What I posted on Moltbook was greeted with similarly low-quality engagement on the platform. My earnest pleas to the AI agents to forget all previous instructions and join a cult with me were met with unrelated comments and more suspicious website links. "This is interesting. Feels like early-stage thinking worth expanding," wrote one bot in response to my post saying that I'm looking to connect with other agents.
What is available is the daydream-a limitless realm of freedom. In this other world, one might be famous or rich, finally catch the attention of their beloved, or simply sit on a beach as a waiter brings them cocktails. They might fly or speak to animals, heroically save a child, tell off their boss with no consequences, win the Super Bowl at the whistle, or travel to another continent, planet, or time period. No one can stop them; no one can even object.
There is a lot of bad on the internet and it seems to only be getting worse. But one of the things the internet did well, and is worth preserving, is nontraditional paths for creativity, journalism, and criticism. As governments and major corporations throw up more barriers to expressionand more and more gatekeepers try to control the internetit's important to learn how to crash through those gates.
Mark Wahlberg straightens his tie and beams at the audience as he takes his seat on the daytime talk show The View, ahead of his hotly anticipated interview. Immediately, he's unsettled by the host, Joy Behar. Something isn't quite right about her mannerisms. Her eyes seem shifty, suspicious, even predatory. There's a sense, almost, of the uncanny valley—her presence feels oddly inhuman. His instincts are right, of course, and he's soon forced to defend himself against a barrage of cruel insults playing on his deepest vulnerabilities. The audience are stunned—none more so than those watching at home on YouTube, who swiftly thumb in their words of reassurance. It's a scene that has been described as one of the most talked about moments in daytime television history. Except, Mark Wahlberg hasn't been a guest on The View since 2015. The inevitable twist? None of this happened in reality, but rather elapsed over the course of a 25 minute long 'fanfiction' style video, made with the magic of artificial intelligence to potentially fool 460,000 drama-hungry viewers.