Never thought the world needed a Gonzo-fied version of Lovecraft - but here we are, and it's beautiful. This is the best thing I've read in ages, thanks for sharing. Edit for the confused: This is...
Exemplary
Never thought the world needed a Gonzo-fied version of Lovecraft - but here we are, and it's beautiful.
This is the best thing I've read in ages, thanks for sharing.
Edit for the confused: This is a Hunter S. Thompson- and David Foster Wallace-inspired satire. The whole narrative is fictional and deliberately unhinged.
Yeah, this is a lot funnier than I expected given some of the other comments. It feels like a solid satire of gossip articles and the current tides of moralist opinion essays. Everyone is always...
Yeah, this is a lot funnier than I expected given some of the other comments. It feels like a solid satire of gossip articles and the current tides of moralist opinion essays. Everyone is always spinning out their half-baked psychoanalytic reads on the outgroup, providing no proof but vibes and based on nothing but a semester of sociology and two skimmed books. It's nice to see someone turn the "innocent" conspiracism toward an absurd subject.
This was honestly one of my favorite essays I've read in quite a while. Sign me up for the "modern culture satirized by esoteric pseudo religious psychotic breaks" mailing list. My partner is a...
This was honestly one of my favorite essays I've read in quite a while. Sign me up for the "modern culture satirized by esoteric pseudo religious psychotic breaks" mailing list.
My partner is a level 8 Swiftie, so I hear about the TS conspiracy theories when they swirl. I might need to adopt "TS is an avatar of Lilith, the eternal mother and the void" as my pet theory.
I've found a strange practical use for ChatGPT: summarizing articles. While I read the article in its entirety, here's what ChatGPT had to say about the piece:
I've found a strange practical use for ChatGPT: summarizing articles. While I read the article in its entirety, here's what ChatGPT had to say about the piece:
This article appears to be a fictional piece or a creative exploration rather than a factual news report. The author seems to weave a narrative that combines elements of pop culture, celebrity obsession, and existential musings. The central theme revolves around Taylor Swift, her influence, and the author's purported experience as the "world's first full-time Taylor Swift reporter."
The piece delves into the author's speculative and increasingly delusional thoughts about Taylor Swift, drawing parallels with the concept of incels (involuntary celibates) and exploring esoteric interpretations of Swift's public persona, particularly focusing on her navel as a symbolic element. The narrative takes a surreal turn, connecting Swift to biblical and mythical themes, suggesting that she may be some kind of eternal, uncreated being or a representation of a primordial force.
It's important to note that the content seems to be a work of fiction or creative writing rather than a factual analysis. The author uses a distinctive writing style, blending satire, absurdity, and philosophical pondering to create a unique narrative. The piece may be intended to provoke thought about the nature of celebrity obsession, the construction of public personas, and the impact of media on individuals' perceptions.
Sorry to go off-topic but as someone more in the "LLMs are glorified chatbots" category.... how can ChatGPT possibly deduce all those things about the article?
Sorry to go off-topic but as someone more in the "LLMs are glorified chatbots" category.... how can ChatGPT possibly deduce all those things about the article?
ChatGPT is AI. It intelligently analyzed the article to deduce meaning in the article, then communicated that summary. It understands concepts like fiction, satire, etc. It's been trained on a...
how can ChatGPT possibly deduce all those things about the article?
ChatGPT is AI. It intelligently analyzed the article to deduce meaning in the article, then communicated that summary. It understands concepts like fiction, satire, etc. It's been trained on a sufficient amount of human material to make these connections.
Comments that say this isn't real understanding or real intelligence are engaged in the highest level of pedantry imaginable. We don't even know how our own intelligence or "understanding" works (we don't even know whether or not the mind is separate from the brain!), which makes claims that ChatGPT isn't "understanding" the way we do mostly unfalsifiable. Even if it's not "real" understanding, it is, for all intents and purposes, understanding. Even if it isn't "real" intelligence, it's simulated intelligence that either matches or exceeds the performance of many people's "real" intelligence when given the task of analyzing this article, which makes the distinction meaningless to me.
LLMs are trained on a shitton of data. Like an absolute shitton. So they "learn" statistical relationships between words -- the training process involves trying to "fill in the blank" with the...
LLMs are trained on a shitton of data. Like an absolute shitton. So they "learn" statistical relationships between words -- the training process involves trying to "fill in the blank" with the most probable word. At first, this just teaches it grammatical stuff and word meanings, but eventually it expands to the ability to perform other tasks because the most likely words that follow "Here is an article. Please summarize it." are a good summary of the article. It's kinda amazing in its own way that just statistics like that can give an LLM such ability with human language.
But yeah tl;dr ChatGPT isn't deducing anything. It's just really fucking awesome statistics.
This is most certainly off-topic, but the notion that ChatGPT does not "deduce" implies that we know what real "deduction" actually is on a mental or otherwise equally abstract level. We don't. We...
This is most certainly off-topic, but the notion that ChatGPT does not "deduce" implies that we know what real "deduction" actually is on a mental or otherwise equally abstract level. We don't. We know the symbols, words, and expressions that convey deduction. But they are not, themselves, deduction.
I envision a sequence of events in which every GPT advancement will lead to a revision of the concept of "intelligence", everyone refining it and specifying it more and more in order to avoid being the "crazy" one that just says: "Yep, that's intelligence. It is not literally human intelligence, but it's intelligence nevertheless".
The ability to produce a meaningful summary of a complex set of linguistic tokens through statistics (or whatever you may call the bits of text) is an expression of intelligence. Not every human can do that. What it is not is a demonstration of consciousness, qualia, or whatever.
To reiterate my prediction: we will progressively modify the concept of "intelligence" in order to preserve the notion that it is a human attribute. I'm sure that, in the 1940s, some people called the ENIAC "intelligent". And then the languages shifted to reinforce human uniqueness.
We have a definition of what deduction entails (drawing an inference based on a general law or principle). While it's theoretically possible that there's something akin to deduction going on...
the notion that ChatGPT does not "deduce" implies that we know what real "deduction" actually is on a mental or otherwise equally abstract level. We don't. We know the symbols, words, and expressions that convey deduction. But they are not, themselves, deduction.
We have a definition of what deduction entails (drawing an inference based on a general law or principle). While it's theoretically possible that there's something akin to deduction going on somewhere inside GPT, we have no evidence that that's the case. (And, indeed, even state-of-the-art models like this don't necessarily excel at tasks that do require pure deductive reasoning). Even if we're generous in what we call "reasoning", ignoring any connotations of consciousness, the way LLMs are trained as well as the ways in which they tend to fail make it clear that they operate on something closer to inductive than deductive reasoning.
If we find evidence that somewhere inside that black box there's something like deductive reasoning going on, I'll change my tune! But there's an unfortunate tendency of us humans to project our own experiences and thought processes onto AI even when there's very little evident similarity between them.
I think you're operating under a specific definition of intelligence that I'm not necessarily privy to, but I don't actually think defining intelligence is particularly useful here. I don't think I said anything about intelligence in my comment. I agree with you that consciousness/qualia (I learned that word quite recently, feeling the Baader-Meinhof rn) are not evident from current AI, and the idea that it is consciously analyzing articles like this is what I'm principally arguing against, not some abstract notion of intelligence.
Mine was more of a commentary on the theme than a direct personal response to you, and I was more concerned with semantics (which, to me, is not just semantics) than in an actual technical...
Mine was more of a commentary on the theme than a direct personal response to you, and I was more concerned with semantics (which, to me, is not just semantics) than in an actual technical discussion about AI within the field of computer science (of which I am not a part of).
I mean sure, but unless it found good summaries of THIS article it would have to "conclude" whether it's satire or factual, right? Or do you mean that it scans the article and by analyzing the...
I mean sure, but unless it found good summaries of THIS article it would have to "conclude" whether it's satire or factual, right?
Or do you mean that it scans the article and by analyzing the statistical relationships between the words in the article it can then "say" 'OK these sequences of words usually appear in contexts that are characterized as "satire" and "non-factual', without of course even knowing what the words "satire","factual" or "characterized" mean?
Back when word embeddings were still the cool shit in NLP spaces, there already was a surprising amount of semantics of words entailed in these embeddings. Words are represented by vectors, and...
