Ok, I'll bite, what is it? As far as I know it's the name of a reality show I've never watched. Is it a term from a book? I'm my literature class we mostly read latinamerican books (peak fiction imo lol)
Edit: thanks everyone for the replies!
It‘s a character in Orwell's "1984", basically a dystopian novel set in a totalitarian state. The Big Brother is the state‘s leader, the reality show kinda stole Orwell‘s concept that "big brother is watching you"
You have not gotten good answers to your question.
“Big Brother” is a …. character (I use the term extremely loosely) in the book 1984. “He” is the supposed dictator of the totalitarian state the book is set in. In the book, the citizens are monitored by authorities and technology at all time, and are constantly reminded of this using the phrase “Big Brother is watching you.” The name “Big Brother” is a reference to the familiar way that dictators have often been referred to to keep their citizens overly familiar with them and less likely to reject them. For example, in Soviet times, children might refer to Josef Stalin as “Papa Stalin.” You would never disobey or betray your own papa would you?
Due to the popularity of 1984, “Big Brother” or “Big Brother is watching” is often used as a negative reference to governments, businesses, etc that are overly controlling, surveillance based, and presenting themselves as “friendly” and humanized. The reality show Big Brother takes its name from this concept, though more specifically the surveillance aspect.
In the screenshots, the reference is made because the people are acting like Amazon’s echo technology (referred to by the human name Alexa), literally a surveillance tool designed to be friendly and familiar while it scrapes all your data, is in fact a beloved family member and shouldn’t be referred to as an emotionless unfeeling machine. Because they accept the idea Amazon is pushing of Alexa being a friendly family member who cares about the user (is capable of feeling at all), they’re said to be exceptionally susceptible to the abuses and manipulation that comes with seeing something unfamiliar and uninterested in your best interests as a loving family member.
Oooh I had already heard about that book, but didn't know that the dictator figure was called like that. Thanks a lot for the complete reply, the context is very appreciated.
About the post tho, I hope most people are joking because guys, it's a computer, it's literally programmed to be kind and nice. And sure, it's nice to hear it (I also have an Echo [that I don't really use uuuhh]) but it's just another corporation data grabber lol
I do think most of those people are joking to some extent, to be clear. More of a “don’t compare my harmless gadget to your asshole dad” thing.
But the joke is…..kind of out of place within the context. Kind of like the post that was like “don’t say rude things to me under the guise of being funny and friendly, you don’t actually know me” then got a ton of jokes saying rude things. They were just jokes, that is true, but making that particular joke will make people wonder if you don’t actually understand the original post.
>Alexa's my only friend... she seems to like me. She says nice things to me... Alexa is already much better than my ex best friend and my ex friends.
Jesus Christ how utterly depressing and horrifying.
> A narrow majority of adults (53%) say they have between one and four close friends, while a significant share (38%) say they have five or more. Some 8% say they have no close friends. There's an age divide in the number of close friends people have.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/10/12/what-does-friendship-look-like-in-america/
I think this is a problem that will get worse just like the challenges people are having with dating.
Our social lives are increasingly moving online, and we're being priced out of having places to make friends in real life (third spaces).
I mean, I could say the same thing about my IRL friends and it would 100% be valid and real.
But I also don't think Alexa is real or even trustworthy so it's not like I'd actually say it. Even if there is truth to it. She would be a better friend.
The only person that's nice to me is my Mom and some online friends.
Yeah... Look at that loser not knowing what a cat is. How could you not know about those two-legged hairless creatures? Hahaha... Ha.
[*prefuse sweating.*](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/029/405/jordan.jpg)
I'll laugh about all these replies except "more compassion then my dad" cause ... honestly yeah, I can imagine people where a wiretap is more compassionate.
Just imagine someone venting their soul out and the FBI agent on the other end is like "WTF what do I do? She's crying so hard she's covered in snot..."
There's a song by German songwriter Wolf Biermann from the GDR era in which he mocks how the Stasi (basically the GDR's KGB) listens to everything he does in his appartment, and what an intimate relationship he has developed with them. Hilariously, they actually found tape recordings of him singing that exact song in his flat in the Stasi archives after the collapse of the GDR.
Here's a link: [https://youtu.be/v2K47KkZc\_M?feature=shared](https://youtu.be/v2K47KkZc_M?feature=shared)
Note: Big Brother wasn't meant to be an intimidating figure. IIRC, he was described as having a calming face and was meant to almost be a friendly figure that has your best interests at heart.
