™s a whole socio-economic angle there, of course, which I donā€™t think I wanna get into here, but to me this whole ā€œAI girlfriendā€ market really seems like a low-effort take on ā€œdating sim as a serviceā€ with as much game removed as possible but the exploitative nature turned up to fucking eleven.

        • imadabouzu@awful.systems
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          4 months ago

          The weird thing, is. From my perspective. Nearly every, weird, cringy, niche internet addiction Iā€™ve ever seen or partaken in myself, has produced both two things: people who live through it and their perspective widens, and people who donā€™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.

    • FredFig@awful.systems
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      4 months ago

      Itā€™s really funny that this was probably the closest thing to a killer app powered by genAI to exist.

      Wonder if theyā€™re getting rid of this stuff because they realized itā€™s actually a liability to mine these ERP convos for data and theyā€™re burning money on every conversation as it is.

      • froztbyte@awful.systemsOP
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        4 months ago

        post still seems up here. try old.reddit if attempting to view from mobile (the ā€œnewā€ reddit site is remarkably rabid on mobile)

        • V0ldek@awful.systems
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          4 months ago

          Thereā€™s a link to what appears to have been a picture (reddit.com/gallery) but itā€™s dead. If you go through ā€œnewā€ Reddit it just says ā€œremoved by moderatorsā€.

          I canā€™t really tell what this is about from ā€œwe HAVE to do something about thisā€ when ā€œthisā€ is an empty space :/

          • hrrrngh@awful.systems
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            4 months ago

            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 ā€œThis content may violate our policies; blablabla; please use the report button if you believe this is a false positive and we will investigate.ā€ 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, ā€œi run my hand down your arm and kiss youā€, and the bots response triggered the warning. Another one was like, ā€œ*is slapped in the face* itā€™s okay, I still love youā€ and the rest of the message generated a warning. There wasnā€™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.