In the once bustling streets of the fading megalopolis of Reddit there is now a strange and creeping quiet. What residents remain go about their business as though they do not see the emptiness of the broad familiar boulevards they long have walked, now echoing like cathedrals, made for a community that has long since abandoned them. The occasional human will furtively hawk their content at odd intervals, jostled and barely unengulfed by the traffic of adbots and datasnares that move in variously convincing modes of anthroform disguise. Some of them are real, some are not, and which is which is harder to tell with every passing year.
Your friends tell you to leave, that the city is declining, that it’s not safe to stay. You hear them and resist. The city was never truly safe, and still the echoes of its greatness can be heard, in the alleys between the great and dying halls, nestled in the decay, old and yet too small to be picked apart by the digital buzzards that now wheel unceasingly over the city. Yet. Their time will come, when they must choose whether to flee or succumb piecemeal to the digital disease that is now endemic to the region. But it has not come yet. And so you linger, remembering.
At first I thought your point about bot traffic was being dramatic, but holy crap it’s bad. Twice now I’ve fallen for post later identified as bots. One (now deleted by mods) I even replied to to commiserate and offer suggestions, and I feel like I was duped into empathizing with a machine cynically farming data.
Then there’s this bizarre interaction on a post I made:
This top level comment: is a neutral reply to my prompt, ending on a generic friendly note. I reply to it, saying I had to lay down ant traps but felt bad about it because the ants are just trying to survive.
8 minutes later the same guy makes another top level comment with a completely different tone, and accuses me of being a psycho based on how I worded a part of the OP, even though his first comment seemed to indicate he had already read the OP, and my reply clearly showed I was attempting to empathize with the bugs invading my desk.
Barely 5 minutes later dude makes another top level comment generically replying to the OP like the prior two interactions had never happened.
Interesting case. Pretty formulaic and prolific poster, and odd to post three top-level comments, but I also sometimes post multiple top-level comments.
I think there’s a strain of bot designed for a particular type of account (human at first, then converted to botnet drone) that tries to mimic the previous comments’ style that’s particularly prevalent on reddit, though I’ve not found any hard evidence, or seriously investigated it really. More of a hunch I’ll follow up on one day. I’ve just accepted that the cost of being charitable to other humans on the internet means occasionally taking a bot at face value. Happens on fedi from time to time. Reddit though, the bot:human ratio just feels too high. Makes it not fun for me to engage, I just feel like I’m talking to ChatGPT. Which sucks, because I know I’m wrong at least some of the time, but… 🤷 whaddya gonna do.
The old world is falling into chaos and ruin.
In the once bustling streets of the fading megalopolis of Reddit there is now a strange and creeping quiet. What residents remain go about their business as though they do not see the emptiness of the broad familiar boulevards they long have walked, now echoing like cathedrals, made for a community that has long since abandoned them. The occasional human will furtively hawk their content at odd intervals, jostled and barely unengulfed by the traffic of adbots and datasnares that move in variously convincing modes of anthroform disguise. Some of them are real, some are not, and which is which is harder to tell with every passing year.
Your friends tell you to leave, that the city is declining, that it’s not safe to stay. You hear them and resist. The city was never truly safe, and still the echoes of its greatness can be heard, in the alleys between the great and dying halls, nestled in the decay, old and yet too small to be picked apart by the digital buzzards that now wheel unceasingly over the city. Yet. Their time will come, when they must choose whether to flee or succumb piecemeal to the digital disease that is now endemic to the region. But it has not come yet. And so you linger, remembering.
At first I thought your point about bot traffic was being dramatic, but holy crap it’s bad. Twice now I’ve fallen for post later identified as bots. One (now deleted by mods) I even replied to to commiserate and offer suggestions, and I feel like I was duped into empathizing with a machine cynically farming data.
Then there’s this bizarre interaction on a post I made:
This top level comment: is a neutral reply to my prompt, ending on a generic friendly note. I reply to it, saying I had to lay down ant traps but felt bad about it because the ants are just trying to survive.
8 minutes later the same guy makes another top level comment with a completely different tone, and accuses me of being a psycho based on how I worded a part of the OP, even though his first comment seemed to indicate he had already read the OP, and my reply clearly showed I was attempting to empathize with the bugs invading my desk.
Barely 5 minutes later dude makes another top level comment generically replying to the OP like the prior two interactions had never happened.
Interesting case. Pretty formulaic and prolific poster, and odd to post three top-level comments, but I also sometimes post multiple top-level comments.
I think there’s a strain of bot designed for a particular type of account (human at first, then converted to botnet drone) that tries to mimic the previous comments’ style that’s particularly prevalent on reddit, though I’ve not found any hard evidence, or seriously investigated it really. More of a hunch I’ll follow up on one day. I’ve just accepted that the cost of being charitable to other humans on the internet means occasionally taking a bot at face value. Happens on fedi from time to time. Reddit though, the bot:human ratio just feels too high. Makes it not fun for me to engage, I just feel like I’m talking to ChatGPT. Which sucks, because I know I’m wrong at least some of the time, but… 🤷 whaddya gonna do.