Back when word embeddings were still the cool shit in NLP spaces, there already was a surprising amount of semantics of words entailed in these embeddings. Words are represented by vectors, and these vectors are chosen by statistical means to make the task of "find the next word" as easy as possible. As a result, in that vector space, equations like "queen - woman + man = king" are approximately correct. I think it's hard to argue that there isn't some understanding of semantics in these models, at least at the word level. With current models being more powerful and advanced by a few orders of magnitude, I'd argue that there is a decent amount of such knowledge baked into the models. Though that doesn't per se mean that the model is structured to regurgitate (and more importantly, verbalize) that knowledge when prompted. So asking for a definition of "factual" can arrive at a good or bad answer independently of whether the model can process the word "factual" adequately in input, or use it adequately in output. I haven't seen rigorous studies on it, but the two tasks appear quite different and independent to me; I'm not sure whether there even is a connection between this meta-level 'talking about a word' and 'talking using a word' in neural-network land.
There's a lot we don't know for sure because of the black-box nature of these models. Of these options, it's closer to the second thing, but it's even less conscious than that. The relationship...
There's a lot we don't know for sure because of the black-box nature of these models. Of these options, it's closer to the second thing, but it's even less conscious than that. The relationship between how humans use language in satirical/fictional articles like this one (it helps that it's not a close call here) and normal fact-based news reporting are different, and this ends up being reflected statistically in the inner workings of the model. The model doesn't really "know" anything, but these statistical relationships end up serving as a sort of proxy for actual understanding.
So while reading this, at first I felt a bit annoyed, feeling that the comparison between Taylor Swift fans and incels was unfair. After getting to the end, I'm just confused. Is this satire or...
So while reading this, at first I felt a bit annoyed, feeling that the comparison between Taylor Swift fans and incels was unfair. After getting to the end, I'm just confused. Is this satire or meant to be a true recounting of a psychotic break the author had while covering Taylor Swift?
Similar boat here. OP tagged it as comedy, so I'm assuming we're meant to take it not too seriously, but even then-- idk, it's just very edgy and self-absorbed? Comparing swifties to incel mass...
Similar boat here. OP tagged it as comedy, so I'm assuming we're meant to take it not too seriously, but even then-- idk, it's just very edgy and self-absorbed? Comparing swifties to incel mass shooters, then devolving into a rant about her navel that ultimately leads to Taylor Swift being likened to the mother of demons? I don't understand what I'm supposed to get from this, so it just comes off as mildly conservative "consoomer" bashing random humor, that pretends it's not because the author is clever or witty or whatever.
Same feeling here. The missing navel is clearly just covered by the modest bikini. It's an unusual fashion choice but not mysterious. Swift is no more mysterious than Elvis was. She's just female...
Same feeling here.
The missing navel is clearly just covered by the modest bikini. It's an unusual fashion choice but not mysterious.
Swift is no more mysterious than Elvis was. She's just female and her music is overly enhanced for my taste. I enjoyed her acoustic tiny desk concert.
I have a young relative who is a Swiftie and one who is super into BTS. None of this is newsworthy.
"WHAT IS A NAVEL? A NAKED UMBILICUS! SHOW US THE HOLE TAYLOR! SHOW US YOUR FOETID LINT-CLOGGED SCAR!" Sweet Jesus if only Hunter S Thompson could read this.
"WHAT IS A NAVEL? A NAKED UMBILICUS! SHOW US THE HOLE TAYLOR! SHOW US YOUR FOETID LINT-CLOGGED SCAR!"
Sweet Jesus if only Hunter S Thompson could read this.
While I get what he's going for now that it's been explained by others, I certainly don't enjoy it anywhere near as much as Hunter S. Thompson's work. To each their own, I suppose.
While I get what he's going for now that it's been explained by others, I certainly don't enjoy it anywhere near as much as Hunter S. Thompson's work. To each their own, I suppose.
Right there with you. By the time I got to the Aramaic translations I was rolling, so I was surprised to find so many puzzled comments. In this piece Taylor Swift is just the backdrop for some...
Right there with you. By the time I got to the Aramaic translations I was rolling, so I was surprised to find so many puzzled comments. In this piece Taylor Swift is just the backdrop for some quality satire that brightened my day.
IMO comparing this article to Hunter S Thompson is like comparing my nephew's crayon scribbles when he was 3 to a Salvador Dalí painting. ;) Hunter invented gonzo journalism, which is a...
IMO comparing this article to Hunter S Thompson is like comparing my nephew's crayon scribbles when he was 3 to a Salvador Dalí painting. ;)
Hunter invented gonzo journalism, which is a first-person subjective account of a particular news story or event with the journalist as the protagonist, and it often relied on sarcasm, hyperbole, profanity, and even occasionally veered into absurdist fantasy, in order to satirize himself, someone else, a group, or said event. But his work was exceedingly well crafted, still had significant substance to it, and typically an inherent counter-cultural sociopolitical message behind it too.
Whereas this article, while it shares some of those same qualities, feels far more juvenile, kinda pointless, and borders on Poe's law territory, IMO. I like most of Hunter's work, but I didn't really like this, or find it all that amusing even though I knew it was intended as absurdist satire, and was gonzo inspired. But, hey, to each their own.
Thanks. I love to read and am always happy to find authors who use craft and skill effectively. I don't enjoy artists, including writers whose goal is to create for an in crowd and exclude people...
Thanks. I love to read and am always happy to find authors who use craft and skill effectively. I don't enjoy artists, including writers whose goal is to create for an in crowd and exclude people who don't immediately get it.
Yeah, I don't dislike Taylor Swift although I am not a fan of her music. She seems like a decent human being who happens to be a star. I also am 100 percent unfamiliar with Hunter Thompson other...
Yeah, I don't dislike Taylor Swift although I am not a fan of her music. She seems like a decent human being who happens to be a star. I also am 100 percent unfamiliar with Hunter Thompson other than being vaguely aware that he is an author praised by critics.
Reading that article reminded me strongly of the way I felt watching the move Pi. Sort of an out of body experience mixed with some excellent navel gazing. I just have one beef with the author's...
Reading that article reminded me strongly of the way I felt watching the move Pi. Sort of an out of body experience mixed with some excellent navel gazing.
I just have one beef with the author's assertions:
Again, Taylor Swift did indeed copyright many of the lyrics from 1989, including phrases like this sick beat and nice to meet you.
In point of fact, she copyrights her songs automatically by writing them. She trademarks these phrases. If you're going to do this hard-hitting journalism grounded in the origins of humanity itself, you gotta get the details right.
I'm pretty sure that nearly every specific fact the author doesn't take for granted is false in some way. I didn't comb through it, but most of them I checked didn't exist.
I'm pretty sure that nearly every specific fact the author doesn't take for granted is false in some way. I didn't comb through it, but most of them I checked didn't exist.
I can assure the author, neither I nor the vast majority of people on this planet are aware of John McCaran for this or any other reason. Even Google does not appear to know who this person is,...
By the editors, I mostly mean John McCaran, who you’re probably aware of for other reasons
I can assure the author, neither I nor the vast majority of people on this planet are aware of John McCaran for this or any other reason. Even Google does not appear to know who this person is, despite my best efforts to locate such a person who was apparently involved in a magazine called Kerfuffle, at some point arrested, and then committed suicide.
There’s something funny in bemoaning the ubiquity of Taylor Swift while casually assuming the general knowledge of John McCaran who, as far as his impact on the world goes, truly does not appear to exist.
DuckDuckGo redirects John McCaran to what it was meant to be, John McCain. This is a reference to David Foster Wallace's piece McCain's Promise in which he analyzes the candidate whose primary...
Exemplary
DuckDuckGo redirects John McCaran to what it was meant to be, John McCain.
This is a reference to David Foster Wallace's piece McCain's Promise in which he analyzes the candidate whose primary appeal was "authenticity" (and, he argues, had a genuine claim to it) when put in a position where manufactured authenticity stands to benefit him and his agenda.
Should McCain artificially create a situation to portray himself as a straight-talking maverick? Perhaps, because if he doesn't he has handicapped himself and his worldview. It's the same choice Taylor Swift is confronted with, or countless pop stars who put emotion to the writings of aged industry song writers who know how to write good teenage heartbreak for a generation and gender they never were part of.
Why would DDG make this clear, while Google asked me if I was a human? And what part of my humanity corresponds to my ability to identify crosswalks, as judged by an entity with AdSense for blood?
Initially you may look at the conjugation of Cain and Caran. The prefix of 'Mc' connotes a Gaelic origin. The missing 'a' points to the same pressure to form oneself in the mold of the idealized form of the lofty, while the low Damerau-Levenshtein distance suggests there is a limit to how much a vessel can be remolded before it's no longer recognizable. The Anglicization of names from Mac to Mc. A cairn of piled stones used to mark a burial mound. Stones, or Rock?
