Sunday Link Roundup

[wolffyluna]

(content warnings at link) earlgraytay's post on social capital is rather good. It's a good look at how using oppression dynamics as your only lens does not work, and how Subcultures Can Be Weird.

(warnings: torture and bullying of simulations) Tom Scott has started a series(?) of 'YouTube Videos From the Future.' Stealing Our Friend's Brain Backup PRANK (GONE WRONG!!!) 🤯🤯🤯 is hard to watch, but it is also exactly my kind of horror. I am sucker for the banality of evil, and horror where the antagonists are unaware of how terrible they are.

chocolateboxcomm nominations are happening! I am very excited. I am also endlessly fascinated by the tag set, for reasons of 'ooh, I should totally read/play/engage with that media some time,' 'wow, that sure is a lot of dragon age ships' and 'the people who are nominating original works are collectively amazing and I want to steal their brains.

I have been listening to far too many versions of 'The World Revolving.' And also trying to learn it on flute. (even though that is a frankly absurd amount of sharps)

Comments

[zenolalia]

It's been like 3 hours and I'm still fucked up over that youtube video. Like, that's exactly where youtube prank vids would end up in that kind of future and I don't think I'm emotionally equipped to cope with that any more than I'm equipped to cope with the whole "let's sexually assault a stranger and call it a prank" videos that currently exist.

[wolffyluna]

Yeah, it's rough.

Tom Scott has a thing for 'in the future, people will still be people...with all that entails.' He's done a few smaller things along those lines, like 'The Singularity Ruined by Lawyers'.

One of the things I liked/found deeply horrifying about that video is how... normal it was? Like, it's what the current crop of youtube pranksters would do. There were some commenters that were surprised that there wasn't a twist of the dude dying while go karting and the backup getting corrupted. But I think it was better that that didn't happen. The fact that the video is not --dramatic(?) in that way makes it more effective imo, in a 'less is more' way. It kept it more grounded, and thus, much more uncomfortable. (Plus, I think 'is this simulation meaningfully the same entity as your friend, and can it meaningfully suffer?' is an interesting question, in a way 'but what if that person died while you messed with their back up?' isn't)

[zenolalia]

Yeah, if the friend had died during the prank, then that would have been every sci-fi story about mistreated brain clones I've ever seen. There's been like 3 black mirrors about that.

The total normalcy of it, with no narrative just the same tropes and memes of any regular, real prank video online today... It was chilling, and all the more powerful for it.