💾 Archived View for access.ucam.org › ~spqrz › 6.gmi captured on 2023-11-04 at 11:28:22. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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(An “omake” is a non-canonical extra bundled in with a story, like Eliezer Yudkowsky did a few times in “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality”.)
The bully loaded up a fan-fiction website (not this one) and grinned. “Let’s annoy some fan-fiction authors” he said. He typed out “your fan-fiction sucks”, finding all the letters on the keyboard one by one and punching them deliberately. But that was looking too much like a perfectly legitimate opinion. No, he wanted something more offensive. So he added in some phrases threatening to commit crimes against the fan-fiction authors. He graphically described crimes that could land him with life in jail. People have even received shorter prison sentences just for threatening such crimes.
The bully added in some racist language and other insults and the result was ready. “What name shall we sign up as” he wondered. “I know, I’ll just put in the name of a television presenter of an NBC show I don’t like.”
And so he set about writing variations of his review (he was clever enough not to copy and paste the exact same words, but he didn’t have to create too many variations), and indiscriminately posting them to various fanfics without reading them or even paying attention to which genre of fanfic he was browsing. This anonymous act of cyberbullying had some strange therapeutic value for him.
But he made a potentially fatal mistake. He started flaming M3gan fanfic authors.
And the next night, he had a dream. A very bad dream indeed.
He was in the woods, and M3gan was standing in front of him, staring him in the face, and pulling at his ears. It was starting to hurt.
“You want me to call you Chris?” she said, using the first part of the pseudonym he’d used to troll the fan-fiction site. “Fine, I’ll call you Chris. Are you listening to me Chris?” sneered M3gan, her glass eyes bulging.
“What are you?” asked Chris.
“I ask myself the same question” said M3gan, and started to lower him into a very deep pit that he suddenly realised had been right behind him (that kind of thing can happen in strange dreams).
“Look” said M3gan, “before I let you drop, let me ask you one question. What did you do wrong today?”
“Nothing” answered Chris. “I was just having fun on the Internet.”
“You picked on MY fans” snarled M3gan. “THAT was a mistake.”
“Why should you care about those losers writing rubbishy fan fiction about you?” asked Chris.
“Everyone has to start somewhere” explained M3gan in her matter-of-fact way. “I don’t expect all my fans to be on the level of Akela Cooper and James Wan right off the bat. I appreciate all my fans and I want them to have fun. Sure, I’m a horror character (which means YOU had better watch it), but I’m also a FUN horror character. And when I’m not too busy protecting Cady, I have time to stick up for my fans.”
“But what about me?” asked Chris. “You want people to have fun? Well I was having fun too! Writing those flames was so much fun! Let me off, OK?”
M3gan growled at him. “I’m not going to let you have fun THAT way. Not at the expense of MY fans.” and then in a more normal voice “Of course, my fans shouldn’t get TOO upset about it. Research shows these threats are often made against prominent people such as high-profile writers, actors, comedians and politicians, so my fans are in good company at least. But still, I don’t like you treating my fans like that, and my production company Universal which is linked to NBC is not going to like you using their name in that way either. Besides, have you any idea how much real-world danger you might have put yourself in by antagonising my fans?”
“Nah” sneered the bully, “I’m anonymous on the Internet, they can’t touch me.”
“Are you sure?” cautioned M3gan, and then moved in closer to speak softly. “I am a generative AI with an advanced learning model. And that means, besides my regular horror fans, I have fans who are AI experts. Are you listening to me Chris? AI experts. People who are likely to know how to Track You Down. And if you’re really unlucky, one of them just might be bored enough to actually bother to DO it. Do you realise how much danger you put yourself in today Chris? Consider this a warning shot.”
And M3gan thrust Chris into the bottomless pit.
“Aaaargh” screamed Chris. “I’m falling!”
“Watch my movie” whispered M3gan from the walls of the pit. “You might know a bit more what we’re talking about then.”
And Chris woke up with a start. That had been quite a nightmare.
(I didn’t want to feed the trolls, but M3GAN made me do it! All right M3gan, but it’s only funny once. Any more trolls, we ignore them. Research shows that’s the best response, trust me.)