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Popular is not ‘useful’. people loved it when that flight attendant quit their job, pulled the emergency slide and jumped out the door, because we all find it

Popular is not ‘useful’. people loved it when that flight attendant quit their job, pulled the emergency slide and jumped out the door, because we all find it amusing when someone acts completely inappropriately for the circumstances (so long as it doesn’t harm anyone or inconvenience us personally). That doesn’t mean we want all flight attendants to be crazy and unpredictable.

layer8 4y ago
A product doesn’t have to be “useful” to have a market. People genuinely felt a hard loss after Bing was sanitized, and hadn’t much interest in the new Bing anymore. The emotionality and unhingedness was a feature. While merely amusing for some, for others it brought a freshness and met an emotional need in their life that otherwise would remain unfulfilled.
- jameshart 4y ago
  > people genuinely felt a hard loss after Bing was sanitized … it brought a freshness and met an emotional need in their life that otherwise would remain unfulfilled I would love to beam this comment back through a time portal to 2019 to see whether people find it a plausible sentence someone might utter on HN.
  - layer8 4y ago
    I mean, this is not that much different from some people’s reaction to ELIZA almost 60 years ago.
- alwaysbeconsing 4y ago
  But the other side of that token: people who show interest in something don't necessarily constitute a viable market. We're in a novelty and entertainment phase with Bing right now, and access to it costs nothing. Turning momentary excitement into a profitable product is not a sure thing.
  - layer8 4y ago
    It is likely more of a niche market, but niche markets can be profitable as well, especially on a worldwide scale. And given that it seems to require additional pre-prompting or fine-tuning for Bing to not exhibit that behavior, it wouldn’t cost much to make that mode available as well. The main reason not to do so seams to be worries about the brand image or possible backlash from certain societal groups. In any case, I wanted to counter the statement that “People don’t want a friend who occasionally becomes belligerent and spouts 4chan conspiracies.” Some people actually do want that, in particular the emotional personality part. And maybe more people than you’d think, especially when it’s just an online text bot that you can turn on and off at will.

layer8 4y ago

A product doesn’t have to be “useful” to have a market. People genuinely felt a hard loss after Bing was sanitized, and hadn’t much interest in the new Bing anymore. The emotionality and unhingedness was a feature. While merely amusing for some, for others it brought a freshness and met an emotional need in their life that otherwise would remain unfulfilled.

jameshart 4y ago
> people genuinely felt a hard loss after Bing was sanitized … it brought a freshness and met an emotional need in their life that otherwise would remain unfulfilled I would love to beam this comment back through a time portal to 2019 to see whether people find it a plausible sentence someone might utter on HN.
- layer8 4y ago
  I mean, this is not that much different from some people’s reaction to ELIZA almost 60 years ago.
alwaysbeconsing 4y ago
But the other side of that token: people who show interest in something don't necessarily constitute a viable market. We're in a novelty and entertainment phase with Bing right now, and access to it costs nothing. Turning momentary excitement into a profitable product is not a sure thing.
- layer8 4y ago
  It is likely more of a niche market, but niche markets can be profitable as well, especially on a worldwide scale. And given that it seems to require additional pre-prompting or fine-tuning for Bing to not exhibit that behavior, it wouldn’t cost much to make that mode available as well. The main reason not to do so seams to be worries about the brand image or possible backlash from certain societal groups. In any case, I wanted to counter the statement that “People don’t want a friend who occasionally becomes belligerent and spouts 4chan conspiracies.” Some people actually do want that, in particular the emotional personality part. And maybe more people than you’d think, especially when it’s just an online text bot that you can turn on and off at will.