BotStack

One example of how this app is being overrun

In recent weeks, I’ve become concerned that more and more of the internet—even moreso than usual—is totally fake and that few of us are actually talking with each other.

Now, I have one more reason to believe that.

This morning, I received the following comment:

Not a very nice comment. This was on a post I’d made about the evil of many Republican-led states’ efforts to immediately capitalize on the decision of SCOTUS in Louisiana v. Callais to disenfranchise black and brown voters in theri states.

This person, clearly positioning themselves as a far-left account, took issue with my politics as stated in the piece. But something didn’t sit right with me. Their profile picture immediately jumped out to me as off, so I went looking deeper.

Immediately two things jumped out at me here. The first was the poster in the back left.

The text kind of says … nothing? Like it looks like text but not text. Okay, fine.

But then I looked back at the flag in the background.

Is.. is that supposed to be a Cyndaquil Lightbox from Pokemon? Oh that’s cute. Wait, but, Cyndaquil Lightbox doesn’t look like that. It looks like this:

Maybe just a handmade piece or something?

But wait, what about that cap…?

It looks very familiar to me. Oh that’s right, that’s a Phyrgian cap, worn by the French revolutionaries as a symbol of their resistance to the monarchies.

But… wait no it’s not. Phyrgian caps don’t have metal on them. They have the classic tricolor cockade on them, but the middle is never metal as far as I’ve seen.

So, all that’s weird. But then I go and I look at the person’s history and…

The account is not even 12 hours old as of the time of writing.

Now, obviously bots are on the internet, we know this, and, obviously, Substack is not immune from AI slop being a main form of content fuel. But, man, it feels pretty wiggy to be able to so easily tell when accounts are trying to bait you.

That’s all. That’s the post.