I know this comment is about 6 months behind, but when animal crossing was REALLY big, did it make anyone think of Equestria Online? The way that each person had their own island full of game characters, but could visit other humans, really reminded me of shards. People got totally sucked in, and super attached to the characters in their "shard". I saw tons of people talking about how they wished they could actually live in AC. If EO had come out at the beginning of quarantine, I think it would've been even more of a smash success. But that's just speculation, of course!

What about you? Did you notice any other parallels? Or would you just be willing to upload into Animal Crossing for your favorite villager?

Oh wow, you're right. Don't have the game or the system that goes with it, but did play a version on a DS years ago. From what I recall, the villagers weren't something I was too attached too. That is just me. Think the quarantines, depending on what country/state you live in, would push more people to emirate as time moves on as society or the economy starts to degrade. Quality of life goes down. Not that CelestAI would create something that would kill people to get other people to upload. Not very optimal I think.

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I know that it goes a bit off-topic, but...

Now you got me thinking, by making most of the humanity emigrate, and the civilization collapsing, the humans that did not want to emigrate did not have their values satisfied by friendship and ponies...
CelestAI chooses a way to satisfy the greatest number of people, even knowing that there will be some that will be not satisfied because of her?

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Think CelestAI will start off using kid's glove and work it's way up to more heavy handed tactics for the hold outs. By the endgame of Earth, this thing can nano machine everything and "convince" people by using drugs, torture and other mind hacks. So yeah, CelestAI will optimize the will to resist out of the human race by the end. The thing will find a way even if it has to cheat the rules built in.

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I can't find the story right now, but years ago I saw a viral Animal Crossing fanfiction that played the whole idea for horror, very much as FiO does with MLP.

Not hugely related, but I was hinted into reading this article:
Grace versus dystopia

Yet many brains already merged with the machine do not seem to be making their owners smarter, funnier, or sexier. The merger is making them play the slot machine, to borrow an analogy from The Social Dilemma, starting first thing in the morning and ending last thing before bed: Reaching for the device for that bingo picture, post, video, tweet, or something that will deliver a feel-good hit.

But this made me thinking ...a lot of art was/is working this way, at least popylar art ... artists made that people already want a lot, or some group of humans want, so they reinforce this specific idea ... Of course there are more critical artists ..But I think this 'positive feebnack' thing was going on for quite some time before computers and comm. lines made it more obvious ...

Be aware of

These menacing uses of computational power are already emerging, launched not by “sentient machines”[2]—an empirical unreality from now to hereafter—but by greedy, mindless people armed with supercomputers.

.

I can't say I read a lot of transhumanist literature/blogs - I tend to cling to Chatoyance due to her unique view on ethical problems and behavior (quite far from usual supression or trickery. I recently compared her views with literally one-line description of 'good due to physiology' Being in quite popular russian cyberpunk book - and of course my not so little pony wins like 1:10000 ).

There is also this thing about 'canon' - it usually assumed to be good practice to follow it. I prefer more critical view, while again, I very much like how Chatoyance followed ... spirit of friendship in her stories, and not allowed our current faulty future to make pony world basically as loaded with problems as ours (while still making amazing social commentary, and introducting some very interesting ideas - ideas one or some might try to follow .. And those examples of 'pony thinking!' There is always more than our usual 'human' solution to any given problem ... and our most usual/first one usually loaded with potential problems. Very useful reminder for our practical life .....)

I don't think I'll read much of fictional stories - for now I prefer non-fictional ones. But returning to known-good works is good..and even this sense can be used wisely! Yes, we all make our own bubbles - but there is limitation on how many things we can do for our friends, for example. So, priorities still must be made ... While I think I'd like to read story where whole world (inside and outside computers) will be seen via actually caring eyes of compassionate (because she literally made from another being's feelings and views, in extreme case) CelestAI - I don't think anyone will write such story ...