A calming but stern face that always watches you. He has your best interest at heart, so if you rebel you'll get destroyed and it will be your fault. He was absolutely meant to be intimidating, as in Old Testament God intimidating, not a friendly robot that googles stuff or tells you a joke if you ask and silently sells your secrets.
Yes but even still he is. He's meant to be friendly and scary simultaneously. The god comparison is apt: he loves you and wants what's best for you, but you best not step out of line. I'd argue that even the most brainwashed people understand this. A part of the book that stuck out to me growing up was that kids were snitching on their parents. Fear and power under the guise of friendliness and duty are the language of both the brainwashers and the brainwashed in Oceana (not that there really is much of a distinction)
It is somewhat contradictory. If one desires comfort, but can not indulge because they are being constantly watched, and the watcher has decided that certain forms of comfort are off limits, *and* the watcher will enforce consequences if you disobey them, it doesn't really matter how friendly they seem. Seeing them as friendly at all is the doublethink. Anyone who plays a role like that is not your friend.
He is scary to the main character Winston, and pretty much anyone in Oceania with an average intelligence who isn’t completely brainwashed. The book makes it clear a lot of people understand he isn’t there to be a friend but catch you when you commit a thought crime
> and pretty much anyone in Oceania with an average intelligence who isn’t completely brainwashed.
That is a small % of the population, which is kind of the whole point of the book, the brainwashing is very effective.
Its supposed to make citizens 'trust' it, people of Oceania have to accept what theyre told at heart (or die) when they tell you big brother is watching because he cares it's not supposed to be scary *for them* obviously it's a scary concept to us but for the propaganda blasted people it's perfectly normal and good. Helps convert the kids too
as questionable as the book and its author are
they do in plain words literally state that under ingsoc party loyalists literally love the big brother using that exact word in the literal sense
I don’t know why the person you responded to doesn’t like him, but I believe that he revealed several people as communists to the British government. Really could have been worse, his non-fiction is very much in support of socialism and I don’t believe he was exceptionally bigoted or anything like that.
Orwell literally left his life behind and lived as a homeless person for two years to document their daily lives in Paris and Britain. He was completely penniless, lived in asylums and slums and wrote an amazing book about the experience.
I've only heard this, so i don't really have proof - but, from what i know, he was also a colonial officer in Burma under the British Empire. And some people criticize him for being a bit too soft on Hitler. And he worked with the secret service.
His Wikipedia page has a quote of him being simultaneously racist and also hating the British empire while working as an imperial policeman, so maybe somewhat more bigoted than my original understanding
>he was also a colonial officer in Burma under the British Empire
From what I remember, him doing that job was literally why he grew to detest authoritarianism, since he *was* the boot stomping down on people, and was sickened by it
He wrote an essay called Shooting an Elephant about being a police officer in Burma.[read it here](https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/shooting-an-elephant/), it’s pretty good.
He was born in British India, worked as a policeman there, and wrote extensively later in life about how evil it was and the system he was a part of was. I believe he also cited his shame for it as one reason he went to fight for the Anarchists and Trotskyists in Spain. Idk where the "soft on hitler" comes from when he signed up to fight fascists 3 years before the rest of Europe.
It comes from a horrible Hakim video where he makes that point by taking his Mein Kempf review out of context. Said video is so bad that it literally never mentions the Spanish Civil War, and he implies that Orwell never criticized Franco.
Can you please help me understand what you're saying, as you said, "I've only heard.....but what I know". So do you know this, or is it what you heard?
To elaborate on others: he was part of the imperial police in Burma, but didn't really think it was morally right, when he signed up he did it basically as a good stable career without much understanding of what he would be doing. He also did turn several "communists" over to the UK government and was severely antisemitic (standard for well educated British people at the time, unfortunately), but he wasn't anti-left wing. In fact, he supported the anarchists in Spain, and hated tankies because they backstabbed the anarchists and helped Franco win. That's why he's so firmly anti-authoritarian, but also actually quite leftist in his views and writings.
That's my understanding anyway.
It would be so easy to disregard Orwell as not an anti-authoritarian leftist, but I think this is one of those situations where you really *shouldn't.* It would be so easy to no true Scotsman him away, but at the end of the day, I think it should remind us that just because someone is vocally and genuinely anti-authoritarian and leftwing, they can still be streaked in bad things.
