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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@Alan Robertshaw
In addition, there are possibly billions of rogue planets that don’t orbit stars. They are less likely to have life because they’d be colder due to lack of star, but it would be possible still with geothermal heating.
@MansVoice: The manifesto spelling out my winning argument is contained in the letters below. Get back to me when you’ve picked them out and put them in the right order and read it and understood it:
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
.,?!():'”-_
It’s only 13,500 pages long. Nobody has ever been able to refute it.
And when you’re done, find me an acre of land between the salt water and the sea strand.
(The purpose of right-wing propaganda isn’t to persuade. It’s to exhaust.)
@Snowberry Why am I unsurprised to learn MetaMed was funded by Peter Thiel?
I conducted an experiment. I wanted to see what kind of characteristics the stray cats in my neighborhood have. So I put out a saucer of milk and examined all the cats that came to drink it. I observed that the cats were all under 1 year of age.
That my experimental protocol excluded cats who are not attracted to milk never occurred to me, so I arrogantly extrapolated my findings to all cats in all neighborhoods, concluding that all stray cats are under 1 year of age. SCIENCE, Y’ALL.
@PoM
Remember to choose a vantage point where you can’t see any of the cats that are on the fence but decide against drinking the milk
@MansVoice
If you really wanted to prove to us that we’re just a bunch of dum-dums and you are the smartest there is, you really should write out a paragraph or two pointing out what is stupid about the points people have raised to oppose you. Being smart and articulate as you are, it should be no trouble for you to be concise and convincing. We would all be in awe and you’d feel good.
Or, if we still wouldn’t believe you and would continue to mock you, you could always link back to this thread to prove that there’s just no reasoning with certain people.
It’s a win-win for you. Just answer the questions.
@Allandrel:
The bit about ‘thinking as a substitute for learning’ reminds me of comments made regarding the ancient Greek philosophers in the foreword of the comic book ‘Epicurus the Sage’, which satirized Greek philosophy and Greek myths. Like the idea that we could see because of rays projected from our eyes. Or the idea that, I think it was crocodiles were in the same category as plants because both were green.
There’s a reason why science requires actually testing theories against reality eventually.
I mean, people tend to think that sort of intellectual masturbation is the domain of philosophy in general, but even in philosophy there are a number of people for whom the idea is to describe the real world, and what’s in debate is the framework under which to interpret the facts, not the facts themselves. Not to mention that the basis of science is really a philosophical argument to start with, that this is the best way to find out about the world around us.
@Lainy:
Glad to hear things are doing better for your husband.
@Surplus, Alan, others on Voyager:
I remember seeing cartoons decades ago lampooning the fact that the people were shown naked. (Things like humanoid aliens picking it up and saying, “Gee, honey, these folks look a lot like us, but they don’t wear clothes!”) Which says something about our culture.
And as for what aliens would be able to figure out… yes, if there’s one thing that modern anthropologists know, it’s that it’s easy enough to completely misinterpret things just between different cultures here on Earth, much less some culture with a completely different background.
I know Polish science fiction author Stanislaw Lem was a bit of a pessimist in that regard; his attitude was generally ‘we probably wouldn’t even recognize intelligent life if we find it out there, because it will be so different’. Of course, Poland, stuck between Germany and Russia as it is, has a much greater appreciation of variation in culture than the U.S., which has managed to blind itself to differences by its own light…
@Jenora Feuer
Indeed, there could be living things on Earth that we don’t recognize as living because they are very different from most life (like the proposed theories about the shadow biosphere).
I love Solyaris!
(I also quite like the remake; nice music)
But yeah, even on earth we have trouble, or no interest, in trying to communicate with species who share almost all our DNA and only a few million years of evolutionary divergence. And they’re species we actually recognise as being ‘alive’.
The gulf between us and aliens are likely to be orders of magnitude different even from that. Unless there’s some sort of evolutionary/intellectual ‘plateau’ it seems very unlikely that there’s be any sort of overlap in terms of communication ability.
They might find our communication as incomprehensible as bee dances or ants laying chemicals. Assuming they even have any interest in investigating. A billion year old civilisation might have priorities that are physically beyond our understanding. We might not have the brain wiring to relate.
