this post was submitted on 29 Feb 2024
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[–] AllonzeeLV 233 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (8 children)

Am I supposed to be mad at these small time ~~con-men~~ capitalists? This is what the modern global economy is all about. Attempting to fuck over the people who aren't you, attempting to receive the maximum while providing the absolute minimum you can get away with without consequences. Their mistake was only slightly miscalculating that minimum where people would feel cheated but otherwise leave minus their money grumbling, but not enough to make it a weird news of the day story.

When's the last time your fast food sandwich looked remotely like the one on all the signs?They look like that sandwich in the ad was a tire that got deflated, deforming under its own weight, at best. Those scammers just had swaths of lawyers and lobbyists to make their false advertising your problem, until now it's just how it is. Deception is a vital component of market capitalism.

Why are you harassing these glorious, aspiring job creators acting in rational self-interest?

[–] TwilightVulpine 92 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Our society is long overdue giving con men the ass kicking they deserve.

[–] AllonzeeLV 32 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Can we start with the con-men hurting/exploiting millions and threatening billions with their "externalities," capitalist Orwellian shorthand for "I already have your money, so my mess is your problem, you stupid fucking suckers🖕🤑🖕?"

Because these bottom feeders are just a symptom of the above's global sociocultural damage. They ruined some kid's afternoons (but when those grown kids are dying from capitalist made climate change induced Cat 6 superstorms, or hungry from the associated crop failures, or the scammers successfully lobby to catch yet another tax break out of the asses of those kid's education funding using their unlimited exploitation bucks, 🤷). It might be cathartic to kick their ass, but it's odd and inconsistent to the extreme considering how comfortable we are with our most prolific con-men being allowed to own, and keep!.. everything, every exploited, scammed dollar, instead of getting their ass kicked as you say.

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[–] samus12345 21 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Back to the days of running the snake oil salesmen out of town tarred and feathered?

[–] [email protected] 46 points 9 months ago (2 children)

We went to Japan last year and they have a fast food chain called MOS burger. The food looked exactly like the menu pictures... It was amazing! Plump and delicious.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 9 months ago (1 children)

They tasted like the pictures too!

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago

Pulpy and full of ink.

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[–] givesomefucks 191 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I know people don't read articles, but at least scroll down to the picture of "an Oompa Loompa running a meth lab"

[–] [email protected] 191 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (7 children)
[–] [email protected] 33 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I had no context when I first saw this image and assumed it was something drug related.

[–] givesomefucks 14 points 9 months ago (6 children)

The most ridiculous part of this story is the workers showed up, saw what it looked like, and just went to work...

Like, just lock the doors and go back home. Nothing good will come of trying to pull it off, and there's no way you're getting paid

[–] [email protected] 71 points 9 months ago

Going home doesn't get you a paycheck so that you can eat. Working is a chance to get paid, even if it looks like a guarantee that they won't to someone who isn't under that strain.

[–] Leeker 17 points 9 months ago

I mean the event organizer was there to have the doors open (of course the person was flanked by two bouncers). So it isn't like the worker even if they wanted to could stop it. I'm sure those bouncers could've been turned on her like they were the parents asking for refunds. (Source)

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[–] [email protected] 81 points 9 months ago (2 children)

The look in that poor girls eyes

[–] [email protected] 59 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I think she already knows she's not being paid.

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[–] Rolando 57 points 9 months ago

Speaking to MailOnline, she confirmed that not only had she not been paid she also hadn't been briefed on what her role would involve. She explained: 'I was angry at the time because I felt like this is embarrassing for me, and I felt bad for the people coming in as well. I actually ended up shouting at the guy. I just said to him he’s a joke and this is like embarrassing, and how can we basically live with himself, doing this to people. This is really embarrassing for me. My job is teaching kids yoga and I go into schools and stuff and I do kids’ entertainment. This is none of our faults at all. We got the job and then we got given the script. By that point I’d signed a contract and they said they were going to put us £500 for the two days which is a lot of money which is a lot of money to say no to.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/galleries/article-13134989/Embarrassed-Oompa-Loompas-actresses-Wonka-scam-talks.html

[–] pete_the_cat 14 points 9 months ago

I saw the meme yesterday before I knew about this and was confused haha

[–] someguy3 110 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (4 children)

Coull appears to be the only official employee of the company, ...he presents himself as a business-savvy life coach.

Life coach, why am I not surprised?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Please let this Willy Wonka warehouse extra teach you about how to be business savvy.

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[–] [email protected] 96 points 9 months ago (1 children)

duped unsuspecting parents into bringing their kids to a truly dmsial event using clearly AI-generated marketing materials.

Said the AI generated article.

[–] LemmyKnowsBest 62 points 9 months ago (4 children)

would AI spell "dismal" wrong?

[–] Gradually_Adjusting 25 points 9 months ago (1 children)

If you told it to include human like errors yeah

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[–] [email protected] 88 points 9 months ago (9 children)

I look forward to more AI failures and flops and hope the public and financial backlash is intense for each every one of them. You cannot automate human creativity, and until the powers that be feel that in their wallets, we're going to be getting more and more of this inane drivel while actual, talented writers lose job opportunities.