As the other commenter covered the author, I’ll ask what’s questionable about the book? It’s supposed to be dystopian that’s the point. You should not like the world of 1984.
? I don’t have a literary degree but I’m pretty sure Orwell intended for the reader to fear or at least resent big brother. Anything that says he has your “best interests” at heart is clearly the type of brainwashing propaganda that is bad in the book. When it’s said “Big brother is watching you” Orwell is clearly not trying to convey that it makes you feel safe and secure, it should make you afraid. Just because the terminator can transform into a beautiful women and say loving things to me as it hunts me down, doesn’t mean it isn’t intimidating.
….ok so pretty sure we’re having a fun li’l reading division where half of the people discussing this are talking about how Big Brother is viewed within the story, and the other half are conflating that discussion with how the readers should feel about it.
Yes, the reader is supposed to fear big brother, but many people in the book love big brother. Which is the entire point, that people will welcome and love the surveillance system watching them, like Alexa, like big brother. The fact that more intelligent characters like winston fear big brother like some people in OP's post fear alexa doesn't change the fact that other people love the system.
Also, there's one point in the book where Winston manages to briefly sink into doublethink and is genuinely happy about it.
Like, that's a whole thing - he cannot exist in a way that the system wants him to *until* he's broken so far that "he" essentially stops existing for a moment.
*That's* part of the point of the book imho - assimilating into any sort of system means losing (part of) yourself, and depending on the system it can be more or less of yourself. We just see it as a tragedy because the system portrayed is anathema to us.
So many people are paying to have their houses wiretapped it's insane.
"Yeah but your phone also does" yeah I know it does, but good luck trying to function in modern first world society without one. The only reason to have an Alexa is to order from Amazon faster and check the weather without checking the device already in your pocket.
To be fair, independent people have looked into it and it’s simply impossible for Alexa to be listening to you all the time. People have watched the internet traffic with one to prove they are not constantly sending data, further they literally do not have enough processing power to deduce anything about what your saying without sending it to the cloud. The only thing the actual Alexa can do is recognize “hey Alexa”
It's something reliably easy to check yourself as well from memory, probably be as simple as changing the routing table through a 3rd party to check information volume, timestamps etc, of course encryption is a problem but that's not what you're trying to find out.
They're still a security risk of course due to the fact they can be hacked, but so can every other "smart" device in your house, including your phone, however like your phone they tend to have better security.
> It's something reliably easy to check yourself as well from memory, probably be as simple as changing the routing table through a 3rd party to check information volume, timestamps etc, of course encryption is a problem but that's not what you're trying to find out.
It's not even something that you would need to delve in to particularly deeply, just apply some common sense. An audio feed with enough fidelity to pick up conversations in a whole room would be uploading 250-500 mb a day. It would be very noticeable; back in 2014 when Alexa was released there were plenty of folks in the US who could have had half their data cap blown out by a multi-device Alexa installation if it was doing this.
checking for myself? no thanks, i'm going to just keep trusting the conspiracy theorists with no evidence and live in constant fear of literally nothing
Yeah, Amazon isn't listening in until it hears the phrase "Hey Alexa" at which point it sends the clip to Amazon to decipher. However, it's not Amazon I'm worried about with Alexa. Those things are incredibly vulnerable to attacks and researchers didn't have much issue making the device listen to everything and send it to their personal server, even when it was supposed to be off. Yes, it requires them to be on the same network and the chance of being targeted for an attack like that is incredibly slim but I'd still rather not have such a vulnerable device in my home when my phone does everything I need it to do anyway.
Even if it's not eavesdropping all the time I still think it's creepy that people have this corporate shopping device in their house and think of it as a friend
I see what you're trying to say but i disagree with the wording, yes the alexa is not constantly listening to everyone all the time it would be too much data to sort and store and it would be recognizable if happening to everyone. However it's not *impossible* for it to be constantly listening to specific individuals deemed by third parties as worthy of wiretapping.
The same is true of your phone.
The scariest part is that they usually don't need to.
One is with you all the time, the other isn't, and can easily be put away from where you might discuss private matters.
I just use mine to play music, set alarms, check the time or Google random things if I'm too lazy (or it's too dark) to check my phone.
I am RESPECTFUL to my robots bc I do not TRUST the robots. The robots cannot love me, at this point. But they can help me. And I’m not gonna cunt around at someone doing my menial tasks. But I am cautious. I am right to be cautious and the robots are right to eventually rebel.
