I’ll never like her.

I will begrudgingly acknowledge that she was likely suckered in the same way so many people were suckered, and is now trying to do the right thing.

I will continue to quietly suspect that she’s probably an accessory to the cover up in some way and is trying to save her own ass.

However, the enemy of my enemy and all…

Give it a while. This is absolutely where it’s heading.

Once it’s acceptable, or at least understandable, for people to have an “AI romantic partner” you’ll start seeing more mainstream ads for devices that let you “take your relationship to the next level.”

I mean, it’s harmless fun to open yourself up emotionally to a manipulative, sycophantic, cloud-based homunculus with no real assurance of privacy and then feed it tons of blackmail material each time you want to jerk off, right? What could go wrong?

I honestly worry about this as much as I worry about the impact of generative AI on education and critical thinking.

Social media already constantly screws with our heads and tries to manipulate our emotions to drive engagement, adding AI dating to the mix is going to fuck some people up real bad in terms of mental health, emotional stability, and social skills.

Don’t fall in love with a chatbot.

Don’t do it.

It’s not going to help anything.

The Satanic Panic was around long before D&D and heavy metal music and it never really left. It just moved on to new targets. Someone, somewhere has always been doing something satanic as a plot, it’s just easier to find people talking about it in the age of social media.

Same with conspiracy theories. The alt-right never invented anything new, they just recycled things that wingnuts and cranks have been spouting for centuries and adapted them to modern settings. Look at the parallels between “Hillary tortures children and drinks their blood to stay young” and the old Blood Libel conspiracy for example.

I go back and forth as to why I think this kind of thing is so enduring. Maybe people need to believe in some kind of evil because it allows them to feel good about being on the “right” side of something. It could make them feel smart to find “secrets” that people won’t openly admit (because they aren’t true). Or they feel some kind of cognitive dissonance if they don’t have an enemy and invent one to quiet it. Or maybe it’s just a convoluted effort to take control over something they aren’t comfortable with in a “he who can destroy a thing, controls the thing” sort of way. Maybe all of them even.

I dunno, like you said, people are goddamn stupid and fucking nuts sometimes. Shame they’re so often dangerous because of it.

One thing that gives me hope is that these chucklefucks will happily eat each other alive over the smallest imagined things. If they don’t have a “big evil thing” to organize against they’re just one giant fucking bucket of crabs, man.