Tag: weird ideas

What The Fuck Is Tik-Tok Up To?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Tonight, I was repeatedly pushed eerie videos on Tik-Tok. Given that I had a long and interesting conversation about Tik-Tok’s ability to push “eerie” content to me with someone today, it’s almost like the service is taunting me at this point.

Here’s what happened.

I had a wide-ranging conversation with someone today over beer and pizza and at one point he mentioned how an online friend he met in person was “tiny” compared to what he expected. Well, lo and behold, what happens today, but I get pushed a video about that exact fucking thing — how tiny another woman was!

Then, I’ve been pushed what seems like six or so videos about elevators, of all things. And what did I think about intensely in the last 24 hours since I’m living in a hotel this weekend?

Elevators!

What the fuck is going on? How could the Tik-Tok “algorithm” figure out that I, specifically, was thinking about elevators a lot in the last few days. Or, more specifically, if you follow the logic that what I’m seeing in aggregated assumption about people like me, then why would there be a few thousand people like me who the “algorithms” thought would be interested in elevators of all things. I have no written about the situation with elevators. I have not spoken to anyone about it. The only metric by which elevators have come into my life at all has been in my thoughts.

I’m still not prepared to go full crank and actually believe Tik-Tok can read our minds, but…I dunno, man, something spooky is definitely going on.

A Scifi Explanation For ‘Havana Syndrome’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Here’s a free scifi concept for you, Hollywood. The reason why diplomats around the world are having their minds fried by some unknown device is there’s some industrial strength “digital telepathy” going on.

The point of being targeted is a digital mindreading device is draining their minds so intensively that they suffer intense side-effects.

Money please!

Potential Fast & Furious Movies


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It seems as though each Furious movie grows more…furious. They’ve gone to space, what could happen next?

It’s my impression that a Fast & The Future cross over with Transformers is at least being thought about. But, why stop there? Why not have them time travel to save The Rock’s life? Maybe bring Dr. Who into things. They could set the entire movie inside the TARDIS.

They could fight dinosaurs.

How about a Fast & the Furious with clones? They all have to fight cloned versions of themselves.

A Little Contemplated Aspect Of A Potential First Contact: The Religious Right


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Given the extremely weird development that the U.S. Military is like, “Oh, by the way, UFOs are real,” I’ve found myself given a bit more serious thought about what First Contact would be like in practical terms.

Now, obviously in the back of my mind I’m kind of couching this in a “JEWS IN SPACE” plot device for a hazy movie in my mind, but we shouldn’t sleep on the Religious Right in the United States getting really fucking worked up about converting any space aliens we might eventually encounter.

It would not happen right away. And how likely it was to happen would depend on the actual nature of the ETs. (I think it’s likely that any ETs we actually encounter would be machine intelligence, but, lulz, even that wouldn’t stop MAGA Religious Right people.)

It’s easy to imagine a situation where one the shock wore off that we Were Not Alone that the (white) MAGA Religious Right in the United States would see the aliens as Souls To Save. The only reason why I even suggest this is the fucked up religious logic that has made the absolute support of Israel a foundational aspect of the modern Christian Right.

If they can pull that out of their ass, they can definitely think up a reason to demand they get the opportunity save aliens souls, too. (I’m not picking on Israel, but, as I understand it, the American Religious Right’s love for it is for a kind of dark reason.)

It would be surreal that once we reached Alien Nation levels of indifference to aliens being in our presence that the aliens would start to complain about how pushy the American Religious Right was. (How the American Religious Right would get to the point where they finally came to believe that ETs had “souls” would also be pretty surreal.)

Anyway. lulz.

The Shakespearean Tragedy That Is Mike Pence


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

You couldn’t make this shit up if you wanted. About four-ish years, Mike Pence was the biggest fucking suckup to Trump there was on the planet. Pence, like von Papen before him with Hitler, gave Trump a patina of political legitimacy.

And then, near the end of the Trump Era he blew everything by doing the right thing!

So, in a sense, Pence destroyed his career near the end of the Trump Era for simply doing the absolute basics of the job he was elected to do. Now, Pence inhabits a strange nether realm where he is both hated by the center-Left AND the very people he would depend on to win any sort of primary.

The only Pence might find some redemption at this point is, tragically, if there was some sort of civil war and he flipped to the Good Guys in a big, big way.

I dunno. Strange times, guys.

My Hot Take On Conspiracy Theories


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve written about this some before, but here goes. While I’m willing to concede that there is the occasional conspiracy theory here and there, they rarely stay secret for very long.

A lot of the interest in conspiracy theories says more about how their proponents feel disenfranchise and helpless in a changing world. The actual conspiracies themselves are just a way for such people to funnel their frustration into a narrative.

I would suggest that most of the things that conspiracy theorists are noticing is the modern world is built on social constructs that have no valid reason for existing other than we’ve all agreed upon them as being “real.” Paper money has no value other than our society agreeing that it has value. That’s it. It’s really just paper.

There are plenty of other examples — barcodes, for instance. If you go down that particular rabbit hole, you can get pretty freaked out. But it’s not some sort of secret conspiracy — the nature of barcodes is well known and everyone just shrugs. So, I would say, that unless you’re willing to organize some sort of mass revolt against the much-needed constructs of the modern world: shut up.

