By David Futrelle
You may have noticed a strange explosion of highly surreal memes hitting your Twitter home page of late. Blame the Artificial Intelligence-powered meme generator that you can find here, which will happily generate as many weird and baffling memes as you could ever want.
Now, the meme generator is a fairly basic thing, in principle: it takes in hundreds (thousands?) of human-generated memes in a variety of formats before pooping out something it doesn’t understand, but that we humans might.
Given that the AI-meme-generator literally doesn’t know what it’s saying, most of the memes it puts out tend to be a bit puzzling:
And sometimes it doesn’t seem to understand the meme format at all:
But alongside the surreal memes, the AI-meme-generator somehow manages to spit out others that make perfect (or at least only slightly imperfect) sense. I’ve been fiddling around with it for awhile and have been surprised and intrigued by these memes, which seem very much like the memes an actual human might produce on their own.
Indeed, these memes make a lot more sense than many if not most of the Men’s Rights memes I’ve run across (and written about) over the years — despite the fact that the MRA memes were generated by actual human beings who, at least in theory, should know what they’re saying.
Let’s look at examples from both genres — contrasting some of my, er, favorite MRA memes with memes the AI-meme-generator made for me.
Let’s start with this authentic MRA meme:
Apparently the thought process behind this, er, hilarity is: “Women are stupid! And rape is funny! Sharks!”
This AI-generated meme makes a lot more sense:
I mean, who doesn’t enjoy a nice hot dog once in a while?
Here’s an MRA meme taking aim at women in the military:
Contrast that with this cheerful and wholesome AI-generated meme:
Again, the AI hits the nail on the head. Everyone loves to see people talking about their cool stuff.
Here’s a dark and bewildering MRA meme:
I suppose the message here is supposed to be “even if she says she’s not a feminist, she might secretly be one, and falsely accuse you of rape.” But I’m not sure anyone not steeped in MRA-talk could discern that.
Also, why is “radical/white” in ironic quotes?
By contrast, this next AI-generated meme, while admittedly rude and perhaps a bit sexist, is as clear as a (school) bell.
This MRA meme may leave you scratching at your head as you try to puzzle out its strange “logic.”
This AI meme, by contrast, makes so much sense it hurts.
In the world we live in today, who has the patience to wait until you get home to get sloshed?
So why are MRA memes so illogical and incomprehensible? Part of the problem is that reality is not on their side, and so many of their memes only make sense if you’re already living in the imaginary world of the Men’s Rights movement, where black is white and mean, bitchy women rule over all. I know enough about this world from the many years I’ve spent doing this blog that I can usually make some sort of sense of most of their memes, but I still struggle with some of them. It doesn’t help much that many MRAs are bitter bastards choking on their own aggrieved entitlement; their attempts at jokes are undercut by their meanness and their barely developed sense of humor.
The AI may not have a sense of humor, but it’s also unencumbered by all this baggage, so when it pops out with something that’s funny, it’s genuinely funny.
Congratulations, MRA; it’s official now: You’ve failed the Turing test.
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@vicky
Yes i do believe my husband would want to join the club as well. I told him ahout this cause there isn’t much to talk about during quartineen. That one troll won’t tell me ig we are a look match couple or not and he said
“Look one of us is hot in this relationship and it isn’t me. I was just too funny for you not to notice. “
@Alan
Glad you enjoyed! I subscribed to his channel a year or so back, originally to enjoy his “real lawyer reacts” videos, but I soon grew interested in his more educational video essays.
Also, Stella the Legal Eagle Beagle is one cute doggie.
ETA: Lainy, glad to hear your husband is on the mend!
@ Vicky P
They’re all cute dogs Bront. 🙂
Speaking of legal shaggy dog stories.
https://www.civillitigationbrief.com/2020/05/09/covid-repeats-16-the-dog-that-got-a-better-masters-degree-than-a-witness-when-witnesses-dig-really-deep-holes-for-themselves/
@Alan
Ha! So tell me, does taking silk mean acquiring a puckish sense of humor? I’m reminded of Judge Otis Wright’s infamous Federation-themed benchslap of Prenda Law.
@Lainy:
1. Glad your husband’s on the mend.
2. His description of how he feels reminds me of that Russian dashcam video where a fight breaks out between the drivers of two vehicles ahead of the vehicle with the dashcam, and all of a sudden four people in mascot costumes (Winnie-the-Pooh, Spongebob, etc) get out of one and start beating up the driver of the other.
@moon
He also just acts like he’s dying with a normal cold. He’s tough but he’s method of coping is bitching about it through the whole thing. Which is fine. As long as he’s okay. I hate that i can’t be there for him. Even if all i could do is rub his back and make tea. I wish i could be there.
@ Vicky P
Well John Mortimer said QC stood for ‘queer customer’; although he did end up taking silk himself.
(As I think I’ve mentioned before, JM was a member of my chambers and based the Rumpole stories there. I’ve had the spooky experience of reading a story describing the room I was reading the story in)
As a committed junior though I tell people “They’re called Leading Counsel because they get away with asking leading questions.”
That case was a brilliant piece of advocacy though; and it ties in to our previous discussion about using the material at hand.
So, the fact counsel wanted to prove = ‘That the witness’ qualification was worthless‘
Use of evidence: Hands up dog’s MBA certificate from same institution; showing dog got better grades than witness.
@ amansvoice
See, that’s how you do it!
(I liked the Star Trek judgement.)
ETA: I suppose they could have tried to rescue by cross examining to show it was a particularly clever dog.
@Lainy:
Yay for COVID-free! Not so yay on the feeling like he got run over twice by a humvee.
Hope he feels much better right-quick.
