Last year, my roommate began a Facebook page titled: "Nobody likes Seth Grossman" it was self-explanatory and was an instant hit among my friends or people I assumed were my friends. After they had their laughs, I reported the group to Facebook as a form of harassment. It was a simple checked box and nothing more yet Facebook took the threat seriously, removed the group ad issued a warning to my roommate. A few months later my roommate posted an unflattering picture of me on his profile. Once again, I untagged myself and reported the picture. This time Facebook banned my roommate from the site for a week. I found it shocking that he was actually banned for sarcastic harassment and was curious as to what level of sarcastic harassment would get him banned. The sadness of the whole situation is that even if an actual predator on Facebook is banned permanently, Facebook can't stop that person from making another profile.
I bring this story up for two reasons. One, Facebook can't keep up with it's users intentions and their responses tend to be a form of overkill or complete ignorance. Two, anonymity and dishonesty are rampant through Facebook as evidenced by my roommate's fake fan page. As writers, we should be more aware of the author and not just take their status on face value alone. Anyone can post a pretty picture of a seemingly friendly person. Flash forward six months later and that pretty person is commenting on your profile pic. Flash forward another six months and that pretty person is stating facts about tanning on their status that you later quote to your friends. Little do you know that pretty person is just a fictional character generating pro-tanning propaganda for HIS job. I say 'his' because it's almost always a guy flirting with you via email. Trust me.
In the Bunz article, the question, "Should it be made transparent if a text is written by a human or an algorithm?" is a no-brainer. If we can't distinguish human writing from computer writing, we have FAILED as a society. Mad Libs is funny because it's disjointed and very unhuman-like. I'd like to think that audiences prefer and recognize 'soulful writing', if you will. The example that the article gave was a sports synopsis. It sounded so generic that the information given seemed worthless. If the content is drivel then the author, or in this case the algorithm, has failed.
I sincerely hope writing can never be perfected into a formula....
P.S.
Here's a skit from Chappelle's Show regarding the internet. It's almost 10 years old, but still relevant as hell.
It's really interesting how facebook responded to sarcastic harassment, though, I can see why -- if it was real harassment and you were actually feeling attacked, they did good but you're right, they can't really control who creates new profiles, etc.
ReplyDeleteAnd, I agree, I hope algorithms never completely replace writing but I hope that they can help writing and be designed/worked on continuously to create more efficient systems so that real writing and "soulful writing" (because I will) will still be written and still be appreciated. I hope and seriously believe it will never really be lost but hopefully given a better and more specific venue.
I agree that despite Facebook's efforts, they can't really prevent someone from using Facebook, so it's kind of dumb. But at least they kind of throw off the supposed "harasser" if that person is really attached to their account (which any for-real harasser/scammer wouldn't be, anyway).
ReplyDeleteLoved the Chapelle's show clip. It's still so representative. Maybe the algorithm-praising folk should take a step back and look at how ridiculous their technology is getting...