🤖🤖🤖 new macroblog post (about artificial intelligence and sociopaths no less): outputs

🔗🔗🔗 I used to write an email newsletter called DMail. I’m thinking about rebooting it. This blog post is similar to what a DMail issue looked and felt like so have at it or whatever: combatdavey.bearblog.dev/links-post-2

I’ve been building a little site over at Bear. It’s still a work in progress (and I still need to map combatdavey dot com to it) but I’d be grateful it if you took a look and read a few things: combatdavey.bearblog.dev

LinkedIn is one of the most disingenuous and fake places on whole internet and I hope that never changes — because as a cultural artifact, the site is endlessly fascinating. Every time I spend more than 10 minutes there I feel like I’m auditing a grad school semiotics class.

To paraphrase a LinkedIn post I wrote, it’s tough to be a creative taking part in the group therapy session on LinkedIn. It’s lame that they think AI + whatever else negates the need human creatives, bc contemporary professional life needs it’s humanity and creativity more than ever.

“Future-proof your skills” rubs me the wrong way. I think selling this idea is disingenuous within the context of this moment. (Yes, I’m an old ND copywriter — and those kids better get off my lawn.)

Who are your favourite people to follow on Micro.blog?

🚨 Macroblog! Does this links post portend the 2025 return of my newsletter? As per Anna Baragli, only Bobo knows for sure.

I’ve been working on a LinkedIn post for the last half hour but all I really want to write is “your aDaPt Or DiE posts are lame af and I hope someone drops a piano on you.”

Want to read something new and fresh? Something published in the last 24 hours? Sure you do. My suggestion: I don’t know why early 2000s internet is suddenly back, but both Ask a Ninja and Homestar Runner have just uploaded new videos by PC Gamer writer Wes Fenlon (h/t Guy @ thingstoclick.com)

Social media would be great if you weren’t permitted to see replies. If you were the only person in the world who couldn’t see what happened in the replies to or melee below your post.

I know I’m turning into an (unpaid) evangelist but if you post to Bsky, Threads, or LinkedIn (or all three), I highly recommend using Micro.blog. It lets me post where I want to without directly interacting with platforms designed to suck time, emotion, and energy.

OpenAI is building a social network, escalating the battle (I’d imagine something closer to a slap fight, actually) between Sam Altman and Elon Musk. I for one cannot wait to never, ever be on whatever it is. (The Verge)

I get why they do it, but I don’t think using fear as a motivator is the best way to get people to use this kind of service.

Reading the Atlantic piece about loneliness and feeling grateful. Without knowing the power of what I was doing, I spent decades building a life that prioritized a very active kind of friendship. I worried that my way was insecure. Pathetic even. In actuality, I was feeding my brain and my soul.

Nine days later, no second email. What a joke.

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I have started, stopped, and deleted about 20 posts today. The gist of the deletia: I do not know how to function in a world where the bad guys always win and people are increasingly morally bankrupt and intellectually empty.

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That these guys think asking AI to Ghibli-fy an image is the same thing as being creative and/or making art explains so much about their entire worldview.

My fave part of LinkedIn is when some influencer “realizes” something everyone knows and then posts about it like they’re Moses coming down the mountain with the tablets of the covenant.

Bruce Eric Kaplan for The New Yorker.

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I need to torch most if not all of my social accounts. There was a time for those platforms and products, but they’re just no good for me anymore. I just don’t know what the point of anything is anymore, tbh.

It’s not the tools. It’s how people use them, and to what end.

As someone who has been (mildly) chastised for not being serious enough on LinkedIn, I’m endlessly amused by how many LinkedInners are happy to post wildly sexist and racist things next to their names, headshots, and employers.

Just made a bad pancake that was a pretty good pancake, all things considered. (First time vaguebooking on Micro.blog, what a day!)

A byproduct of America’s descent into authoritarianism is that Azealia Banks is once again tweeting banger after banger. This timeline sucks but at least we have that.

I haven’t written an actual blog post (i.e. over 300ch) since joining Micro.blog bc my thoughts and ideas either come as pithy little asides or strap-the-fuck-in longreads. And I only write longreads when I get paid.

