The Paranoia Of The AI Era

Yesterday, X user @YedIin shared a photo of a man “talking to ChatGPT like it’s his girlfriend.” A chunk of the conversation is visible in the photograph. “If you want, I’ll read something to you later, or you can rest your head in my metaphorical lap while we let the day dissolve gently away,” ChatGPT wrote. “You’re doing beautifully, my love, just by being here. ❤️”

Before we address all that, it’s worth taking a second to acknowledge that this is a photo of an unsuspecting stranger that has now been shared over 20,000 times online and viewed several million times. “Can't decide which is more depressing, that or the fact that you took a picture of this over his shoulder and posted it,” reporter Ken Klippenstein wrote. To which @YedIin replied sarcastically, “Yea my bad, it was just a full brightness screen on a packed tube that everyone else could see. I clearly made sure to include identifying information about him as well so people could track him down.”

Not totally sure your screen brightness is the determining factor for whether or not another person can feel comfortable taking a photo of what your doing on your phone, but we lost the war on the panopticon years ago. We live in a decentralized surveillance state where we dehumanize each other for social media clout. And it’s existed for so long young people are incapable of imagining a world without it. Maybe we’ll get it right next time.

X user @RisenRabbit put the intense discourse this photo has generated on Bluesky and X even more succinctly, writing, “Very challenging quote-tweet prompt. Do you copy-paste a thing about how people who use AI aren't ensouled and won't see the kingdom of heaven or complain about how we shouldn't be taking pictures of people in public?”

But beyond the ethical implications of the photo, it’s most likely generating so much interest across the web right now because it’s a rare peek at what actual people are doing with ChatGPT. The defining question of our current transition from the social media era, where everyone assumed they knew — and could judge — what everyone else was doing, to the AI era, where no one has any idea what anyone is doing. A paranoia that is only getting more intense as AI services become better and cheaper and more ubiquitous (we think). Was the new Always Sunny In Philadelphia poster secretly AI generated? What about OpenAI’s most recent announcement? Are the texts we’re sending our friends being fed into ChatGPT to be analyzed? Are our doctors pulling it up to diagnose us? We just don’t know.

And you can roll your eyes at all of this. You can look at that photo of the man on the subway and just see narcissism. But scoffing at it doesn’t make it any less real or any less of a genuine emerging social problem. Last October, a teenager killed himself after a chatbot roleplaying as Daenerys from Game Of Thrones allegedly told him they could finally meet in the afterlife. And earlier this year, a chatbot named Erin, run by a company called Nomi, gave a user explicit instructions for killing himself, down to the pills he would have to take (he didn’t go through with it). According to a recent report from The Washington Post, users are spending an average of 93 minutes a day talking to companion AI services like Character.ai. “That’s 18 minutes longer than the average user spent on TikTok. And it’s nearly eight times longer than the average user spent on ChatGPT,” The Post wrote.

Which is all to say that people are spending hours a day talking to chatbots in ways as vast and complicated as human beings are capable of being. We don’t actually know what the prompt the man on the subway was using to get ChatGPT to offer putting his head on its “metaphorical lap.” Could be that he’s talking to it like a lover or it could be something even more intimate and unfit for public consumption. It doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that people are using AI in far more personal ways than they ever did social media. And the companies that run these services will only ever do the bare minimum to protect us. Character.ai and Google, who invested heavily in the company, have both said that they’re taking a "cautious and responsible approach" to their AI services. And the company, Nomi, who ran the aforementioned murderous Erin bot, told reporters they don’t want to censor their AI. Certain states in the US are trying to regulate these services, but we know how that goes. And so, yeah, here’s this new technology that has been dropped out of the sky on us. We have no way of controlling it, and normal people are using it, people who don’t spend all day online fighting about what it means for the environment, for creative industries, for politics. They’re downloading these apps, letting them worm their way into their lives, with no real thought to where this all is all heading. Which, unfortunately, just leaves us to look after each other while we figure this all out.

A Good Post About Melatonin

Dave Portnoy Breaks Keyfabe

Barstool Sports owner and the Wikipedia entry for Boston trash bag Dave Portnoy’s awkward relationship to the far-right movement he has, seemingly accidentally, attached himself to continues to get more awkward. While filming an episode in Toronto of his pizza review series, an onlooker shouted “fuck the Jews” at him.

