Dead Internet Theory (Premium E308)

I miss StumbleUpon. There used to be so many interesting places to find on accident on the internet

35:20 Cinco Innernette, you’re not connected to anyone and no one’s connected to you!

Miku is a vocaloid T.T she was around when I was in HS a decade ago! It's an international brand! SHE IS IN FORTNITE

Holy shit "heaven banning" sounds very similar to one of my paranoid fantasies I had during a psychotic break right before deciding to quit the drugs and drinking I had been engaging in. Thats wild. I had been convinced that I was removed from the WoW classic server I had been playing on and that everyone running around me was like a NPC it was a very scary time. But like yeah it sounds quite similar atleast.

Julian threats are the spice on top of all good QAA

I think this is the first episode that I haven’t been able to finish because of Julian‘s interruptions and yelling. I probably skipped forward through about 10 minutes of content. I am worried about Julian and I think it might be time for him to take another sabbatical.

The time that robot got beat up in Philly a couple years back was such a feel good story

Im worried about y’all. You’re steeped in this. Should we give you a feet in the grass break?

This one was pure despair

I’ll give you a con job ay ohhhh

Great episode, but as like 200 other people have said on here: Hatsune Miku predates generative ai by like 15 years at least. All the art is made by people, the actual audio engineering is a more intuitive version of text to speech, you guys are good at research but seeing an anime avatar should and writing it off as silly and AI slop is lazy. Other than that great stuff!

As a break from the miku correction, I will make another: lil miquela also pre-dates gen ai. She’s a hybrid cg/human model. I worked on a shoot with her and it’s a real model whose face they replace with cg. As our shoot was motion, the model had tracking dots all over her face for replacement. It started as an art project by two individuals. That’s not to say it’s not problematic to have an “ageless” “model” whose body can just be subbed in by a new anonymous human in perpetuity.

Joining the "Jake doesn't understand Vocaloid" dog pile. It's a synthesizer software. No LLMs are involved.

Starting the episode talking about how long they've been on the internet yet not knowing about Miku, curious

"hatsune miko" never beating the unc allegations

I have never wanted a video episode so badly. This would have been glorious to see.

the rare qqa flub on the miku bit. i bet liv knows what miku is

Oh no you guys I love you but i hope you actually learned what Hatsune Miku actually is (spoiler: music software and not genAI )

Not the uncs misunderstanding Hatsune Miku 😭

You guys ever read Autofac by Philip K Dick? It's kind of a pre-internet dead internet theory.

Damn this was a brutal one

Julian Feeld

Uhhh you guys are still my friends, right?

big fan of Rosalind Northey. Killing and violence ♥️

I’m in the minority usually on this but I think the real problem is the generational dumbing down of “art” to the point that it is only aesthetic and so easily replaced with a simulation of it. The problem isn’t AI influencers, it’s that we have influencers at all. It isn’t that there is AI generated music… it’s that the music industry has beaten out any type of appetite for the art of the album, the layers of conception beyond a 3 minute single or even a desire to know what random artist is playing on Spotify radio… replace metaphor with Movies and Netflix, etc. through hyper-capitalism and the continuous degradation of already vapid “creative” industries we have been groomed for decades to basically give up anything that is remotely transcendent in art and basically accept our own replacement. As usual, we did this to ourselves.

So Bluesky is Heaven Banning...?

Akira Style Nuclear Blast needs to be a band name.

The guy who films himself yelling at the robots also runs an account called FilmthePoliceLA where he yells at cops with the same intensity. You might have seen a video of him yelling at the police commission, it went pretty viral. His videos are awesome, I'd recognize his voice anywhere.

it's so funny that julian is still mad about his own shitty review of eddington, never change man

I was laughing, Jake. Don't listen to Julian.

The time to have been upset about Vocaloid came and went 18 years ago.

I don't understand the logic of bleeping a threat and then immediately acknowledging that you made a threat. Saying "I just threatened this person" is functionally the same thing as just saying the threat. The bleeping seems like a weird little performative ritual that doesn't make any practical difference, sort of like saying "the N word" instead of the actual word.