@Naglfar:
No kidding. A friend of mine was noting that a lot of the work on the Human Genome Project actually relied on our relatively recent (at the time) discovery of certain extremophile lifeforms living around undersea volcanic vents. They needed enzymes for DNA replication that wouldn’t break down when the temperature was raised high enough to halt the process. Mammalian enzymes wouldn’t work; we rely too much on keeping a fairly stable temperature. They needed enzymes from an animal capable of living in near-boiling water to get the replication going at a high speed.
@Alan:
Never saw the remake of Solaris, just the Russian original, played at a local repertory theatre back when I was in University.
*checks IMDB* Whoah, I hadn’t realized there were so many versions. Two Russian versions (a 1968 made-for-TV version and the better-known 1972 version), the 2002 American version, and a 2007 Japanese version done while the director was in college.
Admittedly, my introduction to Lem was through The Cyberiad, then later The Futurological Congress. If you want a serious conspiracy-theory ‘everything you know is wrong’ book, that second one is on a level with Phillip K. Dick but more coherent. Lem was an exceedingly philosophical writer.
@ jenora
To me, Lem films are a sort of visual analogue to the trancey drone music I sometimes like listening to. Just the pace of the visuals. It’s like how some music ‘writes directly to the hardware’; you don’t have to process it. It does something at a subliminal level. But he’s definitely, for me, the person who best encapsulates the idea of alien.
I also like PKD.
One day I’d like to do a blog or something on fake religions in fiction. Mercerism would be one of them. Along with Bokononism, and maybe the one in Stranger in a Strange Land. I’ll avoid controversy by not covering any of the ‘real’ religions 🙂
Supposedly Scientology arose from a bar bet between Hubbard and Heinlein to see who could create the best fake religion.. SIASL was Heinlein’s attempt.
The US version is nicely paced too I think.
@Alan Robertshaw
I’m not an expert on drone music, but are you familiar with Sunn O)))?
@ naglfar
I wasn’t; but I’ll check them out. Sounds like chill Napalm Death!
I like the real trance stuff like DroneZone on Soma FM. The danger is you can just zonk out. You lose all sense of time. It’s very relaxing though; and really puts me in a contemplative mood. Just wish I could come up with some great revelation about the human condition or the nature of reality. Usually it’s “Hmm, I could go for some hummus”
Alan Robertshaw:
You reminded me of this (sorry for the poor quality):
@ reaktor
As a bit of a tree hugger*; thank you for that!
Reminds me of the King Midas story.
One early (C19th) suggestion was to use canals to make huge geometric designs in the desert. The idea being that if Martians saw a right angled triangle with squares on the sides, they’d know the planet had an intelligent species.
But animals and plants have been blasting us with Fibonacci Sequences and Prime Numbers, and we don’t regard that as an attempt to reach out. So who knows what we’re missing out on.
(* in the metaphorical sense; it’s only standing stones I actually hug)
@Alan Robertshaw
Sunn O))) may be chiller than ND, but their concerts are known for being loud enough to induce vomiting and fainting.
@Reaktor
I tell all the secrets to my dog, much like the tree nobody cares to listen to what she tells.
“What’s that Lassie; Timmy fell down the well? Oh, Timmy’s been selling state secrets to the Reds.”
I used to run case ideas past my dear doggo. To comply with GDPR provisions I got her paw print on an NDA.
Seriously though, that poor hound heard a lot of jury speeches.
Wouldn’t you know it, but Firefox just crashed and the “Mozilla Crash Reporter” did not pop up after the rubble stopped bouncing. The last time I intentionally exited it, I got two of the damned things, by contrast. Then today, I went to share a file to someone over FB and just when the upload completed poof! No more browser window. It died without a word of explanation as a matter of fact. I was relieved when I restarted it to find that yes, the file had actually gone through …
I might be about ready to investigate whether Chrome can be a viable substitute now. And if there’s a way to defang all the Google telemetry spyware in it.