@thread:
Not gonna do much with our dearest troll, because that’s just too much like work. However, a brief skim and this gem of his jumped out at me:
What we’ve got here is the nifty assumption that because we think he’s being obtuse and he thinks he’s acute, it must be because we’re all MINDKILLED.
— side note: puns 100% intended: I regret nothing! —
I propose an alternate:
Maaaybe if the perceived author is significantly different from the real author, it might be because the author is not as good at writing as they think they are.
I’ve beaten miscommunication over the head with a rather heafty bludgeon in other threads, to help folks get their perceived meaning to line up better with their intented meaning, even going so far as generating a 10+ page document to analyze and sort comments/themes/reactions.
I don’t have that kind of motivatiation for a fool who apparently thinks something akin to:
“My ideas a great! If people don’t agree with my ideas, they must be mindkilled.”
Instead of:
“Huh, people disagree with me. I wonder if the way I wrote my ideas conveyed my intent accurately?”
Or:
“Wow, people disagreed with my assertions. Are my assumptions sound?”
In other news:
I’ve got a cute dog to walk, and some pennywhistles to play with! I’m working on getting a better feel for style to help with improvisation, so if any of you all have some favorite jigs/reels you feel like sharing? Or artists!
If not, carry on the cool space discussions! One of these days I’ll get back to participating in the fun threads again. Someday.
I’ve got it!
We’ve been in the galactic spam blacklist ever since we were caught sending out copies of this ad for some porn site:
Everything we’ve sent past the heliopause since then has gone straight into the “Junk” folder without sapient review. 😛
@ surplus
I could ramble on about the history of that plaque; and all the controversy over the anatomical details.
But thinking about the Sagans, I’m just reminded of one of my favourite aspects of the film Contact. That Jodie Foster’s character wears Carl’s classic jacket and turtleneck combo.
http://rarefilm.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Contact-1997-2.jpg
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KuXib-M17mI/UP90jp-
ZsPI/AAAAAAAAacc/l9WjL_AkHEU/w1200-h630-p-k-no-nu/Time_10-20-80_CarlSagan_100.jpg
Ok, so to get back onto space and SETI etc; trivia question for you all…
The Pioneer/Voyager plaque was designed by artist Linda Salzman Sagan, with input from Carl Sagan and Frank Drake. They worked out all the stuff about Hydrogen Transition and Pulsars etc.
After the design was published though, anthropologists pointed out one thing aliens might not be able to decipher.
What was that?
@Alan
I don’t know the answer, but if I had to guess, I’d say dimorphic sexes.
@ gaebolga
Nope. Although the figures were originally shown holding hands but they thought this might be interpreted as a single being. Hence the separation. Although then the woman got pushed behind the man which has its own implications.
@Alan
Oooooooh, I know this one!
Trying to describe it without spoiling it is hard though.
Hint: Hunting. Old school.
@contrapangloss
This probably isn’t what you’re looking for, but might be interesting to take a look at, especially if you’re into AI research:
Janelle Shane is an AI researcher who does lots of impractical yet amusing things with AIs. One such thing was discussing the use of artificial intelligence to write Irish folk music. The post discusses some of the challenges of doing so, and does have some useful links to sites with actual jigs and reels. An interesting read IMO and does have some more practical links.
Naglfar, THANK YOU!
Top notch, goodness and nerdery. 🙂
@ contrapangloss
Bullseye!
I tried to put a hint in the question; but ,as the plaque shows, it’s hard to predict how other people may interpret your message.
And I’m so glad you get to take part in a spacey discussion!
@Alan Robertshaw
I still don’t know what the answer is. What was it?
@ naglfar
I’ve done as ROT13 in case anyone else wants to play.
@Alan Robertshaw
Ah. I hadn’t thought of that, but now that I think about it that makes sense. TIL something new.
Looks like I guessed right, but I had already heard of that, so it wasn’t too hard especially with Contrapangloss’s hint.
I note that it includes Pluto, but not Ceres or the Belt, nor anything beyond Pluto, so it’s not a great representation of the Solar System. The binary relative distances still work as a hint, though.
Wanna bet that thing eventually ends up in a human museum before any alien ever sees it?
Wow. Haven’t seen a thread mushroom like this since 2014.
Mansvoice looks like a troll with a mission. All this talk of mindkilling just sounds like a fancy way of either saying strawman or cultlike manipulation. Ironically making up a completely new unnecessary word…just like people running cults do. ( Do some Google’s).
As for Less Wrong, here is info from Wikipedia and rationalwiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LessWrong
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/LessWrong
IMO the rationalwiki link is more informative (they also identify cultlike behavior). Less Wrong of course are less impressed:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GfMSiorAsYeezpn9o/the-problem-with-rational-wiki
@ snowberry
In Arthur Clarke’s 3001 it’s mentioned that the Pioneer and Voyager probes technically belong to the Smithsonian; but they haven’t got around to recovering them.
What amazes me about how big space is, is that if you set off in any random direction from Earth (and weren’t aimed straight for the Moon or anything) you would likely travel until the end of the universe without coming within a light year or so of any other object.
Another fact I learned recently (about 2 minutes ago) is that half of stars are located between galaxies. And there’s nothing ruling out them having habitable planets. In fact, inter galactic space is a less hostile environment for life because there’s fewer radiation hazards to periodically sterilise the local environment. So there could well be civilisations isolated by millions of light years from anything else.
And I thought the Western Spiral Arm was the arse end of nowhere.
They’ve reinvented creating a cult.
After going down a bit of an internet rabbit hole, I ended up learning about the saaad ? tale of MetaMed. It was founded in 2012 by four prominent LessWrongers who thought that, by utilizing a gross misapplication of Bayesian Theorem, they could doctor and medical research better than actual doctors and medical researchers! Spoilers: they really couldn’t, and folded in 2015.