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I find these guys extremely likable. Its obvious that they're aware Jon is upset and they're toying with him. They are challenging his desire to use flimsy soci
by evanlivingston 14y ago
I find these guys extremely likable. Its obvious that they're aware Jon is upset and they're toying with him. They are challenging his desire to use flimsy social media to represent himself. They also challenge his right own his online identity. I feel that their attitudes are warranted.
I don't feel as though these three are merry pranksters just out for a laugh. It's obvious that something about their work kind of rubs us the wrong way. It devalues our online representations, and that's precisely what they're after. They don't glorify their algorithms. Doesn't it sting a little that their simple web bots can emulate a human fairly accurately? Doesn't it really suck when this online persona steps on our toes? Is there no way to tell the public who the real me is without makings lots of videos, online profiles, status updates and tweets.
It's all a little trivial and those three make it obvious.
- smcl 14y agoI dunno, I felt like they dodged questions and twisted Jon's words which makes me think of slimy politician-speak. This coupled with their attempts to spin it as some kind of academic pursuit and the paranoid "you're trying to control us" intro just made me uneasy. I don't really have a strong opinion on the actual bots themselves, hell I wrote one to ape the physicist Brian Cox (http://blog.mclemon.cz/notbriancox-i-do-some-stupid-things-when-drun http://blog.mclemon.cz/notbriancox-i-do-some-stupid-things-w...) after reading about Markov Chains one lunchtime - though I only posted a couple tweets and made it very clear it wasn't impersonating him.