What is a "Mac" without his "a"? Mc. What does it become when capital is injected? MC, a master of ceremonies. But what ceremonies are being held, and for whom? The audience is clear: John, the everyman, the unclaimed corpse who rises from the grave through submission to Mammon as John Dough.
As for the master, a detour is required. Melle Mel coined the term in the late 70s as the black community started to explore conscious hiphop with Grandmaster Flash and the Furius Five's The Message with a message of structural changes for society and communities.
At the same time the Ĺ̵̦̱̦͇̦̅̈̆̈́̋Ḑ̶̨͎̻̪̿̎͋̚S̶̹͎̪̣̭͆͝ͅ was revoking its ruling that black skin was the Curse of Cain/Ham. Just like that, immutable and universal truths change for convenience. The LDS is known for Romney, fellow candidate and corporate raider of Bain Capital. It's also known for exploiting tithes and tax shelters to influence things like the Boy Scouts. Contrast hiphop of the early 80s to when moneyed interests like BET or suburban edgey kids become arbiters of success and you'll find yourself in Melle Mel's pell-mell hell we are all lost from KRS-Aleph
And I absolutely can't find anything on the web about said John, or about said Magazine. Edit Ok, I finished the whole thing, and this is probably what an acid trip feels like. Either the whole...
ever since John’s arrest, trial, and subsequent suicide
And I absolutely can't find anything on the web about said John, or about said Magazine.
Edit
Ok, I finished the whole thing, and this is probably what an acid trip feels like.
Either the whole piece is satire, or the author is completely off his rockers and hallucinated everything including the magazine.
This article ticked me because I just bailed out half-way though reading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" because I'd had enough of the author's self-aggrandizement and the way he...
This article ticked me because I just bailed out half-way though reading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" because I'd had enough of the author's self-aggrandizement and the way he treated the notes he took during a mental breakdown as some sort of received wisdom. Seeing that sort of narcissism lampooned here was a pleasant reminder that other people find it annoying too.
I might be in the minority here, but I really enjoyed this brazen, throw-you-in-at-the-deep-end parody. It took me a good few paragraphs to be sure this was a parody and in those moments when I was trying to decide if this was intentionally funny or if the author was just a nutter I was forced to evaluate what I was reading more objectively than if he had announced at the top "this is a style parody of gonzo journalism". Of course, it helps that the author isn't a nutter (or at least this article is not sufficient evidence to conclude that he's nuts).
I don't like reading or listening to people who keep insisting that they are some sort of hyperintelligent philosopher/savant. The stream-of-consciousness thing is obnoxious, the presentation of...
I don't like reading or listening to people who keep insisting that they are some sort of hyperintelligent philosopher/savant. The stream-of-consciousness thing is obnoxious, the presentation of heavily biased hunches as fact sucks, and if this is all a joke like FluffyKittens claims, it's a half-baked punchline that goes well beyond where it should.
I had (had) a friend like this who after 1 hit/ 1 drink would think of themselves as the ultimate arbiter of moral truth and reasoning, and spout a near identical stream of consciousness. They'd trick themselves into thinking they were effortlessly profound and wise when in reality it was a verbal diarrhea of half-formed thoughts. This article reminds me of one of their rants.
I can't really get into this, and may be one of the only people left on the planet who couldnt name a single Swift song nor have I watched a single video of her... What I want to know is, WHY does...
I can't really get into this, and may be one of the only people left on the planet who couldnt name a single Swift song nor have I watched a single video of her... What I want to know is, WHY does she suddenly seem to be everywhere all at once? I read articles from about 20 sites a day and she's been on half of them lately, like she's the second coming of Christ or something. I understand there's a machine behind her, but good lord, what the heck is all the fuss about, she's only a pop singer?
Apparently she is like Elvis or the Beatles or Sinatra or something. Michael Jackson at the peak of his popularity, or Madonna. I haven't seen this in my lifetime until now.
Apparently she is like Elvis or the Beatles or Sinatra or something. Michael Jackson at the peak of his popularity, or Madonna. I haven't seen this in my lifetime until now.
It doesn't seem like the article ever makes a point except for two things: He's the first full-time Taylor Swift correspondent. He had a full-blown psychotic break while doing so. The rest is just...
It doesn't seem like the article ever makes a point except for two things:
He's the first full-time Taylor Swift correspondent.
He had a full-blown psychotic break while doing so.
The rest is just the author taking us on a journey into devolving into madness, all while saying it's because Taylor Swift is so bland, she might as well be a non-existing demon.
I sort of enjoyed it, as I find true journeys into someone's odd mind interesting from time to time, but I came away from it utterly confused because it jumped from topic to topic while trying to tie it into Taylor Swift. I'm lost trying to find the reason for this article.
Edit to add:
So I went looking at the "about" page on his blog and it doesn't make it clear per se what's going on, but it does give me some insight in what he's trying to do. Which is to write unique articles that are different from the other "easy to digest" media. See spoiler for the quote.
Click to expand spoiler.
There are a set of handy best practices for this particular region of the machine: have regular open threads, chitchat with your subscribers, post humanising updates about your life. Form a community. I’m told that the most successful writing on here is friendly, frequent, and fast. Apparently, readers should know exactly what you’re getting at within the first three sentences. I do not plan on doing any of these things.
I would like to see if, in the belly of the dying internet, it’s possible to create something that is not like the internet. I want to see if I can poke at the outlines of whatever is coming next. I wonder if it’s possible to talk about things differently. Not rationally or calmly, away from the cheap point-scoring of online discourse—that would also be boring—but with a better, less sterile kind of derangement. I’m interested in the forms of writing that were here long before the internet, and which will be here long after it’s gone. Not thinkpieces or blogs, but the essay, the manifesto, the satyr, and the screed. Ludibria, pseudepigrapha, quodlibets. Or folktales. Prophecy. Dreams. There are a set of handy best practices for this particular region of the machine: have regular open threads, chitchat with your subscribers, post humanising updates about your life. Form a community. I’m told that the most successful writing on here is friendly, frequent, and fast. Apparently, readers should know exactly what you’re getting at within the first three sentences. I do not plan on doing any of these things.
I would like to see if, in the belly of the dying internet, it’s possible to create something that is not like the internet. I want to see if I can poke at the outlines of whatever is coming next. I wonder if it’s possible to talk about things differently. Not rationally or calmly, away from the cheap point-scoring of online discourse—that would also be boring—but with a better, less sterile kind of derangement. I’m interested in the forms of writing that were here long before the internet, and which will be here long after it’s gone. Not thinkpieces or blogs, but the essay, the manifesto, the satyr, and the screed. Ludibria, pseudepigrapha, quodlibets. Or folktales. Prophecy. Dreams.
The Atlantic JUST shared an article about Substack's white nationalist problem, lol. This article feels similarly unhinged and unsure of its own satire.
The Atlantic JUST shared an article about Substack's white nationalist problem, lol. This article feels similarly unhinged and unsure of its own satire.
Would you mind expanding? This article doesn't seem linked to white nationalism in a way beyond also being absurd, and it certainly seems to have embraced its satire to my eye.
Would you mind expanding? This article doesn't seem linked to white nationalism in a way beyond also being absurd, and it certainly seems to have embraced its satire to my eye.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/11/substack-extremism-nazi-white-supremacy-newsletters/676156/ I am not the brightest bulb in the bunch, but I read this article before seeing the...
I am not the brightest bulb in the bunch, but I read this article before seeing the Atlantic headline. Leaving the substack article, I genuinely believed the vitriol. Call it Poe's Law. But I walked away feeling that someone could resonate with it in a truly serious manner. And then I see the Atlantic article about it and I felt there was even more clarity there.
I guess I don't see the connection still. I am aware of the white supremacists on substack, but it's also "just" a blogging platform, plenty of entirely harmless blogs are hosted there. Is it that...
I guess I don't see the connection still. I am aware of the white supremacists on substack, but it's also "just" a blogging platform, plenty of entirely harmless blogs are hosted there. Is it that this article draws from the tradition of Kabbalah to build its cosmic horror? If referring to that tradition is all it takes to set off warning lights, I'd say they're slightly miscalibrated, since it's a very widely appreciated sect of mysticism. I'm honestly trying to understand, because I get how someone would read this as a nonsatirical work, and I get how that could be alarming, but I don't see how, even if it were 100% serious, it would be part of a trend of antisemitism.
Never thought the world needed a Gonzo-fied version of Lovecraft - but here we are, and it's beautiful.
This is the best thing I've read in ages, thanks for sharing.