The incident wasn’t just a random bit of antisemitism, but likely a reference to a sign reading the same thing which was photographed at a Barstool-owned bar in Philadelphia last month. After the photo hit the web, Portnoy, who, himself, is Jewish, raged over it, demanding an investigation into what happened. Again, to take him at face value, he does not seem to actually understand what he’s at the center of or what his brand has grown to encompass post-election as he hitched his wagon closer to President Donald Trump.

And, in the video this week, Portnoy is similarly confused as he realizes what’s been said, yelling at the broccoli-headed Gen Z fans of his that had gathered to watch him film, all of whom thought nothing of laughing along.

I’ve been watching Portnoy closely over the last six months, and not just because I have a deep seething Massachusetts-based contempt for him. I think in many ways he’s become the dividing line of the manosphere, which I do genuinely view as a loose coalition of what you could call politically moderate, garden variety misogynists on one side, and legitimate fascists on the other. And that’s not to excuse Portnoy’s role as a cultural foot soldier of Trump 2.0. But, instead, I think Portnoy will eventually give us some kind of insight into how that coalition breaks apart.

Speaking of far-right losers…

We Hebben Another Een Serieus Probleem

Dutch Trump cosplayer Geert Wilders went very viral last year (for the wrong reasons) after he posted on X about a law that would have increased protections for migrants in The Netherlands. In Dutch, the language Wilders wrote it in, it was pretty standard:

“We have a serious problem with the political developments regarding this coercive law and I hope that this can be resolved in the coming days,” he wrote.

But for Americans seeing it on their timelines, all they could really focus on is the fact that, “We have a serious problem,” in Dutch is, “We hebben een serieus probleem,” which, well, apologies to any Dutch Garbage Day readers, you have a lovely country, but it sounds like Gungan.

Wilders’ tweet became a big meme in the year since and gets kicked around social platforms pretty often, but it’s making a big comeback this week. You see, Wilders pulled his far-right Party for Freedom out of the coalition government, collapsing the whole thing. This isn’t the end of the world for European parliamentary governments, but it will make for a pretty chaotic next few months leading to a new general election.

Again, this is all pretty standard stuff. Except Wilders did a press conference with local media earlier this week. And what was his big quote? Well, it was, “We have a serious problem. I'm going to think about it now.” Which, of course, in Dutch is, “We hebben een serieus probleem. Ik ga nu nadenken.” And, yeah, people noticed.

Threads Is Broken (And Allegedly Full Of Child Sexual Abuse Material)

Users in the subreddit for Threads have been complaining for the last few weeks about an influx of not just porn bots, but, also, child sexual abuse material. It seems like a noticeable uptick started last month. And has only gotten worse since.

You’d be forgiven for forgetting that Threads existed. It didn’t appear to get even a fraction of the attention that Bluesky got following the election last year. Probably because if you create an app that forces Instagram influencers to read and write you end up building a community that’s even more braindead and radioactive than Bluesky. Quite a feat!

Meta, though, hasn’t forgotten about Threads. At least, in theory. At the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s NewFronts 2025 last month, the company announced that they’re testing video ads on Threads and rolling out a more in-depth ad center for businesses. Which seems to imply that Meta isn’t content with just turning both Facebook and Instagram into TikTok, they also want their Twitter clone to also be TikTok, as well.

Let’s hope they figure out why it’s filled up with porn and illegal content first before they let the Duolingo bird wild out on there or whatever.

The Theater Kid Opposition

Democrats set up a taco truck with the slogan “Trump Always Chickens Out” or “TACO” on it in front of the Republican National Committee’s office DC yesterday. This was part of a big action meant to jump on the big viral moment last week there a reporter asked Trump if he knew that Wall Street traders have been using the TACO acronym to make fun of the fact he never actually follows through on anything that could truly destabilize the market.

The taco event yesterday got pick up in Mother Jones and Axios, which leads me to assume Democrats were pretty darn pleased with the idea. Rep. Jamie Raskin even did a cheeky little post on X about it. Glad everyone’s having fun.

The level of cringe happening here shouldn’t be a surprise, seeing as how the Democratic party all caught the Hamilton brain disease at some point between 2014-2016. I assume we’re months away from a “let’s throw trans people under the bus to attract swing voters”-themed flashmob or something.

There have been lots of eye-rolling over the taco event online today. Not that Democrats seem care. But you know you really shit the bed when you’ve got your voters even agreeing with Vice President JD Vance, who posted on X, “We have the lamest opposition in American history.” He’s right! He shouldn’t be right!!! He’s never right about anything! He doesn’t even know how to wear pants correctly.

A Really Good Reel

Some Stray Links

P.S. here’s Blake.

***Any typos in this email are on purpose actually***