The company has since promised to refund customers, but whether they'll all actually get their money back remains to be seen.

I'd be demanding it in full.

[–] fluxion 55 points 9 months ago (1 children)

They didn't even proof read the promotional flyers to make sure they made sense. It's an absolutely absurd level of laziness.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You’re describing AI. We are in the get rich quick period of AI usage.

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[–] Ledivin 41 points 9 months ago (1 children)

This was clearly a scam from the start. AI art is a tool, just like a paintbrush - if you don't know what you're doing (or if you just dont give a fuck, like this event), the outcome will understandably be shit.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 9 months ago

This wasn't a failure of AI. It was just a low-effort charade. If you want to put in the least amount of effort possible in such things, AI is there for you.

If they had put in any effort whatsoever they would've taken the first "draft" BS generated by the AI, made some minimal changes, then fed it back into the AI for further improvement.

Chat AIs are just that: Chat. You're supposed to go back and forth in conversation with the AI in order to get a good result. It appears the organizers of this event put together some terrible prompts and didn't even bother to spend an extra ten minutes refining things.

AI is a tool like any other. This pathetic event is a textbook case of how AI can't replace humans entirely (not yet, anyway). You still gotta put in some effort.

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[–] [email protected] 65 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Connell wasn't the only actor surprised to find that props promised by the script didn't actually exist.

So there was never a dress rehearsal and the performance was a cold read? AI may be to blame for the bad script, but there many other points of failure happening here.

[–] Rolando 16 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Apparently they were given the script only a day before. And on the day of, they were told to just let people walk through, and improvise. Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/galleries/article-13134989/Embarrassed-Oompa-Loompas-actresses-Wonka-scam-talks.html

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[–] PeterPoopshit 44 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Imagine hosting an event so lame that it makes international news solely because of how incredibly lame it was. Just damn.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 9 months ago

I think i read this story when it was called huckleberry finn.

It was that book, right? Where the con man sold tickets to a "ribald show" which ended up just being one dude running around naked?

[–] Son_of_dad 40 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Doesn't sound much worse than the Avengers experience that came to my city. It was like $30 for a 10 minute walkabout of a big room with the avenger costumes and a bunch of costumes, I felt ripped off

[–] [email protected] 36 points 9 months ago (5 children)

I get the feeling that most of these "experience' things I've been hearing about lately are low effort cash grabs.

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[–] pete_the_cat 17 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Or like the Friends experience that is a yearly occurrence in Manhattan. I'm a huge fan of the show and lived in NYC for 5 years, but I never went there. The first time I saw it, my girlfriend and I walked by the place it was at, and it was a shitty re-creation of Central Perk. There were like 100 people lined up on the sidewalk just to go inside and sit on the orange couch and drink coffee. James Michael Tyler (who played Gunther, the barista) was also there.

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[–] tipicaldik 38 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (10 children)

Sure, AI can whip up fantastical imagery and low-effort dialog — but if audiences call BS, the blowback can be extraordinarily embarrassing.

I see AI generated bullshit on youtube all the time these days. To the point where I can tell by the thumbnail before I even watch it. I've gotten in the habit of checking out new-to-me channels in a private window first, before deciding whether I want to subscribe or even keep watching. The instant I detect any AI... either in the voice or the nonsensical writing, I'm outa there. I do e-learning multimedia for a living, and we use a lot of stock images, and those sites are being loaded up with AI generated garbage. It's getting harder to find stuff that isn't AI, and using it to generate your own is a total crapshoot as far as results go...

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[–] set_secret 29 points 9 months ago (1 children)

this isn't so much a failure of AI generated anything. it's a failure by the organisers to have the budget needed to do it. this was 100% human fuck up. So weird the article tries to spin it that it's somehow an AI fail.

[–] cmhe 29 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

The AI part is what makes this fuck up special and international news.

We are used to human fuck ups, but a in person event where the organizers where so lazy that they used AI to create the content and that it sucked is something novel.

AI generated pictures, blogs and books are old news, generated in person events is new.

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[–] Garyx23x 26 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The best part about this event was the new Wonka lore of The Unknown, an evil chocolate maker who lives in the walls

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 9 months ago (1 children)

This whole event reads more like an artist trying to showcase the dangers of machine learning models. It's honestly hilarious to see how people just fell for some pretty pictures that were clearly generated with AI and ended up at an oompa loompa meth lab.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 9 months ago

People going in expecting a fun adventure with Willy Wonka and having a horrible time because it was created by an asshole trying to teach them a lesson...sounds like the plot of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!

[–] MrsDoyle 21 points 9 months ago (3 children)

This feels like an episode of The Apprentice. Lord Sugar (appropriate!): “Willy Wonka? More like Willy Wanker.” Cut to sweaty Project Manager about to be fired.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago

So the script called for some of the Wonka's to use vacuums, but they didn't have vacuums, so they had to improvise.

But they managed to pull out a chemistry set.

What the fuck is happening.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago (2 children)

The only way this would have worked is if everyone had been given a little tab of lsd.

[–] fluxion 17 points 9 months ago (1 children)

They only had enough in their budget to give LSD to all the organizers

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