Edit for the confused: This is a Hunter S. Thompson- and David Foster Wallace-inspired satire. The whole narrative is fictional and deliberately unhinged.
Yeah, this is a lot funnier than I expected given some of the other comments. It feels like a solid satire of gossip articles and the current tides of moralist opinion essays. Everyone is always spinning out their half-baked psychoanalytic reads on the outgroup, providing no proof but vibes and based on nothing but a semester of sociology and two skimmed books. It's nice to see someone turn the "innocent" conspiracism toward an absurd subject.
This was honestly one of my favorite essays I've read in quite a while. Sign me up for the "modern culture satirized by esoteric pseudo religious psychotic breaks" mailing list.
My partner is a level 8 Swiftie, so I hear about the TS conspiracy theories when they swirl. I might need to adopt "TS is an avatar of Lilith, the eternal mother and the void" as my pet theory.
The style also reminds me pleasantly of Douglas Adams.
What on earth did I just read
More like Philip K Dick, if PKD had a sense of humor.
I've found a strange practical use for ChatGPT: summarizing articles. While I read the article in its entirety, here's what ChatGPT had to say about the piece:
That's amazing. ChatGPT was able to understand this piece better than 75% of Tildes users.
TIL what incel is short for. Thanks, ChatGPT!
Out of curiosity, which version of Chat GPT did you use to do this? The free version 3.5 or the paid version 4 (that is supposed to be much better)?
3.5. I haven't paid OpenAI any money
Sorry to go off-topic but as someone more in the "LLMs are glorified chatbots" category.... how can ChatGPT possibly deduce all those things about the article?
ChatGPT is AI. It intelligently analyzed the article to deduce meaning in the article, then communicated that summary. It understands concepts like fiction, satire, etc. It's been trained on a sufficient amount of human material to make these connections.
Comments that say this isn't real understanding or real intelligence are engaged in the highest level of pedantry imaginable. We don't even know how our own intelligence or "understanding" works (we don't even know whether or not the mind is separate from the brain!), which makes claims that ChatGPT isn't "understanding" the way we do mostly unfalsifiable. Even if it's not "real" understanding, it is, for all intents and purposes, understanding. Even if it isn't "real" intelligence, it's simulated intelligence that either matches or exceeds the performance of many people's "real" intelligence when given the task of analyzing this article, which makes the distinction meaningless to me.
LLMs are trained on a shitton of data. Like an absolute shitton. So they "learn" statistical relationships between words -- the training process involves trying to "fill in the blank" with the most probable word. At first, this just teaches it grammatical stuff and word meanings, but eventually it expands to the ability to perform other tasks because the most likely words that follow "Here is an article. Please summarize it." are a good summary of the article. It's kinda amazing in its own way that just statistics like that can give an LLM such ability with human language.
But yeah tl;dr ChatGPT isn't deducing anything. It's just really fucking awesome statistics.
This is most certainly off-topic, but the notion that ChatGPT does not "deduce" implies that we know what real "deduction" actually is on a mental or otherwise equally abstract level. We don't. We know the symbols, words, and expressions that convey deduction. But they are not, themselves, deduction.
I envision a sequence of events in which every GPT advancement will lead to a revision of the concept of "intelligence", everyone refining it and specifying it more and more in order to avoid being the "crazy" one that just says: "Yep, that's intelligence. It is not literally human intelligence, but it's intelligence nevertheless".
The ability to produce a meaningful summary of a complex set of linguistic tokens through statistics (or whatever you may call the bits of text) is an expression of intelligence. Not every human can do that. What it is not is a demonstration of consciousness, qualia, or whatever.
To reiterate my prediction: we will progressively modify the concept of "intelligence" in order to preserve the notion that it is a human attribute. I'm sure that, in the 1940s, some people called the ENIAC "intelligent". And then the languages shifted to reinforce human uniqueness.
We have a definition of what deduction entails (drawing an inference based on a general law or principle). While it's theoretically possible that there's something akin to deduction going on somewhere inside GPT, we have no evidence that that's the case. (And, indeed, even state-of-the-art models like this don't necessarily excel at tasks that do require pure deductive reasoning). Even if we're generous in what we call "reasoning", ignoring any connotations of consciousness, the way LLMs are trained as well as the ways in which they tend to fail make it clear that they operate on something closer to inductive than deductive reasoning.
If we find evidence that somewhere inside that black box there's something like deductive reasoning going on, I'll change my tune! But there's an unfortunate tendency of us humans to project our own experiences and thought processes onto AI even when there's very little evident similarity between them.
I think you're operating under a specific definition of intelligence that I'm not necessarily privy to, but I don't actually think defining intelligence is particularly useful here. I don't think I said anything about intelligence in my comment. I agree with you that consciousness/qualia (I learned that word quite recently, feeling the Baader-Meinhof rn) are not evident from current AI, and the idea that it is consciously analyzing articles like this is what I'm principally arguing against, not some abstract notion of intelligence.
Mine was more of a commentary on the theme than a direct personal response to you, and I was more concerned with semantics (which, to me, is not just semantics) than in an actual technical discussion about AI within the field of computer science (of which I am not a part of).
;)
Ah alright that makes sense! Hopefully my comment was edifying in some way regardless.
I don't know either of those :/
Thank you @Lou. Today I learned the word qualia
;)
I mean sure, but unless it found good summaries of THIS article it would have to "conclude" whether it's satire or factual, right?
Or do you mean that it scans the article and by analyzing the statistical relationships between the words in the article it can then "say" 'OK these sequences of words usually appear in contexts that are characterized as "satire" and "non-factual', without of course even knowing what the words "satire","factual" or "characterized" mean?
Back when word embeddings were still the cool shit in NLP spaces, there already was a surprising amount of semantics of words entailed in these embeddings. Words are represented by vectors, and these vectors are chosen by statistical means to make the task of "find the next word" as easy as possible. As a result, in that vector space, equations like "queen - woman + man = king" are approximately correct. I think it's hard to argue that there isn't some understanding of semantics in these models, at least at the word level. With current models being more powerful and advanced by a few orders of magnitude, I'd argue that there is a decent amount of such knowledge baked into the models. Though that doesn't per se mean that the model is structured to regurgitate (and more importantly, verbalize) that knowledge when prompted. So asking for a definition of "factual" can arrive at a good or bad answer independently of whether the model can process the word "factual" adequately in input, or use it adequately in output. I haven't seen rigorous studies on it, but the two tasks appear quite different and independent to me; I'm not sure whether there even is a connection between this meta-level 'talking about a word' and 'talking using a word' in neural-network land.
There's a lot we don't know for sure because of the black-box nature of these models. Of these options, it's closer to the second thing, but it's even less conscious than that. The relationship between how humans use language in satirical/fictional articles like this one (it helps that it's not a close call here) and normal fact-based news reporting are different, and this ends up being reflected statistically in the inner workings of the model. The model doesn't really "know" anything, but these statistical relationships end up serving as a sort of proxy for actual understanding.
So while reading this, at first I felt a bit annoyed, feeling that the comparison between Taylor Swift fans and incels was unfair. After getting to the end, I'm just confused. Is this satire or meant to be a true recounting of a psychotic break the author had while covering Taylor Swift?
Similar boat here. OP tagged it as comedy, so I'm assuming we're meant to take it not too seriously, but even then-- idk, it's just very edgy and self-absorbed? Comparing swifties to incel mass shooters, then devolving into a rant about her navel that ultimately leads to Taylor Swift being likened to the mother of demons? I don't understand what I'm supposed to get from this, so it just comes off as mildly conservative "consoomer" bashing random humor, that pretends it's not because the author is clever or witty or whatever.
It gave me a similar vibe to reading Naked Lunch.
I felt a bit this way to. But that final line made me like it a bit more. Basically saying not to take it seriously
Same feeling here.
The missing navel is clearly just covered by the modest bikini. It's an unusual fashion choice but not mysterious.
Swift is no more mysterious than Elvis was. She's just female and her music is overly enhanced for my taste. I enjoyed her acoustic tiny desk concert.
I have a young relative who is a Swiftie and one who is super into BTS. None of this is newsworthy.
"WHAT IS A NAVEL? A NAKED UMBILICUS! SHOW US THE HOLE TAYLOR! SHOW US YOUR FOETID LINT-CLOGGED SCAR!"
Sweet Jesus if only Hunter S Thompson could read this.
While I get what he's going for now that it's been explained by others, I certainly don't enjoy it anywhere near as much as Hunter S. Thompson's work. To each their own, I suppose.
