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I tried to get back into Team Fortress 2 without knowing this and was completely confused by this phenomenon. Aimbots randomly appear on just about every public server, all the time. It’s ridiculous that a small number of very sad people can so prolifically ruin something for everyone.
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This has to tie to Roko’s Basilisk. And porn. Only then will the ur-theory congeal.
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Got to the bit where it said the purpose of the conspiracy was to sell stuff, right as the embedded Hyundai ad started to play. I’m a believer now! (Also, I know BB doesn’t have a lot of control over ads, but auto playing ads are Satan)
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I mean yes this is nuts but there are plenty of astro turfers, government sponsored propaganda campaigns. There are lots of bots etc. but 95%? I do wonder often how many random accounts on fb commenting on CNN articles are real humans.
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(I swear I’m real too.)
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‘CAT’ actually stands for ‘Computerized Attraction Target’; the AIs designed them specifically as magnets for “social engagement”.
Genetic engineering of a visually similar organism to lend credibility to the corpus of neural network generated cat pictures through IRL experiences happened later; along with the weird period when RETCON-BAST briefly made the American clandestine services the leading employer of Egyptology grads.
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This theory seems an awful lot like what would happen if someone read about qualia zombies while being spooked at how effectively an add for something annoying managed to follow them between sites and/or devices.
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Worst Matrix movie ever.
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Apparently I gave up on online gaming at a good time (several years ago). At the time cheaters and bots were a problem but more or less somewhat kind of under control. Even then, though, playing with other people was just more trouble than it was worth better than half the time.
Unrelated observations:
- This particular conspiracy theory makes more sense than the plot of the Matrix.
- My favorite conspiracy theory right now says that the population of the Earth is really a hundred times smaller than they say it is. The evidence is compelling, especially if you’ve never left the isolated rural county you grew up in. They inflate the population numbers in order to, uh, well, look, it all makes sense once you do your own research.
- I am simultaneously leery of conspiracy nostalgia. Those glorious old conspiracies resolved way too often to “the Jews” or some other scapegoat.
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Well, I guess I stand corrected because I thought the internet was not dead, but mostly just crap.
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That’s how most of the guys at my (engineering) college caught things…
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I mean, the Internet is dead, but more in a “punk is dead” kind of way. Has been for way more than 5 years, too
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They still do. It hasn’t been fun being in one of the scapegoat groups, or actually several. Am I the scapegoat today because I am trans, or because I am disabled, or because I am descended from Irish travellers? Or are they going to leave me alone today so I only have to worry about my Jewish friends?
I’m fucking exhausted.
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Absolutely. It’s so goddamn obvious these days that so many conspiracy theories are aimed at groups the conspiracy theorist doesn’t that I didn’t spell it out like I should have.
This belongs to the same sub-genre as They Live and David Icke’s lizard people. It’s not about a specific narrative so much as trying to capture a pervasive sense of something askew. What makes it appealing is that you can start out by reading it as a metaphor (like Shakespeare’s claim that all the world’s a stage), and in that sense it’s reasonable and even insightful.
It is objectively true that the “people” on the internet aren’t people. Even on real-name platforms, you are seeing fictional characters who don’t talk or behave anything like the IRL humans they correspond to.
And it’s not just conspiracy theorists who struggle to understand the difference between on-screen and real-life. The Guardian and the New York Times (for example) systematically report Twitter as reality, in a way that would seem batshit insane if they did it with Harry Potter; and I think you’d struggle to explain to a space alien why one is all that different to the other.
Obviously you can (and people do) use this as a springboard to insanity, but on a certain level it’s just an eye-catching way to express common sense.
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And then they whine about the servers being shut down because no one (real) is playing any more and the company can’t cover costs.
The name alone reminded me of Jakes I used to play back when Usenet was still a thing. It’s a troll like alt religion.kibology used to play, really. Fnord.
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Lᴏᴏᴋ, I sɪᴍᴘʟʏ sɪɢɴᴇᴅ ᴜᴘ ʜᴇʀᴇ ғɪᴠᴇ ʏᴇᴀʀs ᴀɢᴏ, ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴅᴏᴇs ɴᴏᴛ ᴍᴇᴀɴ ᴀɴʏᴛʜɪɴɢ.
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