Most of these constructs aren’t really hurting anyone or anything, so why get upset about them?

Anyway. No one listens to me.

The Death Of Cable Channels


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Why, at this point, do cable channels even exist? It would make a lot of sense if the industry collectively gave up and disrupted itself by ending traditional cable channels altogether.

The future is streaming and the cable content is wasting everyone’s time by not getting with the future and making a clean break with the past. But there’s still too much money left in the rotting corpse of traditional cable, so, lulz, this will never happen.

It will be interesting to see what happens when we skip the MX (AR / VR) step and go straight to $1,2000 Mindcaps.

An Old Struggles To Understand Bella Poarch’s Tik-Tok Superstardom


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m an old and I use Tik-Tok all the time. One of the mysteries of the service is why some people become superstars. One of the really surreal Tik-Tok stars is Bella Poarch.

Why is this woman famous?

She’s an attractive, apparently personable person who can sing.

But exactly why she, of all people, is so popular on the service is something of a mystery to me. She doesn’t really do anything. She has a very expressive face? She’s a hot brunette? She taps into the browning of America?

If you wanted to get all conspiratorial about it, you could say that Tik-Tok is now in the business of making Gen Z stars out of whole cloth through the manipulation of its famous “algorithms.” I only suggest this because a number of other Tik-Tok insta-stars have mysteriously faded of late.

That’s definitely a scenario ripe for being turned into a novel or movie — the personal consequences when a Gen Z’s stardom mysteriously fades when their video app moves on and they don’t. I guess that sounds more like a Black Mirror episode.

How Humanity Might Settle And Govern A New Planet


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

One thing I’ve always thought was interesting was the specifics of how humanity might settle a new planet. I’ve come up with a very elaborate scenario that would allow humanity to settle planets in a solar system that, say, a galactic empire gifted us as a “homeland.”

But how you would go about settling and governing any of these plants is very, very difficult to figure out. Let’s take earth — in real terms, there are two USA size places that dominate the entire planet — North America and Europe. There are a few other first world nations, but they’re very small in population. While China is growing in economic and military power, the world is still pretty much controlled by the “Western World” of the USA and Western Europe.

Why is this?

Well, let’s talk the Pacific Ocean. The world we live in has more to do with the size of the Pacific Ocean than you might think. It’s this huge ocean that prevented China from settling the New World and makes the type of climate necessary to establish and grow a First World nation so precious. (In other words, it’s easer to warm machinery up than it is to cool it down during an Industrial Age.)

Imagine, however, if there was an Africa-size continent between East Asia and North America. If it had a geography and climate similar to Europe’s, then the world we live in now would be dramatically different. You could probably fit another billion+ people on such a huge landmass.

Anyway, if you take that idea and apply it to a new planet that is empty and ready for humanity to settle, you have a shit tone of problems. On earth, you could literally organize North America and Europe such that you had only two nations that everyone lived in. I mean, we’re not doing the globe’s environment any favors by having so many people live in South America and Africa.

But it’s easy to imagine that if humanity was “gifted” a few planets for our homeland, that there would be a fundimental problem: who gets to settle such a homeland? There are 1 billion Chinese and 1 billion Indians. They’re just as human as anyone else, why would you automatically say the West should get the opportunity to settle new planets?

I go over this problem again and again in my head because it’s impossible to solve using the conditions of the scenario. The USA makes the most sense as the basis for a planet wide settlement, but everyone hates the USA and a lot of MAGA New Right people would hate the idea of the States having to absorb a lot of non-Americans (Read: non-white).

I really want to give this scenario a plot and characters and write something using it, but it’s still impossible to figure out at the moment.

Tik-Tok, The Stripper, The Soft Singularity & Me


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I only keep harping on this because of how often it happens and how it jiggles my sense of reality. I don’t like the idea that I’m seeing something surreal that is real and yet everyone else is too busy watching Tik-Tok videos to give my fears much bother.

But Tik-Tok AGAIN pushed me something pretty eerie.

This time, it was a video of a woman who looked identical to a stripper I talked to recently. We had a lovely talk for about an hour and two things are true: I thought about her really intensely and we both use Tik-Tok and had our phones on us.

So, if you absolutely don’t believe there is any chance Tik-Tok can read our minds, then, yes, you could say that Tik-Tok used the location information from both our phones to figure out what to push me. But the implications of even that are pretty staggering — that definitely sounds pretty soft Singularity to me. That a company like Tik-Tok has it within its means to take location data to push me a video of a woman who looks just like the woman I was sitting for a while recently is pretty mind boggling.

What’s more, just within the last 48 hours, I’ve been pushed ANOTHER video of a woman who looks identical to my romanticized memory of the late Annie Shapiro. That’s pretty deep. I don’t have any pictures of her anywhere for even me to access — I just have the imagine of her stored in my mind.

So, we could go through a rather elaborate — but no less rattling — sequence of events where by Tik-Tok isn’t reading my mind, or we cut the shit and say: Tik-Tok is reading our minds.

But I still don’t have any proof. Claiming that Big Tech has the ability to read our minds sounds like something a crank would believe. So, for the time being, I just have to assume all these “spooky” things I’m being pushed by Tik-Tok have some other explanation than the one I think is the answer.