Right there with you. By the time I got to the Aramaic translations I was rolling, so I was surprised to find so many puzzled comments. In this piece Taylor Swift is just the backdrop for some quality satire that brightened my day.
Hunter Thompson is not an author I have experienced. If this is what it is like, why would I want to?
IMO comparing this article to Hunter S Thompson is like comparing my nephew's crayon scribbles when he was 3 to a Salvador Dalí painting. ;)
Hunter invented gonzo journalism, which is a first-person subjective account of a particular news story or event with the journalist as the protagonist, and it often relied on sarcasm, hyperbole, profanity, and even occasionally veered into absurdist fantasy, in order to satirize himself, someone else, a group, or said event. But his work was exceedingly well crafted, still had significant substance to it, and typically an inherent counter-cultural sociopolitical message behind it too.
Whereas this article, while it shares some of those same qualities, feels far more juvenile, kinda pointless, and borders on Poe's law territory, IMO. I like most of Hunter's work, but I didn't really like this, or find it all that amusing even though I knew it was intended as absurdist satire, and was gonzo inspired. But, hey, to each their own.
Thanks. I love to read and am always happy to find authors who use craft and skill effectively. I don't enjoy artists, including writers whose goal is to create for an in crowd and exclude people who don't immediately get it.
Yeah, I don't dislike Taylor Swift although I am not a fan of her music. She seems like a decent human being who happens to be a star. I also am 100 percent unfamiliar with Hunter Thompson other than being vaguely aware that he is an author praised by critics.
Reading that article reminded me strongly of the way I felt watching the move Pi. Sort of an out of body experience mixed with some excellent navel gazing.
I just have one beef with the author's assertions:
In point of fact, she copyrights her songs automatically by writing them. She trademarks these phrases. If you're going to do this hard-hitting journalism grounded in the origins of humanity itself, you gotta get the details right.
I'm pretty sure that nearly every specific fact the author doesn't take for granted is false in some way. I didn't comb through it, but most of them I checked didn't exist.
I can assure the author, neither I nor the vast majority of people on this planet are aware of John McCaran for this or any other reason. Even Google does not appear to know who this person is, despite my best efforts to locate such a person who was apparently involved in a magazine called Kerfuffle, at some point arrested, and then committed suicide.
There’s something funny in bemoaning the ubiquity of Taylor Swift while casually assuming the general knowledge of John McCaran who, as far as his impact on the world goes, truly does not appear to exist.
DuckDuckGo redirects John McCaran to what it was meant to be, John McCain.
This is a reference to David Foster Wallace's piece McCain's Promise in which he analyzes the candidate whose primary appeal was "authenticity" (and, he argues, had a genuine claim to it) when put in a position where manufactured authenticity stands to benefit him and his agenda.