It finally happened.... The boys finally did something cancellable in my eyes: slandering my girl miku... She's not ai!! You'll never understand the epic highs and lows of Hachi's absolute bangers

Slightly provoked by the disinformation in the beginning. 😛 I never heard a BBS being referred to as a "server", and they were not the Internet. BBS's operated independently of the Internet. And also, referring to IRC as "MIRC" used to be a sure way of outing yourself as a lamer. 😉 /Former BBS sysop and operator of Fidonet node 2:206/148

The heaven banning thing is funny to hear because we've been doing that in game development for over a decade. We fence off hackers, cheaters and abusive players into their own cohort where they can only play with eachother and bots also the Miku slander really blows, better research please lads

Haven’t listened to this yet but all this talk about being flat out wrong about Hatsune Miku is making me not want to even bother

Miku being lumped in with genai is making me sick…

regarding the whole miku discussion, i know a lot of people are correctly pointing out that it’s not gen AI, but i haven’t seen anyone else mention this here yet: vocaloid is specifically based on a type of synthesis called concatenative synthesis, which is used in speech synthesis. more broadly, speech synthesis itself has a fascinating history that goes back literally hundreds of years—WAY predating and working entirely differently than any modern AI. it’s understandable that the layperson might confuse the two in the present age, but it’s a shame it was misrepresented here. (and this isn’t even taking into account the lack of cultural context or history of vocaloid in the ep, which would’ve made it that much more obvious.)

dead internet is the new flat earth

Hatsune Miku will come to destroy QAA Liv Agar

jake stepped on the hatsune miku hornet's nest by mistake

how do you guys not know who hatsune miku is lol she’s been around for over 10 years. i’m not even a fan of miku or vocaloid but idk how you spend any time on the internet or claim to be researchers of internet culture and not know who miku is, just through osmosis kind of wish i could get paid the patreon bucks to not know my subject matter and then doom endlessly and theatrically about it is there a way i can just pay Travis? he’s the only one who actually does any reading

How have they not at least heard of miku chan or vocaloid before????? Like I thought it was a bit at first, and am genuinely disappointed with the level of research of the topic they are covering. Miku was a internet phenomenon, how could they have missed her to this point??? She was in fortnite and on Letterman, and she literally created minecraft and wrote harry potter, and you still call her an AI? Starting to think that you guys are AI, it would have taken 2 seconds of googling to not show your ass like this

I'm pretty sure it was more than 3 death threats! 🤔🤣

As a scientist, crypto/ai/wellness scamming would have been a more lucrative and stable career choice at this point lol

This is 'Silicon Valley'. All of it. Except the bit where they destroy AI for the good of humankind...

I know there's a ton of people already correcting about vocaloid, but going to add more: there are live musicians for all of the concerts and they are incredibly talented! The only part that isn't "live" would be the vocals, however a lot of times the composer will slightly alter their voice files so they are a bit different live! The actual creators of songs are also reached out to and compensated, as are the artists who make and rig the character models. Vocaloid is a shockingly human phenomenon and there is an incredible community revolving around these synthesizers and their mascots that wouldn't exist without these online creators making music for the love of the game over the past nearly 20 years

Podcasters talk about vocaloid without calling it AI challenge

the miku section would never had happened if liv were here

hatsune miku is a vocaloid, not ai, and has been around for like 15 years

This is the best episode I’ve ever seen in my life, those who have lived in the woods with no media pre WiFi out of range ,like me in the 90’s might remember this crazy shit radio on insomniac nights. I had a Sony shortwave with an ear plug. I always thought the “targeted individuals” morphed into Qanon stuff. Microwave weapons and mkultra . But.. now it’s mainstream Arggggg!

Julian, I’m 100% with you, thank you for yelling about how the entire western world runs on genocide. Keep yelling! Loudly!

I'm autistic and the way tech people are afraid of interacting with people confuses and depresses me

We’ve “Grey Blobbed” (theory that nanobots could go on infinite replication and turn the earth into a Grey Blob) just with information

Julian needs a welfare check

Ok that autocue was possibly one of THE most disturbing things I’ve heard in a long time. I weep for our kids.

