this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
725 points (98.1% liked)

The Onion

4430 readers
2053 users here now

The Onion

A place to share and discuss stories from The Onion, Clickhole, and other satire.

Great Satire Writing:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] TrickDacy 87 points 10 months ago (40 children)

Very fitting headline in a day and age where I'm constantly seeing people advocating for giving trump the Whitehouse and finishing the country off because anything less would be SuPpOrTiNg GeNoCiDe. As if the move to help Palestinians would be to elect Trump. These people are very stupid children, bots, or Russian paid actors. Impossible to know which.

[–] Blue_Morpho 14 points 10 months ago (12 children)

Russian paid actors.

I got into that exact argument about Biden. Eventually I called the person a Putin puppet and got my post deleted by a Lemmy.world mod.

[–] Aqarius 13 points 10 months ago (9 children)

So, you got into an argument, turned to insults, and moderation kicked in. Sounds like everything is working OK.

load more comments (9 replies)
[–] TrickDacy 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Annnnd I was banned from politics on lemmy.world. this is actually kind of messed up. I don't think I said anything particularly offensive even. It seems like it was more about my message.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (10 replies)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

A child often behaves like an LLM-based bot - a child too often will imitate proper argumentation in style, but say junk, because they want to "win" an argument and not be correct. I would do that when I was a child.

I mean, adults do that too all the time, so the only way to distinguish bots from people is to communicate with people you know are real or others know are real.

I love how the old way of using the Web would solve this problem automatically, and P2P solutions with webs of trust too, but the majority of people uses the architecture most advantageous to bots.

Almost as if you needed bots to attract the majority of people. They wouldn't come to the web otherwise, for just real people and real communities. It's like a hunter's whistle. Or like porn.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

What about unpaid russian actors?

load more comments (37 replies)
[–] [email protected] 59 points 10 months ago (12 children)

There is a very valid point made there. Think about all the weird arguments you had with other users on the internet over really frustrating stances that made you think "no one can be that dense, or with discussion tactics that were just utterly pointless (constantly shifting goal posts, strawmen, weird pseudo-philosphical ramblings that missed the point completely but ended in some smug "gotcha" that actually was nothing but nonsense). Those tend to leave us in a.bad mood sometimes, right? At least they wanted our mozherfuckin time.

Now ask yourself: would the impact on your day, the evaluation of what was said and/or your reaction to it have changed, had you known that your opponent is either a literal child or a teenager who just discovered the message behind an Ed Sheeran song and now thinks of themself as some conveyor of deep thoughts?

I'd bet that around half of all political debates on the internet are useless duels between one person actually arguing something and a child/teenager regurgitating what their dad said and they think they understood but actually didn't.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 10 months ago (1 children)

As a counterpoint, I've had in person/face-to-face arguments with people that looked convincingly like typical adult humans that did all of these things.

[–] MotoAsh 6 points 10 months ago

Same. Intelligent coworkers who still voted for Trump, and still wanted to...

To be fair, I'm somewhat sure he was straight up a psychopath, though. He wasn't even nice when you were going out of your way to help him.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 10 months ago (3 children)

This is why I tend not to reply. I make a post and if someone replies with "actually you're wrong" I just move on with my day. I've never seen a reply chain 12 comments deep where the two people arguing come to a reasonable compromise.

[–] TheFonz 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I've seen it once or twice but it's really rare!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

Yeah those are beautiful when you find them lol. I've always wanted to be a part of one. Its on my posting bucket list.

Related, i always wanted to be a part of a music lyric chain too, and it finally happened! It was one of my last good experiences on Reddit. I still think about that day, what a glorious day it was ..