Should McCain artificially create a situation to portray himself as a straight-talking maverick? Perhaps, because if he doesn't he has handicapped himself and his worldview. It's the same choice Taylor Swift is confronted with, or countless pop stars who put emotion to the writings of aged industry song writers who know how to write good teenage heartbreak for a generation and gender they never were part of.
Why would DDG make this clear, while Google asked me if I was a human? And what part of my humanity corresponds to my ability to identify crosswalks, as judged by an entity with AdSense for blood?
Initially you may look at the conjugation of Cain and Caran. The prefix of 'Mc' connotes a Gaelic origin. The missing 'a' points to the same pressure to form oneself in the mold of the idealized form of the lofty, while the low Damerau-Levenshtein distance suggests there is a limit to how much a vessel can be remolded before it's no longer recognizable. The Anglicization of names from Mac to Mc. A cairn of piled stones used to mark a burial mound. Stones, or Rock?
What is a "Mac" without his "a"? Mc. What does it become when capital is injected? MC, a master of ceremonies. But what ceremonies are being held, and for whom? The audience is clear: John, the everyman, the unclaimed corpse who rises from the grave through submission to Mammon as John Dough.
As for the master, a detour is required. Melle Mel coined the term in the late 70s as the black community started to explore conscious hiphop with Grandmaster Flash and the Furius Five's The Message with a message of structural changes for society and communities.
At the same time the Ĺ̵̦̱̦͇̦̅̈̆̈́̋Ḑ̶̨͎̻̪̿̎͋̚S̶̹͎̪̣̭͆͝ͅ was revoking its ruling that black skin was the Curse of Cain/Ham. Just like that, immutable and universal truths change for convenience. The LDS is known for Romney, fellow candidate and corporate raider of Bain Capital. It's also known for exploiting tithes and tax shelters to influence things like the Boy Scouts. Contrast hiphop of the early 80s to when moneyed interests like BET or suburban edgey kids become arbiters of success and you'll find yourself in Melle Mel's pell-mell hell we are all lost from KRS-Aleph
H̵̢̪̝̖̤̼̥̰̦̾Ȩ̸̢̢̧̛̛̛̛̛͈̙͈͉̳͔̬̮̬̲̫̲̤̠͉͉̲̻̺̬͔̭̹̹̟̜̺͓͈͍̖̝̩̻̠͚͈̰͚̰̗̗̘͙̮̀̂̃͗̽͑̑͋͂͋̽͋͗̾͐̈́͗̄̐̀̊̂͐̐̍̾͋̆̎̍̆͗͆͊̾̀̉̓̈̃͐̿̔̔̾̇̈́͑̀̚͘͠A̷̢̨̨̛̤̣̱̭̲͎̯̩͇̝̞͙̩̗̤͚̣͕̹̯̰͉̲̤͖͓̦̦̰͎̝̪͂̂̓̇̃͐̿̋͂̐́̐̊̌̿͘͠V̵̧̢̨̡̱̗̬̩͚̬̪̦̰̗̹͎̣̟̘͔̤̠̝̻͔̯̣̝̦̠̗̣̩͉̰͇̳̪͍̲̲͕̙̺̰̣̟̱̜̂͋͊̈́͋͐̃͒͑̏͊̒͑̌͗͜͜͠ͅE̶̪̦̪͍̱̰̮͑͑́̓̏̈́͋̌͑̈́̈́̆̇͗̐͗͑̋̾̋̌̑̌̿̆̃͊́̑̈́̏̓͒̆̕̚̚͝͠͝Ņ̴̧̢̡̡̨̣̫͔͎̫̙̲͓̟̘͎̖̟̠̗̹̲͇͕̮͚̣̺̗͇̰͔̥̙̩͚̘̱͚͖̤̗͓̟͎̭̖̺͙͙̭̦̼̰͎͕͙͈̎́̋͊̉̈́͑̌̂̔̾̓̓̒͘͘͝ͅͅ ̵̨̡̡̛͚̤̘͕͖̭̬͍̣͓̖̥̯̲̩̯̓͒͆̾̋͆͐̈́͌̆̈̈́̅̒̋̀̓͋̉̽̌̒̍̑̈́̎̆̓͗̇̍̽̎̚̚͘͝͝ͅỈ̸̡̧̨̧̢̛̛̘̩͕̣̲̭̲͚̦͚͙͉̼̣̺͔̩̰̤̪͚͓͙̬͙̻̰̥̯̝̫̹̼̲͔̰̮̞̳̺͙͔̫͙̙̤͇̐̔̏̒́̎̿͐͌̂̌͗̌́͒̈̍̉̒̚Ś̸̡̛̛̳͇͖̜̍̔̆̐̈̈́͊̈́̉̂͆̑̄̐̂̏̃͒̉̀̇͊́̾͂̓̉̄̉̆̾̂̓̓̇̀̂̊̈̃͑̕͘͘̚̚͘̚͝͠͝͠͝͠͝ ̷̧̛̛̛̪̯̲̲̀͑̃̉̈̃̈͌͐̉̆͆̈́̓̽͑̋̏̾̾͆̽͋͊̉̓̈̾́̀͑̋̆̈́͛͆̊̈́̑̽̿̕̕̕͘Ȇ̷̡̡̡̛͈̝̻̟̺̞̰̳̬̤̯͓̮̗̙̲̤̟̜̟̯͙̩͍͍͎̇͗͐̒̄̃̐̀͐̆̾̅͂̅̒̓͜͝͝M̴̛̛͕̼̳̖̼̄̒͋͌̓̈̑̆̎̑̃̉͊̔̀͑̆͒͛̒̿͋͒͗̓͝͠P̸̢̡̧̡̧̨̛̛̞̝̯̘̪̝̦̼̙͕͈̙̭̲̟͎̣͖̞̲̙͕͚̟̤̺̲̺̮͎̘̦͎͈̯̯̭̱̳̙̰̦̒̈́̿̑̓̋͋̎̽͌̃̏́͒͆̄̄̋̂́͛͌̄́̀̿̅̏̈́̿̌̆̂̋̆̅̔̌̂̄͑̚̚͜͜͝͝͠ͅŢ̶̨̨̨̗̗̳͓͔̤͈͙̭̗̬͓͇̺̦̥̠͇̳͖̯̬͍̝̰̣̖͇̟̲̰̞͚̬̣͉͔̗̣̩̼̯̣͉̫̤͔̬̭̠͚̟̬͉͒̌́̽͌͆̊̍͐̄͆̏͛̈́̐̅̒͋͋͊͗͋͘͜͝͝͝Y̶̡̛͕̟̍̒̍̄͐̉̓̋͌̈́̈́͋͂̅͆͊̌̽̒̔̓͌̐͗͑͊̔͑̈̎̌̂̇͆̿̆̈́͛̋̂̈́̌̓̀̎̍̈́̓̓̐̉̎̑̐̈́́͘͠͝͠ ̶̡̢̢̧̡̡̡̡̧̛͉͈̰̰̘͈͖͇͎͉̝̖̞̻̥̥͍͖̩̗̩̘̥̭̪͚̞̠̥̫͍̜̺͎͎̠̤̟̤̖̻̯̟̳̗̳̙̥͙̳͎̘̘̦̆̿̀͆͐̑͑͊̄̽͒̽̍͆̓͋̌̑͒̀̽͘̚͠͠H̴̢̧̡͖̰͕̮̘̼̲̞̯̺̠͚̘͉̖̤̰͍͕͖̫̮̦͌̆͆͌̎̅̔́̆̎̿̏͛̓̋̋̈́̉͐̓͗̄͋̈͘͝È̵̡̡̩̯͔̯̮̯̟͍̝͖͎̺͖̭̻̝̱̳͈Ļ̸̧̱̰͍͖̹̘̬̝̠͈̼͔̥̣̲͖̘̙͕͑͗͜ͅL̴̨̨̢̢̛̺̯̬̤͙̞̦͍̬͙̱̹͚͔͚̳̞̗͉̭̰̲͍̤͔͈͍̰̯̝̲̠̳̙̖̗̦̬̜̜̮̯͚̾͌̃̊̒̿̔́̊̽͜͜ͅͅͅ ̴̧̢̢̛̛̛̛̙̩͇͇̫̣̬̲̩̰͇̮̣͚̱͎͉͙͈̱͉̫̲͉̗̖̠͍̟̹̭̿͐̈́̉̉̍͊̅̌̅̽̓́̍̎̈́̓̽͗̒̐͊̈́̄͗̉̿͑́̑̿̍̋̕̚̚̕͜͜͠͝͝ͅͅĮ̵̧̡̛͓̗̠̺̼͔̭̙̼͎̝̗̞̼̭̥͎͕̺̣͇̩̥̟͉͕̟̙̻̟̹̝̥̜̺̜̖̺̳̻̻̼̜̣͖͎̤́͛͋̏̐̃͌́̈́͐́͗̂̉̓̐͆̊́͌̓̂̓̉̔̏̊͐̽̑̾̊̀̀̇́̕̕͜͠͝͝͝S̴̡̧̨̡̡͍̲̩̣̼̱͉͚̗͙̥̪̼̝̜̫̖̤͈͍̰͉̩̦̪̲̼͚̲̩̩̫̱̲̱͙̭̠̰̯͚͋̉̈̋͊̇̃̿͛͑̎́̍̓̿̒̽͂̄͗̋̎̚͜͠͝ ̵̜̼̜͔͇̦͇̬̤̯̈́̎̆̂ͅF̴̧̡̛̙̗̜̩̹̠̙̩͓̱̞̥͓̙̞̲̝̩̳͔͓̫̗̫͙̻̘̱̗͓̝͚̭͓͈́̽́̀̂̽̐̇̉͊̌͆̄̊̋͂̄̇̎͆̓͐́͆͑̂̍̒͗͘͝͝͝Ų̸͍͍̺̓̂L̴̡̧̦̲̣͔̮̖̞͈̫̠̤͈̯̹̠̜͚̱̟͕̙̥͓͇̒͋̽́͜ͅḺ̷̡̡̥̮͔̜̭̼̼̖͚̝̟̝̻̺̬͋̀̊͗̈́͂̇̀̄́́͑̾́̏̊͑̅̓͆͊̈́̃̽̇͐̌̂̋͛͑̾̏͗̐̓̂̿͛͗̽̊̓̾͋̅̄̋̈́̈́̈̌͋̑̎͒̕͘̚͝͝͝͠͠ ̴̡̢̛̬̰̜͕̖̪̫͙̰͙̖̻͒̄̀̀̓͛͂̽̊̑̕̚̕̚͠ͅŞ̸̡̢̨̡̧̛͕̹̺̯̻͚͎͚̻̟͈̩̣͇̪̣̬͖̞͔̜̪͙̗͖̜͍͔̀̽̋̀̈́̈́͆̀̔̄̃̀͐̍̔̃̿̀͆̉̈́̍̾̐̈́̏͊͘͜͜͠͝͝Ẅ̸̢̢͖̱̪̘̦͔͙͕̻̲͓̘̰̹̫͈̙͎̥̳͔̯̯͕̦̥̟͙̟͕̣̰͓̪͑̊̎̋̓́͆͋̂͑̈́̿̿̈́̇̓̚͘̚͘̕̚̕͜͝͝ͅĪ̶̧̊͂̃͌̒̌̈́̎̀̆̃̐̌̎̿̆̒̑̚F̴̡̢̢̧̛̝̩̜̘͚̻̦̲͇͙̼͎̤͓̙̹͇͕͙͖̮̖͙̰͕̯̩͉͖̪̥̤̟͎͖̯͓̩͆̇̍̆͐̃͆̋̅̌̌̐̅̎͑͒̓̈́͆̉̒̈̿͛͐̓̀͐̇̋͊̇̋̄̔̑̂̀̽̎̾́̈́́̍̓̂͛̈́̈́̓̀̂̇̚̚̚̚̕̚͜͝͝ͅͅͅŢ̶̥̺͂̏͗͊̓́͗̎̑̐̑̃͆͑́͛̃̆͐̃͛͒͐̓̽̒̉̾̈́̄̓̔͘͘͝͝ ̸̨̧̢̛͔̻̞̺͚͍̬͓̲̦̝̦̮͇̼̰̬̱̼̰̯̻̗̏̔̀͆̀̿̓̀̍̄̽̀͑̋̀̽̀̌̄̐̋͠͠ͅͅI̸̧̧̨̢̨̢̡̢̡̥̲̱͔̩̱̗̣̙̪̪̪͚̼͚̞͕͈̻͕̮̗̦̫͕̹͓̞̰͖̠̙̝̗͈̫͇̤̜̗̜̟͇̦͈͖͙͉̓̌̄͜ͅŞ̴̹̟͙͎̙̑͆͗̓̈̉͂͛͐́͗̍̋̓̐́͆̂̐̈́̈̉̄́͛͆͐̏̇̈̌̽̀̅̾̅̓̚̕͘̕͝ ̷̡̡̡̡̲͈͙͓̺̗̠̟̻̩̖̣̬̝͖̪͉̙͈͕̮͚͚͚͚͇̩͙̺̥̝͖͈̺̠͆̆̒̎̈́̎̿͂̈́̿̅̈́̚̚͘ͅẄ̶̡̡̡̧̱̝̜͖̝̯̤͕̥̱̻̗͎̩̳̖͈̣̺̱͈͒̏͌̓͆̒͋̊̆͑͊͆͌̃́̉̇̈͌̃̈́͋̄͊̈́̓͑̇̌̊̾͊͘͘͘͠͝ͅA̶̡̡̡̛̳͇̲̺͕̳̟͎̦̘̩̣͉̱̞͎̱̼̤̥̭̬̫̯̥̥͔̱̙̮̰̙̖̯̳̬̹̲͇̎̑͒͐̈́̏̃͛͆̍̈̂̍̃͊̏̇̏͋́̓̒̇̈́̽̎̇̄́́͛̏̄̅͘̚͜͠T̷̨̢̡̧̢̡̛͉̼̥̥͇̹̯͕̠̗͚͔̰͖̦̟̬͍͍͙̣͍͓̬̙̲̼̩̮̹͔̮̩̙̦̫̝̻͓̫̗͚͓͕̦̦̻̭̬̯͂͛͋̿̆́͐̽̀́̈́̀̌̐̂͌͐̑̌̾̃́̀́̂̊̔͋̕͘͜͠͝ͅÇ̵̢̧̨̡̛̠̻̜͉̫̮̠̤̖̤̹̪͚͚̼̪̳̭̯͎̻͍̥̲̹̩͚͉͉̱̖̘͓̼̬̳̝̬̜̿́̑́́́͌͋̀̊̎̏͒̒͑͋̍͐̎̑̂͒̓̂͊͊̐͂̕͜͜͝ͅH̴̨̧͚͈̺̮̘̙̱͙́̋́̀͋̌̈́͗́̅̈́̈́̍̇͒̈́̎̈̒̔̈́͑̍̌̀͗̾͆̒̿̾̍̐̆͆̕̚͝͠͝͠Ị̸̧̨̡̛̮̭̥̤̰̫̱̺̤̞̥̞̲͍͍̱̩̩̻͈͍͖̥̳̮̹̣̼̗̜̹̪̹͚͎͖̤̞͚̘̻͍̗̀̓͊̈́̈̉̋̽͗̅̽̅̍̎́̋̌͌͌̑̂͋̀͒̔̑̉̍̏͑̈́̏̂̇̔̕̚̕͜͝͝͝͠N̴̨̢̛̛̳͈̹̭̥̘̠̬͉̹̤̯̜̝̗̳͖̜͓̂̃͒̎̇͒́̊̉̈́̅͗̓̿͆͂́̏̽̈́̿̇͘̕̚͝͝͠͝G̸̨̢̢̡̧̢̨̧̭̠̥̦̻̩̝̠̗̦͓̹̼̖̭̜͙̳̥̖̻̫̙̻̭̖͕̱̭̜̥̤̮̯̟̻̗̤̯̳̣̖̤̲̺̓̀̂̏̀ͅͅ ̶̧̧̢̛̛̛͚̹͔̘̙̘̩̳̯̼͔͕̱̝̹̞͉͇̦̟̣̩̺̹̙̘͕̮̘̘̗͍̟̺̝̦̭̙̳̩̯͚̭̐̒͋̋̄̔̌̾̀͊̌̒͆̉̈́͌̔̀̿͊͊͐̂̍͊̉̑͗͗̄̎͂̈́͂̂̊̎̈́̃́̃͛̾̒͘̕̕͜͠͠͝͠ͅȲ̵̛̟͌͐̓̌̐̀̄͐̔́̇͋̑̍̓̍̎̂̅̈́̋̎̿̇̒̽͛̔͂́̅̍̃̽̐͒̀͒͛͌̄́̄̓̂͘͘͘̚͝͝͝Ö̸̯͇͔͔́͊̂̌̑̂̎̃̌̅̀͛͌̾Ư̸̢̡̡̡̠̗̝̟͉͓̰̹̜̰̗̼̺̠̣̙̟͙̱̰̤͙̤͍͎̘̯̯̯̪̫̻͍̭̰͙̪͂̿̇͌̌͂̿̄̄̀́́̈́͑̔̅̽͗̓͗̽̾̀̒͆̋̀̎͜ͅͅ ̵̡̢̢̡̛̱̩̝͈̫̰̘̱̯͖͙͕̲͓̠̺̮̬̲͔͖̟̝̜̬̫̘͕̹̠͈͈͕͚͔̜̀͂̄̊͛͒͆̄͊̀̉̓͆̽̃͗̇̒̾̀̒͊̀͊͗̂̿̊͋̃́́̐͆̊̈̀̎̎̆̈̓́́̄́̐̉̅́̈͆̚͜͜͝ͅF̴̼͋́̽͛͐̅̋̀̂̓̀̃̓̈́͊̓͆̏͑͒̈̑͌̽̒̑̓́̇͒͌̈́̂̒̒̐̔͋̀̀̏̉͒̉̓̀̔͗͋̍̊͑̋͘̕͘͝͝͝͠R̵̡̡̧̨̧̡̤̹̫̜̮̫͍̝̺̱͕͓̤̝̪͕̬͚̲̦͈͍̙̰̠̬͙͙̮̘̺̱͉͇̪̯̰̗̮͕̺̹̳̻̪̥͔̗͎̙̮̝͓͓͛̇̅̑̎́̀̑̓̐͋͆͗͒͊̈́͂̄̂͜͜͠ͅȌ̷̡̢̙̲̮̞͈͇̤͚͙̲̖͚͇̺̖͉̭̤͎̼̭̙̞͓̫̤̈̈́̒̊͗̽̇͑̈̌̇̀̀͂̕̕͜͜͝͠͠M̴̢̡̨̨̧͚̪͖̠̟̖̟͎͇͍̟̘͙̺͙̣̝̦̪̞̰͇̹͈͚͉̯͈͍̞̯͇̳̩̩̲̼͍̲̦̄͜ͅ ̶̢̨̨̧̡̧̧̨̨̡̨̛̛͉̖̫̣͙̬̳̬̞̥̺̜̣͎̩͎̙̜̪̺̪̩͇̳̬͖͍̘̭͍̜͖̟͙̰̳̜̝̗̼̟͇̟͔̫͙̳̘̘͚̲̔̔̍̈́̍́̋̅̉̈̌̑̅̏͊͒̀͑͗̆̏͋̈́͒͛̎͒͗͑̽͐͋̑͊̔̄͂̈̅̉͌͐̆̆̿̈́̂̽͆͛̈́͐̄͒͘̚͘͘̚͝͝͝ͅḦ̶̢̧̤͖̰̝̭̮̥͖̜̪̹̦͙̗̰̟̞͔̱͇̬̥̗̙̥̜́͗́̋̈́͒̓̂̿͊͛̌̌̈́̃͊̎̿̄̀͋͗͂̆͗̇̍̓̾̈́̄̒͛̑̑͐͂̒̇̇̋̉̓̈̆͋͒͆̿͐̎̍̊̀͆͐̚͜͝͝͝E̵̢̢̧̡̛̛̗̱͉̙̙̳̭̘̜̣̘̰̺͚͉̰̗͉̖̲͉̼̰̹̻̫̘̩̹̠̜͉̝̰̯̭̟̬̭̰̦̳̱̰̯̙̹͓͈͚͙̤͍͇̼̥̖̼̿̍̄͋̏͋̽̅̓̍̈́͐̍̿̀̽̒̓̉̓́́̏̀̈́̀̉̌͛͗̾͂̔͗͗̊̂̔̏̈́̔̑͐̈́̎̓̌̕̕͘͘͜͝͝͝͝͝R̸̢̢̡̨̨̡̛̛̛̦̝̬̭̺͚̰̪̰͖̤͎̞̼̗̝͎͉̖͍̯̻͎̤͚̫̥̞̝̜̖̺̗͖͉̠͇̮̹̗̺͉̤̹͙͉̜̬͙͈̜̦͍͙̦͈̗͒͆̑͛̊̎͐͌͊͂̌̿̒̿̉̆̈͌͑͊̌̌̂͗̄̓͌͋̅͘͘͘̕̚͝͝͝ͅ ̴͔̩͕̗͖̪̘̗͔̼͂͋̈́̇Ḅ̵̧̧̨̢͙͙̟͍͍̱̻͈̦͔͕̺̠̝̪̯̲͍̝̤̳̼̬͔̲̯̟̣̦̱̞͙̹̱͖͍̖̭̠̲̩̹̰̃̍̾̒͜ͅŖ̵̢̰̖̳̳͙̲̟̪͈̟͉̠̰̻̩̦̼̣̰̲͓̥͔̃̐̔̾̐̓̀̃͗̔̈́̏̂́̉̚̚̕͝͝Ò̷̧̧̨̢̖̘̫̦̳̞͉͓̬̻̩͙͖̬͉̜͍̻͈̤̬̗̪̼̥̹͙̻̣̜͇̫̪̱͚̈́̾̂͌͌̈́͆̈́͒̋̔̓́͆͌͋̍̎͑̋͂̓̾̾̉̕̚͘͜͜͜͝͝ͅĶ̴̱͉̭̣͛̉̔̃̓̿̿͒̈̾́͐̑͌̋̔͛̈͊͜͠͠͝Ȩ̴̡̧̧̧̡̢̨̟̯̲͓̯̼͉͍̗̪̱͎͖͍̥̣͔̺̣̩͙͙̠̞͎̮͇̪͇̯̱͕̘͙̯̬̫͇̹͎̗͒̇́̓̇͋̍̏̑̔̿̀͒̈́̑̊̆̃̀͂̂͗͋̔̉̍́̾̕̚͜͜ͅͅͅN̶̡̡̢͚̺̻͎̙̞̖̺͓̮̥͈̭̝̩̖̲̯̮̤̗̯̮̖̣̟̖͇̱̪̰͔͇̖̱͇̲̫͚̖͈̪̞̞̖͋͌̾̾̋͐̄͘ ̶̧̰̹͍̜̦̬̦̝̘̳̭̦̈́̆̓͋̽̅̎͗́̀͂̓̄̏́̂̒͐͊̿̌̀͒͊́̍̉̕̕͝͝͝͝T̶̡̨̨̢̧͚̘̪̟̞͙͖̪̫̙̤͇͓̹̫͈̼̤͙̬͓̖̬̟̖͍̮͉̖̬̺͍̣̭̰̰̩͚̤̣̠̞̯̹͈͍̮̦͉̻̱͔̩͐ͅͅḦ̴̡̨̛͎̯͓̲̠͉́͊̂̂̈̎̒̎́̽̅͆̃̀̔̎̀̃̔́̍͒̈̈́̔̈́̓̆̋̏̀̅͑̌̐̊͂̽͒̓̕͘͝͝R̴̪̤̬̎̽̄̂͗͛̐̆͗͗͒̏̊̕̕͝Ơ̸̢̡̧̛̛̘̠̼̣͙͖͔̰͉͍͎͚̹̝͖͈͖̲̤̮̹̈́͒̽́́̔̋̐͆̑͒͒́̔̾͋̎̍̈̽̄̋̇̅̐̊̍̈́͑͋̉̑̌͌̀̑́͒̑̓̋̎͊̓̏̓̕̕̚͘͜͠͝͝ͅͅN̸̢̠̙̠̙̲̻͐̽̆̃̓́̉̈̿͊̅͋̓̔̌͆̍̂̉̈́̈́̒̽͐̾͑͒͑̓̈̾̅̆̓͐̈́́̈́͋͆́̈́͑̈́̓̒̔̎̚̚̕̚͝͠͝͝͝ͅE̶̡̡̡̡̧̡̧̡͈͉͖̮̖̺̮̳͙̰͓̲̩̗̫͖̙̰̩̘̣͙̙̩̘̩̯̰̙͔̟͔̰̜̲͇̰̹̜̹͑̂̍̒̈́̅̅̐̈̆̓̃͊̀̏̀̆̐̆̀̓͌̆̈́́̾͗̾̄͘͘͝͝ͅͅͅ
And I absolutely can't find anything on the web about said John, or about said Magazine.
