Artificial Fans? · 5:09pm Apr 29th, 2020
On April 1st, 2014, one of that year’s most unexpected video game hits released: Goat Simulator. “What does this have to do with writing and reading?” Just trust me.
Goat Simulator was not what was described in the title. Yes, you were a goat, but “simulation” was more a play on the janky, not-simulation nature of so many other titles around that time claiming the term but being little more than soulless, broken cash-grabs. Goat Simulator played that for comedic effect, and ended up being a hit.
Later that year, it was a added upon with an expansion: Goat Simulator: MMO Simulator, which carried the joke even further by purporting to turn the game into an MMO, or massively multiplayer online game.
Which of course, it wasn’t. It simulated all the online aspects. But for a lot of players, that was enough to fool them into thinking it was, and shortly after the expansion’s release a lot of players who hadn’t read the farcicle fine print were shocked to discover that the “people” they’d been playing with were just AIs.
At the time this was a clever joke. Some chatbots filling a “global” chat, combined with some player-like behavior. People laughed, and the world moved on.
Just … not in the direction we thought. Because as people have discovered (here’s the comic they made about this, by the way) this idea that people could be fooled by nothing more than some lines of code pretending to be the “crowd” that the audience goes along with, well … it hasn’t left.
People are, by nature, social animals. For most, as long as they hear enough voices backing it up, they’ll go check it out. One person says “Hey, you’re good at this?” That’s nice. Ten? A hundred?
1000? Well, you’re probably pretty good at it, right?
Even if 979 of those 1000 are little more than bots?
Bots sound like the grey goo of the digital realm. They swarm, multiply, consume anything of worth, and leave nothing of value behind.
Although, if we are to extract some worth from what looks like a future scam outburst, this might at least serve as another cautionary tale about not getting too wrapped up in online life. Pity it comes at the expense of enjoying the perks of online anonymity, but then we can't pretend that isn't fraught with problems too.
Then again, we might be secure so long as bots have no creative juice to their engagement. When it comes to reviews, for instance, “Wow, I liked this!” or “Hey, thanks for the update on [insert this topic], I didn’t know about it until now” are never going to rank as replies I'd savour in the long run.
5252719
Those were quick examples, but you could definitely go further without much trouble. Imagine a book bot net that picks from dozens of favorable replies about the book and even scans legitimate responses to build its own "praise." Not hard for a Twitter bot to say "Oh, I loved this part of the book" wax on it for a moment, and then say "9/10 read hands down!" or something similar.
Imagine all your fans turning out to just be one fan, who crafted like, a thousand bots to support you.
5252727
(And this is why I'm really glad I've seen a bunch of my fans in person at cons! I know they're real)
Take it a step further. Imagine that it wasn't one fan that did that, but your publisher or agent, and you didn't even know.
I'm guessing this exact scenario will happen before long.
5252751
I would be extremely disappointed if my publisher (if I ever got one) did that.
Probably. sigh.
[Ha-ha-only-serious] This is the answer to all of social media's problems. All your interactions are now with official bots, plus a few curated interactions with IRL family and friends. No toxicity, no misinformation, no flamewars. Just bots and ads and the occasional message from IRL people you know, just to make you think they're keeping things honest. It'd be the most popular social media platform ever, at least until people catch on.
5252727
Well, that's a nice and horrifying thought. Finding that out would just pull the rug out from under you.
It vaguely reminds me of some of the more Orwellian things that forum owners can do, such as shadow-bans and disemvowelment.
5256085
what is a shadow ban?
5256527
It's where things look normal from your end, but nobody but you can see your posts.
5256621
huh
5256624
You can read more on what it is and how it's affected the book industry here.
5256661
wow. Just wow. That's really petty.