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Psyslop or AI propaganda
Cognitive Security or the risks of consumer-entertainment tech
Human Shitcoins or pump and dump
AI Necromancy or photographic reincarnation
Cringe Niche or TikTok AI
Music Videos without Music or Midjourney + Suno
I find out in a pool. My friend, lounging on a chaise with his chihuahua, gets a notification on his Apple Watch: "We just bombed Iran." "Fuck!" I shout. "Motherfuck!" disturbing sunbathers nearby. It’s afternoon in Los Angeles, the first day of summer, the solstice, the longest day of the year. Half-submerged, I reach for my phone and scroll.
People are speculating about oil prices, the Strait of Hormuz, Russia’s response, China’s response. There’s jingoistic hooting Take that mullahs! and comparisons to Luke Skywalker taking out the Death Star. And why didn’t Trump tell Congress? And was JD Vance on board?
I feel my phone hypnotizing me, sucking me in. Tschk. Tschk. The little haptic buzz and jiggle you get every time you pull down at the top of the scroll, asking for more. But it feels futile. Not like in 2003, when I was sixteen and a sophomore in high school, watching the United States bomb Iraq on CNN. My uncle called my mother, minutes after the Breaking News and whooped like a cowboy, so loud I could hear him a room away on the cordless phone.
The government was better at theatre back then. The media, too. They’re lazy because they know the jig is up. I see clips of Fox News banging the war drums. They’re phoning it in. The nuclear weapons and the Middle Eastern dictator: it’s a remake and a low budget one at that.
On social media the psyops are merging with slop creating something new and worse, psyslop. Despite being of much lower quality than last week’s diving cats, these posts with their broken English and obviously fake imagery go viral. If the diving cats fooled my mother, will these?
My friend can see me spiraling. My own cognitive security mantra, "nothing ever happens" is failing me. I wonder what I will be fooled by, not if I will be fooled…