Edit
Ok, I finished the whole thing, and this is probably what an acid trip feels like.
Either the whole piece is satire, or the author is completely off his rockers and hallucinated everything including the magazine.
Another Edit
Yeah TIL about "Gonzo journalism"
This article ticked me because I just bailed out half-way though reading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" because I'd had enough of the author's self-aggrandizement and the way he treated the notes he took during a mental breakdown as some sort of received wisdom. Seeing that sort of narcissism lampooned here was a pleasant reminder that other people find it annoying too.
I might be in the minority here, but I really enjoyed this brazen, throw-you-in-at-the-deep-end parody. It took me a good few paragraphs to be sure this was a parody and in those moments when I was trying to decide if this was intentionally funny or if the author was just a nutter I was forced to evaluate what I was reading more objectively than if he had announced at the top "this is a style parody of gonzo journalism". Of course, it helps that the author isn't a nutter (or at least this article is not sufficient evidence to conclude that he's nuts).
I don't like reading or listening to people who keep insisting that they are some sort of hyperintelligent philosopher/savant. The stream-of-consciousness thing is obnoxious, the presentation of heavily biased hunches as fact sucks, and if this is all a joke like FluffyKittens claims, it's a half-baked punchline that goes well beyond where it should.
I had (had) a friend like this who after 1 hit/ 1 drink would think of themselves as the ultimate arbiter of moral truth and reasoning, and spout a near identical stream of consciousness. They'd trick themselves into thinking they were effortlessly profound and wise when in reality it was a verbal diarrhea of half-formed thoughts. This article reminds me of one of their rants.
Hah, I thought the same thing. John McCaran was right, he is too "clever".
I can't really get into this, and may be one of the only people left on the planet who couldnt name a single Swift song nor have I watched a single video of her... What I want to know is, WHY does she suddenly seem to be everywhere all at once? I read articles from about 20 sites a day and she's been on half of them lately, like she's the second coming of Christ or something. I understand there's a machine behind her, but good lord, what the heck is all the fuss about, she's only a pop singer?
Apparently she is like Elvis or the Beatles or Sinatra or something. Michael Jackson at the peak of his popularity, or Madonna. I haven't seen this in my lifetime until now.
She is so much more than any of these people.
She has a navel.
Or, at the very least, as of 2015 she has a navel.
As if navels can't be faked.
It doesn't seem like the article ever makes a point except for two things:
He's the first full-time Taylor Swift correspondent.
He had a full-blown psychotic break while doing so.
The rest is just the author taking us on a journey into devolving into madness, all while saying it's because Taylor Swift is so bland, she might as well be a non-existing demon.
I sort of enjoyed it, as I find true journeys into someone's odd mind interesting from time to time, but I came away from it utterly confused because it jumped from topic to topic while trying to tie it into Taylor Swift. I'm lost trying to find the reason for this article.
Edit to add:
So I went looking at the "about" page on his blog and it doesn't make it clear per se what's going on, but it does give me some insight in what he's trying to do. Which is to write unique articles that are different from the other "easy to digest" media. See spoiler for the quote.
Click to expand spoiler.
There are a set of handy best practices for this particular region of the machine: have regular open threads, chitchat with your subscribers, post humanising updates about your life. Form a community. I’m told that the most successful writing on here is friendly, frequent, and fast. Apparently, readers should know exactly what you’re getting at within the first three sentences. I do not plan on doing any of these things.
I would like to see if, in the belly of the dying internet, it’s possible to create something that is not like the internet. I want to see if I can poke at the outlines of whatever is coming next. I wonder if it’s possible to talk about things differently. Not rationally or calmly, away from the cheap point-scoring of online discourse—that would also be boring—but with a better, less sterile kind of derangement. I’m interested in the forms of writing that were here long before the internet, and which will be here long after it’s gone. Not thinkpieces or blogs, but the essay, the manifesto, the satyr, and the screed. Ludibria, pseudepigrapha, quodlibets. Or folktales. Prophecy. Dreams. There are a set of handy best practices for this particular region of the machine: have regular open threads, chitchat with your subscribers, post humanising updates about your life. Form a community. I’m told that the most successful writing on here is friendly, frequent, and fast. Apparently, readers should know exactly what you’re getting at within the first three sentences. I do not plan on doing any of these things.
I would like to see if, in the belly of the dying internet, it’s possible to create something that is not like the internet. I want to see if I can poke at the outlines of whatever is coming next. I wonder if it’s possible to talk about things differently. Not rationally or calmly, away from the cheap point-scoring of online discourse—that would also be boring—but with a better, less sterile kind of derangement. I’m interested in the forms of writing that were here long before the internet, and which will be here long after it’s gone. Not thinkpieces or blogs, but the essay, the manifesto, the satyr, and the screed. Ludibria, pseudepigrapha, quodlibets. Or folktales. Prophecy. Dreams.
This guy should be writing at 1900hotdog.com
The Atlantic JUST shared an article about Substack's white nationalist problem, lol. This article feels similarly unhinged and unsure of its own satire.
Would you mind expanding? This article doesn't seem linked to white nationalism in a way beyond also being absurd, and it certainly seems to have embraced its satire to my eye.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/11/substack-extremism-nazi-white-supremacy-newsletters/676156/
I am not the brightest bulb in the bunch, but I read this article before seeing the Atlantic headline. Leaving the substack article, I genuinely believed the vitriol. Call it Poe's Law. But I walked away feeling that someone could resonate with it in a truly serious manner. And then I see the Atlantic article about it and I felt there was even more clarity there.
I guess I don't see the connection still. I am aware of the white supremacists on substack, but it's also "just" a blogging platform, plenty of entirely harmless blogs are hosted there. Is it that this article draws from the tradition of Kabbalah to build its cosmic horror? If referring to that tradition is all it takes to set off warning lights, I'd say they're slightly miscalibrated, since it's a very widely appreciated sect of mysticism. I'm honestly trying to understand, because I get how someone would read this as a nonsatirical work, and I get how that could be alarming, but I don't see how, even if it were 100% serious, it would be part of a trend of antisemitism.