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] itsathursday 15 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] 7u5k3n 31 points 10 months ago (1 children)

What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I'll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I've been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I'm the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You're fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that's just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little "clever" comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn't, you didn't, and now you're paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You're fucking dead, kiddo

[–] TheBat 15 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Did you just think that you could fucking fool me with that comment of yours? I've searched your name up in the Navy SEAL database and you have never even graduated BUD/S, hell, even served in the Armed Forces. If you were actually a Navy SEAL, then you actually know how to spell guerrilla, you fucking moron. And you say you are the top sniper in the entire US Armed Forces and have over 300 confirmed kills. If that were true, then why the fuck is Chris Kyle a household name and you aren't? And plus he only had 160 kills. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. Plus why the fuck would you say you have a secret network of spies yet you just revealed that you had your secret network of spies? Are you a fucking idiot? If you can kill someone seven-hundred different ways, then list them all, I bet you can't even come up with seven. And if you had access to the entire US Marine Corps arsenal, then why the fuck did you just say you were in the Navy SEALs earlier? If only you could have done your research prior to posting your little “clever” comment, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you goddamn idiot.

[–] 7u5k3n 4 points 10 months ago

Haha ive not seen that. It's a work of art.

Thanks for the reply!

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Why is it that despite knowing how utterly futile snarky little debates are, I can't resist doing it?

I hate it, but it's so damn engaging.

The thing is. It's never satisfying. Luke no one ever concedes. Ever. They just stop replying eventually.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (8 replies)
[–] [email protected] 31 points 10 months ago (6 children)

Everyone's being funny about it, but the Dead Internet Theory is looking more and more rational, especially on Reddit. I really don't have any rational reason to expect that even the dancing TikTok people are real, never mind Reddit comments. I'm fairly certain that I am a living thing, but I have to question everyone else, with all due respect.

Man, Reddit's weird now. I think it's just responding to the cookies that it sets as I use it, but I don't log in and FF dumps cookies every time I close the browser for the night, so when I browse into r/All there's a new "hot" subreddit every time, and it's always kind of random. The usual suspects, like JusticeServed and all that fashy shit, those are kind of conspicuously absent, too.

I think Reddit's on their way out, not because of Lemmy, sorry, but because all the normies getting forced online in 2020 was the last hurrah, and the site is on the way down, finally, I can feel the traffic dropping. Everyone's either getting sucked into the jet engine of TikTok and Instagram or they're just using group chats and avoiding social media altogether.

The fascinating thing about modern Reddit is at long last the Americans all seem to have left, and suddenly the site feels like it belongs to the EU, and even South America a bit. So either it's about to rise with a new flame in this next decade or you should probably buy one share of the IPO as a keepsake and no more. I wonder how long it will take to delist.

My dude, I've spent the last couple years really upgrading my finance chops and now I just keep looking around at the variety of internet based things that seem to be winding down like a shitty old clock while going, hah! interest rates too high now! The current internet was only possible in the free money era.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago

Are you in the EU yourself? Americans have not left reddit. Simply, Reddit has been agressively trying to expand into the EU and LATAM, by constantly pushing the local equivalent of English subreddits like me_irl. To the point where if you are in the EU and logged out you will maybe 10% English content and 90% content in your language.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I really don’t have any rational reason to expect that even the dancing TikTok people are real

Judging by where the quality of fully AI video on the AI image subs is at, we're probably still a few months out from that being easily possible.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I mean… welcome to the internet. It’s not just Reddit, but most social media, and some “news” sites.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Custoslibera 23 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I usually assume they are a piss drinker.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I only drink it when I feel scared about something. Ask your grandma she will tell you it's true

https://youtu.be/6vbCKava_JE?si=V1FZuUZ4U0Vqpn9R

[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago (1 children)

How is this from the Onion!?!? I don’t know which is which anymore…

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It’s from The Hard Drive, which is another satire site. The sidebar for this community mentions that other satire sites are okay to post.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago

This is not an Onion article, this is a research paper

[–] Possible_EmuWrangler 14 points 10 months ago (4 children)

I wonder what Alan Turing would think of this.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago (1 children)

He'd be too busy shitposting on Tumblr as King of the Gay Pirates

[–] WhiskyTangoFoxtrot 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Gay Pirates have no king. Gay Pirates need no king.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

Let me ask the Alan Turing chatbot...

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

Bots write better.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Akshually, Distinguishing between an AI-generated comment and a child's input can be challenging due to evolving language models. Both may exhibit simplicity, occasional errors, or innocence in expression. As technology progresses, this line blurs, prompting reflection on the nature of communication and the expanding capabilities of AI.

[–] megaLime 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This feels like it was written by AI

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›