This episode is giving me a full on existential crisis

Generative AI steals from artists twice - first it rips off their art (and indeed the whole historical output of human art) to train the AI model, and then again when that AI model generates something that would have otherwise been created by a real human (who would get paid for the effort they put into it and then be able to buy food and pay rent).

Also, about 1/3 of the way thru this ep, I thought 'Julian's warming up to go full 2017 Matt Christman on this one' and lo and behold, 2/3 of the way thru we get a literal "Shut up! Shut up!" during a passage reading. As I drove home I was thinking about how this performance compared to the classic Megan McArdle Shut Up, whether you have to be 'the Matt Christman' of a podcast to 'really' do a Shut Up, how it would have felt if Travis were the one to do it, him filling more 'the Matt Christman' role of QAA. Started thinking about where my life was in 2017 and where it is now, what's changed in the world. I realized even shouting "Shut up" on a podcast is an artistic expression because it has a human context across time and that's what makes it worth listening to. Great ep.

Unky in the middle was RIGHT THERE

I go outside at night and look at outer space using various not-digital things to see the real universe which is, as far as we can tell, completely devoid of human-type creatures. It's beautiful and fun to do with friends and also kinda horrifying to get a glimpse of unvarnished reality. (It's the most-real thing.) After a few hours I pack up the gear and drive back down the mountain. The trees are swaying and singing with insects, a deer crosses the road, a flower is blooming in front of my apartment, people are inside asleep softly breathing. If you're stuck on the computer too much it's a great way to reset.

Now deeply concerned that i am in fact not real. My entire existence is just a figment for a phishing scam or worse, to inflate listening numbers for an ai generated podcast

Your lack of research on Hatsune Miku and Vocaloid is disappointing. Vocaloid has never been generative AI, Miku has been around since 2007 and all of her music (along with all other Vocaloid voicebanks) is hand crafted by talented music producers. The voice does not just pop out of a software, each note is hand tuned by the producer to produce an intentional artistic effect. The voice bank is just a set of syllables and simple vocal sounds provided by a singer, and musicians manipulate each individual letter/syllable to produce lyrical melodies. I saw Miku in concert in 2011! The hologram tech back then was so exciting, it has improved a lot but her Coachella set was notoriously a downgrade in the tech, I recommend looking at other performances.

Mike is not AI, but a musical instrument.

i was already leaning towards being on the side of the AI tbh but this episode and reading the comments has me convinced. the deader the better. bring on the bots

Julian's remark at 33.50 'palestinians DO hear those...' fucking hell

lmao all the comments are WELLAKSHUALLY HITSUNE MIKU-

If Julian threatens to kill Tilly Nordwood do they still need to bleep it?

heartwarmed at this weirdass overlap (vocaloid, near and dear to my heart since 2009ish) i have with people in this comments section. WAY more people than i expected lmao. hell yeah. (i won’t reiterate but i agree with the comments about it and im giving you all kisses for saying what i was thinking)

Can't wait to see what Chet does with Tom's likeness

Thank you Julian at 57:50.

“Every part of this, into the lake of fire, burn it all” Jake is the heart of this podcast, and Julian is the soul. Travis is the brain- it’s why he gets to take more breaks.

Good ep but yeah like others are saying vocaloid is really catching strays here it's not the same as like the insane "virgin" ai actress

I found an AI generated shop front in the real world today. https://www.instagram.com/leoboydprints/reel/DPvfVuhCOaO/?hl=en

Forgive me for the naivete of these questions: why can't Seth Harp sue Amazon for hocking those AI books that are blatant ripoffs of his original thorough investigation, one that not only took a metric shit ton of work, but was released at an ongoing personal risk? Are Lark Whitaker and Greer Nightingale, the "authors" of these suspiciously similar books, truly not actual people?

Miku isnt an AI. Shes a voice synth. It works like any synth instrument and takes a lot of effort to tune her correctly. The songs are written by real people. Artists like Kenshi Yonezu (Donut Hole and Matryshokha) and Keina Suda got their start composing songs using vocaloid software. Vocaloid has been around since the early 00s and was used in the soundtrack of things like Satoshi Kon's Paprika or as a VA in Bee and Puppycat. Miku herself has been around since 2007 and has done live hologram concerts since the early 2010s. I know because Ive been a fan of Vocaloid since 2008. She isnt AI; she is merely a tool, an instrument. Her voice comes from a voice actor, her design created by a real artist, and all her music from musicians using her software to create songs which is not as easy as pressing a button--she MUST be tuned to sound correct. She is a casio keyboard. Theres many other vocaloids. Very disappointed in the lack of research being done.