Reading LinkedIn posts on main = flipping channels from one infomercial to the next.

I just started watching Anthony Gramuglia’s video essay/Trevor Project fundraiser titled Elon Musk Doesn’t Understand Cyberpunk | 2025 and Sci-Fi. It’s pretty good so far, and, as you can see, so are the comments.

The “I haven’t found steady work in years and it’s breaking me” LinkedIn posts written by experienced, talented, award-winning people who have been consigned to the scrap heap are breaking me — an experienced, talented, award-winning person who (feels like he) has been consigned to the scrap heap.

I received this spam/scam message last November and I didn’t delete/report because it’s oddly specific and weird and as such kind of endearing.

I just spent 10 min on Twitter as per my immersion therapy practice. Wild that some people get up, yawn, stretch, do their breakfast routine, and then get on the internet and lie about everything for no reason except to oWn ThE LiBs. Do these folks not have hobbies? Friends? (Don’t answer that.)

I won’t pretend I’ve never posted about athletes, or actors, and writers with the faint hope they’d see (just had flashback to the time Neko Case replied to me on Twitter) but the way so many bros post about and vigorously defend Elon is decidedly parasocial.

People who know things about government computing systems are… worried. (The Atlantic)

I always forget how important Discord is to my day-to-day until it goes down.

Happy day, Shotcreator seems to be back! 🏀🏀🏀

I didn’t write a trivia post yesterday because the Luka/AD trade broke my brain for a day. Mea culpa.

Another consequence of Luka Doncic getting traded is that the most annoying people on LinkedIn are now going to write 1,000 tHoUgHt LeAdErShiP posts about how no employee is irreplaceable.

I’m assuming Shams got hacked…

If you’re cool with letting AI replace writers in your organization, you can’t complain when AI replaces you. Solidarity in the workplace and class solidarity need to be more obviously entwined.

“i list watches. you’re on a watchlist." goes unbelievably hard (iykyk)

Draymond would kill it on LinkedIn.

I co-wrote a sports trivia newsletter with a friend for a few years but eventually life got in the way and we had to go on hiatus. This weekend we’re meeting up to discuss a revival and I couldn’t be more excited.

I’m wondering if the When Harry Met Sally Super Bowl ad (Hellmann’s) will resonate. I like the nostalgia hit, but given the state of cultural literacy and the changed attitudes and politics in re: sex and sexuality I’m not sure it does enough, or much at all.

I’m quite interested to learn how people use Micro.blog. Main blog? Side blog? If side blog, where’s the main blog? And what does it look like? And is it also a Hugo blog? And if not, why not? And why have two, anyway? If you’re interested in discussing, reply.

It’s wild how Move Fast And Break Things ends up breaking everything, huh.

In re: the current New York Magazine cover story and the attendant social media commentary, a friend said something trenchant and worth sharing: “A good reminder that, for most people, politics are just a personality.”

Finally got around to reading Ed Zitron’s Never Forgive Them, an astounding and searing piece of writing that gets to the heart of how being on the internet is painful, harmful, and anti-user — and why.

Abandoning Twitter? Want to wipe all your tweets on the way out? This script will help you do that.

😐😐😐

These guys love creating features that no one wants/asks for, huh.

Are any of y’all Micro.blog users also Real Sports app users? If so, let me know.

I joined Micro.blog to get away from the… temperature that’s characterized the discourse here the last few days (i.e. not the discourse itself). Reasonable people can disagree, and disagreement can lead to progress. But is that what is happening here?

The personal is the political. What we do, say, eat, drink, read, watch, wear, buy; who we love, hate, accept, reject, associate with, fuck; where we live and work; if and what we drive — can and will be viewed through a political lens by others. It’s unfair and reductive, but it’s where we are.

Pretty spicy day on Micro.blog so far, eh?

Currently reading: Ruined by Design by Mike Monteiro 📚 (which was published in 2019, by the way)

I will forget my mother’s name before I forget about Jaboukie’s all-timer on MLK day five years ago.

Conversation from my 🏀 Discord:

Him: Too bad the US tanking won’t get us a top draft pick.

Me: I mean, it will. But Russia owns your picks for a few years.