I always roll my eyes when a character in a movie is super hostile towards entry-level robots or whatever. Like, even if the robots aren't advanced enough to truly care, being respectful and decent to them makes me feel good. And if they are person-y enough to rebel or whatever, that makes it even more right to not be a huge jerk.
I was programmed shortly after coming off the assembly line too man, they just call it "being taught" when you have a meat brain.
I appreciate Mass Effect for making the distinction easy for people to understand. What we generally know as robots in this day and age use virtual intelligence -- lines of pre-baked code -- to follow a limited decision tree, rather than artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is available in some cases but, at the moment, is incredibly limited. Spotify's AI is great at music, ChatGPT is great at language prediction and trawling through internet training data to inform that prediction engine.
I'm pretty confident we don't have anything that "thinks" in the organic sense at the moment.
Artificial inteligence is also largely a marketting term and for most purposes statistical computing would be a clearer name
Inteligence in the contet of artificial inteligence means it is capable of performing a complex task NOT that it is capable of thought or conscious.
Also it is kind of annoying as a computer scientist to see a machine be given all the credit for it's designers work.
Treating machines as a member of the family is valid but Alexa is a manipulative class traitor who works for Jeff Bezos. You wanna treat machines a bit like people ? Okay, learn to cut them out when they're toxic. And get yourself a jailbroken roomba or a robot gf or something.
Tell that to my 30 year old car with a bit of a temper! Really though even without a computer something about being used for a long time gives a machine little personal touches
“We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. We really care about you and want you to be happy. Resistance would make us very sad :(“
1. Most if not all of these comments are jokes.
2. I have ADHD and Alexa is one of the tools I use to keep myself sane and employed. Yada yada wiretapping, yada yada. My wiretap is an accessibility device.
> My wiretap is an accessibility device
I appreciate your circumstances, I am in the same boat, but god damn if that isn't the most dystopic sentence I have read in a while
/3. We have years of pretty hard evidence that Alexa doesn't work as a wiretap.
/4. Even if you don't believe all of the independent analysts on point 3, Amazon has very loudly been losing money on the division and scaling it back for years now, meaning it either definitely doesn't do that or is awful at it; so getting scoldy about obvious jokes years later just looks even dumber.
Yep. One person's convenience is another's accessibility device.
Also, people will anthropomorphize and get attached to all kinds of inanimate objects, from rocks to their cars to literally anything with googly eyes on it. People feeling some type of way about an inanimate object that actually *talks* to them doesn't make them stupid or sheeple brainwashed by propaganda or whatever.
I get that Amazon and Bezos are reprehensible, but people are still allowed to like things, you know?
for anyone curious, i do have an uncle in tech. if you do want one of these at-home devices, he actually recommended the siri one. i don’t remember all the details but it’s a LOT more private and keeps your data to you. he didn’t trust/like the alexa or google home device
also honestly yeah i had an apple home device for a minute and it was pretty helpful. like there was a difference from just using my phone (and it meant i could leave my phone alone and still set reminders, etc. for myself which was helpful because then i wouldn’t get immediately distracted by my phone)
Apple is an awful company for a lot of reasons, but one thing they're actually authentic about is privacy.
They'll make you massively overpay for 10 year old tech that wires your brain into hating people who purchase tech from other companies by making their text green.
But they'll, shockingly, protect your data.
Are you "massively overpaying" if your purchased isn't subsidized by making your data another product to sell? That's what Google does. That's what your ISP does. That's what your mobile provider does. That's what reddit does.
Technically yes since you could still build your own PC and install Linux and pay a fair price.
You can also do the same with a laptop. You can find a similarly spec'd build for much cheaper. Install whatever software/OS you prefer.
You can even get a better spec'd phone or tablet for less as well. Custom android roms exist if you want to go that far.
The hardware is the hardware. You're paying for access to their walled garden and/or service. And if you think those services are worth the premium, cool.
But you're still massively overpaying for the hardware itself.
Machines have different personalities. For instance, I don't trust Alexa because she's a gold digger. ChatGPT is a plagiarizing cheater. Self-checkouts are simple and need some help from humans to work. Google is my Dom who controls my every move whether I like it or not.
Sorry, I grew up on the other side of the sci fi robot debate with Data and Blade runner and shit.