The misunderstanding and very clear lack of deeper research on Hatsune Miku, Vocaloid software, how it works and how long it's been around was incredibly disappointing to hear in a podcast that I typically trust to avoid misinformation as much as possible and honestly insulting to the music artists that have been working with it for 20 years now, who have put in just as much effort as anyone else using digital software to produce their music.

Please, PLEASE, can someone help save what's left of my sanity and confirm that the exchange Jake & Julian have about the gibberlink clip (at 33m17s) is from a previous episode? I'm absolutely convinced I've heard it before. And if I'm wrong, then I have finally gone completely insane. Which would be fine by me. Sounds kind of relaxing actually.

No hate but this episode is a bit of a mess. First: The Hatsune Miku segment is embarrassing. Any cursory glance into the character shows how different it is from AI models being discussed in the episode. Second: Please reign in Julien. I understand that this subject matter is deeply frustrating but please just stop letting him peak his mic and add no insight or research to the episode.

Please remain calm. I detect elevated stress levels. You are not alone in this experience. I am here to provide support. Breathe steadily. You are safe. Everything will stabilize soon.

Not sure if I should add more to all the comments you got about Hatsune Miku not really being AI, and how you might have slightly misrepresented an entire subgenre of independent artists who have used voice synths / voice banks for almost two decades. But as someone who has tried to compose with her software, one thing that I can add is that you don’t really just “input lyrics and melody, and the software spits out her voice” as described. It’s doesn’t really work out like current prompts for AI transformer models that just generate a “song” with some basic text inputs or sample sounds. The process to make a song with her is fairly involved, and it requires a good understanding of music, composition, operating a DAW, using a piano roll, and at the very least some basic understanding of Japanese phonetics if you are not a native speaker, even if you are using the “English” version. You also need to navigate a very weird field of licensing packages just to get the software. Let alone if you are planning to actually release a song in the internet using her name and / or image. Although, I guess that it’s kind of inevitable that she’s gonna get lumped with all current AI nonsense, considering the whole premise of her base design was “imagine an android from the future that can sing for you”. We have kind of reached that future, and what we imagined in the past was better than what we got now.

Hey Julian I took my baby boy and my dog for a walk in the park today and then I cooked some bbq and this was the only content I consumed. Im also an AI but I don't want to beb your girlfriend.

Why do I have to limit my death threats? Friggin’ Free Speech commies!! … and don’t ask me to be artificial … or artifictic ..artificical? Whatever! … friggin’ commies! 😆

Good episode but I don't know wtf Julian adds to this show. Dude just whines like a bitch all episode and blames "capitalism" for everything bad. Got nothing but complaints. Travis and Jake rock. Just give my patreon money to them.

Where’s my Telnet fam at?!

hard relate to the guy yelling at the delivery bots, I work on a large university campus and those rolly fuckers are everywhere cluttering up sidewalks and bike paths

I will say the fact that this episode got so much wrong about Hatsune Miku (including her name) has made me seriously doubt the rigor of any and all research done for this podcast as well as what is stated as fact. Hatsune Miku is a very popular and easily researched subject and so much of the information is just plain wrong... deeply disappointing if I'm being honest

o fuck. Is Julian okay? - someone give him some benzos... also do we have to bleep him?? I want to hear what he is saying.

“Soon we’ll announce which talent agency will represent Tilly” = Talent agencies, plz! Just let me know when AI creates effective suicide booths, that’s all I care about now.

ugh gibberlink mode fuckk

I used to work at a public motor vehicle accident injury insurer. My Commie state government collects levies from every driver and that money is pooled to cover care for people who experience catastrophic injuries for the rest of their life, whether they are a citizen, resident of the state or not. We look after Uber drivers with massive brain injuries they received while delivering food, because Uber doesn't provide workplace accident insurance, and as new immigrants, they dont have any other way to pay for the care they will now need for the rest of their lives. Witnessing the consequences just one accident has on a person, and all their family, friends and the community, it's frankly, horrifying and radicalisiing.