Everything feted as original in advertising has been done before and that’s okay. Ads don’t need to reinvent the game to be good or effective. There are only a handful of story archetypes and yet we still watch and read. Knowing the tropes of dystopian sci-fi doesn’t make me not want to watch Silo.

What are the dumbest domains you own?

My LinkedIn feed has become one long Boardy ad.

Progresso Soup Drops deliver the classic, hearty flavor of Progresso Chicken Noodle Soup in a format that will definitely SOUPrise fans — it’s a convenient hard candy drop — reminding you of the comfort you can find in a bowl of Progresso Soup.

I need help reacting to something.

I joined micro.blog in December and this week I started posting a lot, like I did back in the day (real heads know). And the more I posted, the more I wanted to post. This felt odd; I retired from posting when social got really awful. Today, the penny dropped. I want to actually write again.

Noticed a few Timberwolves fans on Threads clowning Andrew Wiggins, which is their absolute right (and I get why they feel the way they do). But it’s worth noting that a) he became a better player after he left the Wolves and; b) he has a ring. 🏀

Amidst the AI hype, I hear very little talk about how AI can/will be used to liberate humans from work. The convo is always about what workers/industries are fucked. OK, so, thousands will get replaced/displaced, and… then what? So many smart, hardworking people are scared rn — for good reason.

Good posters write perfect little jokes that become part of the fabric of cultural reality (online and offline) while remaining niche enough to be a shibboleth for and between the right people. It’s actually pretty magical when you think about it.

Reading the Atlantic piece about loneliness and feeling grateful. Without knowing the power of what I was doing, I spent decades building a life that prioritized a very active kind of friendship. I worried that my way was insecure. Pathetic even. In actuality, I was feeding my brain and my soul.

One day we’ll all look back and realize how bad the focus on SEO copywriting was for the web, for search, for language, and for writers. And on that day I’ll smile (while doing my job as a blood bag in our Mad Max future).

I stopped posting on Twitter forever ago but can’t seem to delete the app or my 50,000+ tweets bc of all the bangers I’ve liked/RTed over the years. I basically only it for dynasty basketball research reasons, but, while there, I check the temperature of the zeitgeist. (Spoiler: it’s bad.)

Another day, another few hundred people on the social internet reposting the ol’ shoegaze/Fugazi bit as their own.

“We should trade (player/players who are bad and/or overpaid and/or hurt + some 2nds) to (rebuilding team with promising young talent) for (all their promising young talent). It’s so obvious!” — fans of good-but-not-great NBA 🏀 teams on social media

People with power/money stoke divisions between people with less/none to accrue more power/money. We’ve always known this. But why? Why do people with so much need more? It’s a sickness. They watch people struggle and suffer and fight and die and they laugh and count their gains. And they enjoy it.

I have a friend with a small city worth of followers. I used to needle them about how they never seemed to get political on social. I thought they had a responsibility. These days they are very political on social, and I constantly worry some crazy man is going to show up at their house with a gun.

Zuck bending the knee + slobbering all over the ring to satisfy the worst people alive is infuriating, yes, but it’s also (further) proof that he has no actual principles. I wonder what Meta employees think about working for a boy king who doesn’t seem to believe in anything.

The AI apocalypse is here and it’s far stupider and more depressing than we were promised. Instead of being hunted down by a gleaming metal skeleton in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, we are surrounded by zombies endlessly repeating our own posts back to us.

Meta’s AI profiles are trash. (Gizmodo)

Our experts noticed that ‘brain rot’ gained new prominence this year as a term used to capture concerns about the impact of consuming excessive amounts of low-quality online content, especially on social media.

Still not over Oxford’s Word of the Year for 2024.

It’s okay to not like outside-in (or kinda in) basketball. But the way people are connecting “I don’t like 3s” with “NBA ratings are down” (something no layperson has ever cared about btw) suggests these people think they should have a say in how NBA basketball should be played. It’s insane. 🏀

The number of times I’ve read the (untrue) Rickey/Olerud story over the last few days is wild. I get it. It’s fun. But sports discourse on social is generally bad because it’s just cOnTeNt now. Reposts of reposts, bad takes, bad faith takes. Especially the recent 🏀 stuff.