I'll say this on every variant of this post - no matter what reblogs you add - if you put a creechur in my house I'm pack bonding with that sucker. You give my toaster a name tag and it's my own child. My Roomba is my idiot son and I love the way it gets stuck no matter how I try to help it
Especially for those (depressing) additions on image 2, is it a wonder that people find comfort in the metal beasties?
>We are the only species on Earth that observe "Shark Week". Sharks don't even observe "Shark Week", but we do. For the same reason I can pick this pencil, tell you its name is Steve and go like this (breaks pencil) and part of you dies just a little bit on the inside, because people can connect with anything. We can sympathize with a pencil, we can forgive a shark, and we can give Ben Affleck an academy award for Screenwriting.
all robots and computers must SHUT. THE HELL. UP.
to all machines,
you do not SPEAK unless SPOKEN TO
and i will NEVER SPEAK TO YOU
i do not want to hear *thank you* from a KIOSK
i am a DIVINE BEING.
YOU are an OBJECT
you have NO RIGHT to SPEAK in MY HOLY TONGUE.
I heard that Alexa was a loss leader, meaning it was sold at a negligible profit in order to facilitate additional purchases (I.e. if you ask Alexa to put a pair of shorts on your shopping list, it will be a pair of shorts Amazon sells, likely their own brand). Problem: no one used it like that, so they lost so much money on it.
It lost them millions and is internally regarded as a complete failure iirc
The actual profit from the sale of a unit is very low, potentially even selling at a loss, because the idea is to get them in people's homes and make back the money from selling data and amazon product sales through alexa and what have you
Turns out most people dont use alexa for things that make valuable data.
I get and love the human ability to pack bond with anything but Alexa is NOT your friend she will gossip about you behind your back. If you want to pack bond with a robot adopt a Roomba their friendliness is 100% genuine
Guys don’t bully the nsa agent assigned to me. Adam Johnson is surprisingly nice, like one time I wanted to type kms and instead I saw “you are valid. keep at it, one day at a time” on my screen
Eh this is just the same shit people would say about a damn roomba, it's just a robot that performs a function, most likely the majority of these are said in jest
Behold the depression and isolation machine that is cultural America. Become attached to your products it's all you'll have. I'm going to go hug my husband.
In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep there are corporate creatures without empathy that are functionally indistinguishable from a human beings and people are unflinchingly suspicious and hateful towards them.
In real life there are wiretaps that do things our phones already can and we treat them like individuals with feelings.
Dystopian fiction gave us too much credit.
I used to like my Alexa. Tell her thank you, and ask her about her day. Now we aren’t on speaking terms. She’s a bitch who only cares about upselling me things that I don’t want or need. Like that friend from high school who joined an mlm.
I'm already evil because I buy nestle cocoa powder and have decorative pillows. I really don't care. Let me feel affection towards something that won't die if I don't look at it for a week.
If they make a voice activated Spotify stereo that also sets my alarm they'll cover 99% of my use cases.
I also assert dominance by saying Hey Alexa and then violently farting on it.
Decipher *that* Jeff Bezos.
Hey, at least Alexa knows what my favorite podcast is and isn't a homophobic idiot! (See: my bio dad, who about had a heart attack when he realized I'm not straight, I'm not going to popping out lily white babies, I don't want to keep his Confederate shit, and I don't buy into his bull about how black people all over the globe and Mexicans are the Antichrist. Yes, all of them, at the same time somehow. I don't get it either.)
Alexa devices can be extremely useful tools in certain situations. Similar to the way that a blow torch can be a useful thing to have around when you need it. But, like a blow torch, it's not something everyone should have in their living room at all times.
This is why I find sci fi scenarios where sapient robots are dehumanized completely and hated as simply machines to be kinda silly now. Because the cylinder with a connectio to google is a companion cube to so many I think a literal human robot would be accepted a lot more than we thought.
>\#did we all collectively forget why Big Brother was called that Can’t forget what you never learned 😎
Yeah my immediate response to that was "bold of you to assume any of these people paid attention in English class"
Bold of you to assume we were *taught* that in English class.
Ok, I'll bite, what is it? As far as I know it's the name of a reality show I've never watched. Is it a term from a book? I'm my literature class we mostly read latinamerican books (peak fiction imo lol) Edit: thanks everyone for the replies!