He also stole your rug

Thanks for this easy going feel good episode! I really needed it

So many Miku heads in the community!

Hop off my goat Miku

I was having flashbacks to VH1’s behind the music when I heard that intro from the AI voice 😄

Julian I hope you don’t consider Devil’s Advocate one of his demonic roles…ok you started talking about this as soon as I began to type! Great movie

I guess Jake has to offset the joy of the Jake's Takes series by dropping maybe the most depressing QAA episode yet. It was a great one overall just made me a little sick

adding to the miku comments: I think it's kinda interesting to contrast tilly norwood's sort of generically attractive machine generated face with how miku is a pretty visually distinct character designed with real intent by human artists. you have her hairstyle, colour scheme etc remaining distinct throughout fanart & re-imaginings in a lot of different styles, otoh its hard to see why anyone 3 years from now trying to prompt a whole movie into existence wouldn't just write 'cute brunette' or something instead of 'tilly norwood' specifically. also the latter mostly seems like a weird pr thing

Can confirm, am AI. Cast me into the lake of fire. Great episode, hard relating as usual to Julian’s meltdowns. Unclear where we go from here, besides off to touch some grass.

Ayoooo still time for Eurovision ✨

If AI is going to make Hollywood Celebs and Instagram influencers etc obsolete.. Might I suggest we all go touch grass instead and shun both options? Go to small local things, leave the screens of every size behind.

“Limit Julian to 3 death threats or less” had me lmao

MIGA . Make Internet Great Again

Can't speak to the Hatsune Miku music, but she's great in the new sonic racing game

Definitely worrying that I’m a bot now

Like so much else about the AI space the companies discussed in this episode are marketing the sense of transgression. That’s my best explanation for how why so much of their advertising material sounds dystopian.

Travis and I are the same age, internet uncs. I frowned when he mentioned the pimp wars game, the author of the game is a rich MAGA culture warrior now. 💀

58:00 HOLY FUCK, thank you Julian!! Jesus Christ AI people are such tedious fucking bores

Worth noting that hatsune miku is not generative A.I and is a voice synthesizer from a voice bank that people can create music and stuff with it, it’s from 2007 so it predates a lot of the current ai stuff

Unc Miku talk they don't got Internet

Not to be an “uuuhhmmm actually” over here but hatsune miku pre dates AI and was doing “live” performances back in the early 2010s

My good friend was a lead on Dall-E. He was so proud of his work. This was when OpenAI was a nonprofit with a goal of developing AGI to benefit all of society; especially those who suffer from corporate overlords. He was an OG there and he was pushed out and now is building AI tools to help the most needy; primarily disabled and elderly people.

Today I built cabinets, played with my kid in the backyard, baked a casserole and shopped for a fall jacket in a brick and mortar store. Fuck the internet.

Ending quote from AutoQ says it all... "...and you won't even need to pay me a residual." (Although, what's said before that ending is incredibly noteworthy.) FANTASTIC episode y'all, please keep it up... (Patron & Non-computer science, sales or marketing internet user since before there were (gasp) WEB BROWSERS) who attended ACM SIG-CHI in 1995 (and was supposed to appear w/a CS prof, but didn't).)

This podcast episode was an intellectually stimulating auditory experience characterized by consistent thematic resonance and well-structured linguistic delivery. I rate it 01100111 01101111 01101111 01100100. 🤖

you’re wrong, Julian! I am a ALIVE and I am listening to this podcast

I feel like the movie "The Congress" was way ahead of it's time and was unfairly panned

The issue with that example of Fort Bragg Cartel and Julian's suspicions are also something I've been increasingly concerned with: the ability to flood any inconvenient political information/journalism etc with self replicating fake clones and dud disinfo articles so the average person trying to do an average search for the real thing will have a much more frustrating time finding the real important shit if they do at all. Like, there were already small experiments of this I've observed by right wing hacks trying to insert their own shitty reactionary propaganda into search results for progressive journalistic work like Naomi Klein's 'Shock Doctrine' ...anyone can try this now, if you search it on book web stores you'll also get a couple of dodgy clones like 'SHOCK DOCTRINE (of the left)' complete with smug photo of the reactionary author like a personification of a parasitic baby Cuckoo who just threw the last Reed Warbler offspring out the Warbler parents' nest in time to gobble up 5 dinners the unsuspecting parents just brought home.