Wouldn’t you know it, but Firefox just crashed and the “Mozilla Crash Reporter” did not pop up after the rubble stopped bouncing. The last time I intentionally exited it, I got two of the damned things, by contrast. Then today, I went to share a file to someone over FB and just when the upload completed poof! No more browser window. It died without a word of explanation as a matter of fact. I was relieved when I restarted it to find that yes, the file had actually gone through …
On the other hand, since the crash it’s not working well with WHTM: I keep getting a nagging cookies pop-up on every page load ever since the crash, and my comments don’t seem to be going through. 🙁
I might be about ready to investigate whether Chrome can be a viable substitute now. And if there’s a way to defang all the Google telemetry spyware in it.
@ surplus
Would Kubuntu work on your machine? I use it if I have to use a PC (lives on a thumb drive). That uses Firefox. Don’t know about any security issues though.
@Reaktor, so the moral of that cartoon is: don’t trust trees, because they snitch. Good to know.
@Surplus
I highly recommend setting up some sort of Linux. Windows 7 is unsupported, so it’s unlikely that the bugs will get fixed. What are the specs?
If you can’t set up Linux, you could try the Chromium browser, which is lighter in terms of processing than Google Chrome and is open-source. That might help.
I currently use Linux Mint. Never had any issues with it, but then again I don’t actually use the computer for anything other than internet and word processing, so I have no idea if that would change if I installed a lot of other things.
@Alan Robertson:
As for fictional religions, Babylon 5 had Foundationism, a 22nd century Earth religion that apparently started as an attempt at finding the aspects of commonality amongst as many other religions as possible. Was a rather actively anti-hierarchical group, seeing organized religion as one of the problems. Ended up with some New Age-y bits grafted on. Stephen Franklin, the head doctor on the station, was a practitioner; though it only came up in a few episodes. (Including one of the later ones, ‘Walkabout’, where he ends up berating himself over the ‘Foundationist claptrap’ during an attempt at finding himself.) Straczynski apparently has apparently written up the whole religion as part of the backstory, and hasn’t released the background at least in part for fear of being ‘elroned’. (His words.)
Then again, for a show run by a somewhat vocal atheist, Babylon 5 dealt a fair bit with religion. Sinclair, the original station commander, was raised by Jesuits, and engaged a few times in the sort of vaguely Socratic leading-you-to-the-conclusion conversation they could be famous for. Ivanova was a Russian Jew, and ended up in a discussion over whether some alien-produced food would be considered Kosher at one point. Garibaldi was agnostic, which lead to the sequence of lines:
– Ivanova: I’ll say a prayer for him.
– Franklin: Garibaldi’s agnostic.
– Ivanova: Then I’ll say half a prayer.
I liked that, for the most part, it was just treated as an everyday part of people’s lives, something that’s there, but that generally people don’t obsess about because everybody knows it already.
As for communication… that’s why at least one SETI-based conversation suggested using larger prime numbers for indications of intelligence, because while there are lots of simple natural phenomena that will generate Fibonacci sequences, once you get up past 13 or so not many prime numbers show up in natural phenomena. Prime number pairs would be even better. And I seem to recall one of the earlier parts of the message in Contact was deciphered because the sequence involved a product of prime numbers, two for horizontal and vertical resolution, and one for number of frames of the TV image.
But again, what’s obvious to us isn’t necessarily obvious to anybody else out there, and isn’t even obvious to all of us.
@Reaktor:
I’ve seen versions of something similar with whispering it to a hole in the ground, then planting a seed there and covering it up.
@Alan, again:
Well, they say that any idea you can’t explain to a nine year old you don’t really properly understand yourself. I’ve long lost count of the number of times I was in the midst of explaining a problem to somebody else and realized the solution halfway through my explanation. Just the act of talking about it sorts it out in your own head.
@Surplus:
I’m getting the naggy Cookies popup now as well, and Firefox has been running just fine for several days without the computer being powered off, so that’s not a Firefox crash issue.
@Jenora Feuer
As a Jew of partial Russian descent, I say no, it wouldn’t be.
This reminds me of an old anthology I have of Jewish humor that had a joke about intergalactic kosher rules for Jews on other planets.