forget it jake, it’s clankertown (13. 514)

Stealing the title from the OP at MetaFilter because it couldn’t be improved upon—a favourite snowclone of mine lately that usually withers away as I have to explain it to younger coworkers, though in a way that works on a level since I can repeat, “Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown,” without substituting the place where we work or the client’s location—we enjoyed this analysis of social media gatekeeping, accusation culture with ‘AI slop’ rising to the top along with other strawman invectives like sockpuppet, astroturf and shill but without the overall calling out of fallacy not increasing in aggregate. Whilst not suggesting that online discourse may be plateauing with a new baseline of civility, findings may intimate that we are just more weary of feeding the trolls and know that it lies behind every engagement. AI shaming should definitely exist but labelling one a bot, especially falsely (which seems to happen more and more often) can also stifle or silence an honest conversation. What do you think? I wouldn’t invite a large language model to polish or tarnish my writing—for what it’s worth (even at work, despite it constantly being jammed down or throats), though I know it could always stand a second pass for proofreading purposes. More at the links above.