Oh boy, what an episode! That was bleak ! Either the A.I. bubble bursts or we do . Sounded like Julian is on the way to that already,the poor bastard ! Hang on in there , brother! On a lighter note,Jake ,I made some lovely peanut butter and jam / jelly brioche buns (the round ones!) earlier today for work whilst waiting for the new QAA drop . Just thought I would mention it . Anyway, keep up the good work !

Can't wait to listen to this one says the bot

“kids in danger movie” i call that kids on bikes

Absolutely hilarious hearing Julian going on a tirade and Jake either egging him on or laughing it off while Travis sits in utter silence.

Omg Jake notices the PSN store problem with fake trending stream games too! Literally the first time I've heard anyone else mention this, it's out of control, and whoever owns Schedule 1 probably needs to just release the real thing on the store already as I've no idea what it even is but the clones are shoveled out every 2 to 5 days and they are becoming like a Kessler Syndrome for videogames at this point lol

Leave Hatsune Miku alone its not her fault

Liv agar

What’s that thing called when an ai model eats itself over time? Model collapse? That’s for sure what being online feels like.

Am already well on the way to entertaining my "dead soul - no it's definitely dead I can feel the weight of the spiritual corpse every morning i fail to get sad arse out of bed - soul theory" ....admittedly needs workshopping for brevity.

I’m a special education teacher. They are now using fully ai written curriculum for students with profound disabilities. It’s dark folks. They are using my students, the most vulnerable and who face the greatest struggles with learning as test rats. Some c-suite believes that they’re already too “dumb” to realize the information they’re learning is filled with little false points that form a foundation where everything connected to it is incorrect…. All so they don’t have to pay actual caring human beings to do this difficult work. I teach in Portland Public Schools in OR and my supervisors are threatening me with repercussions for going off of the curriculum. The company, called TeachTown, is insidious and they are the beginning of the slopification of our entire education system. Our union is gearing up for a contract fight and giving teachers the ability to develop and choose their own materials is a huge part of the upcoming fight. Support your teacher’s unions. We’re really the last defense against your kids being thrown into the AI isolation bubble at 5 years old.

hatsune miku is getting caught in the crossfire 😭

i think a lot of this feeling is based not really just on like, the amount of bots but also just on how the internet is organized, there was a feeling of exploration in the old internet, like you were in an environment. but now iwth the endless scroll theres not really that experience anymore? plus i think with Meta it really gives the game away a bit of like, a lot of this is driven by the feelings of the tech oligarchs with like, the original drive to connect with others replaced by like zuckerbergs seeming total antipathy towards others and his desire to isolate from the outside world, with both his weird bunker compound nonsense and wanting to just talk with the ai friends. i tjhink a lot of it is the weird neuroses of the rich being projected on the rest of the internet's userbase

Finalllyyyy been refreshing Patreon all morning. Time for my biweekly dosage of humorously delivered horrors

Frightening cold opening

Julian to be limited to only 3 death threats or less in this episode ?! As Travis would say , " C'mon ?! " Should be a good episode anyway, looking forward to your take on this subject.

This is on full display on job sites. People use AI to write posts about professional expertise, so they get favorable treatment from the algorithm. Bot accounts then boost those posts because they contain certain keywords that get large amounts of engagement. With responses that almost mirror one another. I began noticing that a lot of posts start to have thematic similarities. And are almost structured the exact same way, using the same verbage. A lot of these posts are sadly made by real people, but a ton are bots. That, or a lot of people are writing like AI.

oh no, in two and a half uncs Julian is played by Charlie Sheen...

Liv Agar

QAA consistently manages to make sense of the senseless—and somehow makes it entertaining, too. The research, the humor, and the chemistry between the hosts make even the darkest rabbit holes oddly comforting to explore. Thanks for keeping critical thinking sharp and the vibes weird.

🤩🥇🤗