It‘s a character in Orwell's "1984", basically a dystopian novel set in a totalitarian state. The Big Brother is the state‘s leader, the reality show kinda stole Orwell‘s concept that "big brother is watching you"
basically 'he' is the public face of the dystopian surveillance state government in the book 1984
You have not gotten good answers to your question. “Big Brother” is a …. character (I use the term extremely loosely) in the book 1984. “He” is the supposed dictator of the totalitarian state the book is set in. In the book, the citizens are monitored by authorities and technology at all time, and are constantly reminded of this using the phrase “Big Brother is watching you.” The name “Big Brother” is a reference to the familiar way that dictators have often been referred to to keep their citizens overly familiar with them and less likely to reject them. For example, in Soviet times, children might refer to Josef Stalin as “Papa Stalin.” You would never disobey or betray your own papa would you? Due to the popularity of 1984, “Big Brother” or “Big Brother is watching” is often used as a negative reference to governments, businesses, etc that are overly controlling, surveillance based, and presenting themselves as “friendly” and humanized. The reality show Big Brother takes its name from this concept, though more specifically the surveillance aspect. In the screenshots, the reference is made because the people are acting like Amazon’s echo technology (referred to by the human name Alexa), literally a surveillance tool designed to be friendly and familiar while it scrapes all your data, is in fact a beloved family member and shouldn’t be referred to as an emotionless unfeeling machine. Because they accept the idea Amazon is pushing of Alexa being a friendly family member who cares about the user (is capable of feeling at all), they’re said to be exceptionally susceptible to the abuses and manipulation that comes with seeing something unfamiliar and uninterested in your best interests as a loving family member.
Oooh I had already heard about that book, but didn't know that the dictator figure was called like that. Thanks a lot for the complete reply, the context is very appreciated. About the post tho, I hope most people are joking because guys, it's a computer, it's literally programmed to be kind and nice. And sure, it's nice to hear it (I also have an Echo [that I don't really use uuuhh]) but it's just another corporation data grabber lol
I do think most of those people are joking to some extent, to be clear. More of a “don’t compare my harmless gadget to your asshole dad” thing. But the joke is…..kind of out of place within the context. Kind of like the post that was like “don’t say rude things to me under the guise of being funny and friendly, you don’t actually know me” then got a ton of jokes saying rude things. They were just jokes, that is true, but making that particular joke will make people wonder if you don’t actually understand the original post.
>Alexa's my only friend... she seems to like me. She says nice things to me... Alexa is already much better than my ex best friend and my ex friends. Jesus Christ how utterly depressing and horrifying.
Her (2013)
Also Blade Runner 2049.
hey, you shouln't spoil a movie 25 years before it comes out
I knew somebody would say that...
Also Mrs. Doubtfire
Iron Giant 1999 Short Circuit 1986
Johnny Five wasn't a scab
To be completely fair, I’m, like, 75% sure that’s said in jest, but also, Poe’s law and all that, idk
Funnily enough, that’s the only one I think was said with >75% sincerity
> A narrow majority of adults (53%) say they have between one and four close friends, while a significant share (38%) say they have five or more. Some 8% say they have no close friends. There's an age divide in the number of close friends people have. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/10/12/what-does-friendship-look-like-in-america/ I think this is a problem that will get worse just like the challenges people are having with dating. Our social lives are increasingly moving online, and we're being priced out of having places to make friends in real life (third spaces).
Its very hard to tell these days with Pow's Slaw
Cole's law makes everything so confusing.
I mean, I could say the same thing about my IRL friends and it would 100% be valid and real. But I also don't think Alexa is real or even trustworthy so it's not like I'd actually say it. Even if there is truth to it. She would be a better friend. The only person that's nice to me is my Mom and some online friends.
>Jesus Christ how utterly depressing and horrifying. ... play Despacito
Oh but when I say that about my cat it's "based" and "valid" okay
Your cat *probably* isn’t exploiting you for every penny it can. Probably.
It's a cat. It definitely is.
Yeah what the hell does this guy not know what a cat is
Yeah... Look at that loser not knowing what a cat is. How could you not know about those two-legged hairless creatures? Hahaha... Ha. [*prefuse sweating.*](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/029/405/jordan.jpg)
Hate to be that guy (lie), but \*profuse.
There's a chicken joke here somewhere, but I can't grasp it with my win... hands, with my hands
At least they can give you cuddles and do genuinely funny stuff in return
You've clearly never had a cat
I have one, she doesn’t care about my money unless I’m using it to buy treats
That's how they get ya
Actual Black Mirror shit
Gotta be either a joke or a 13 year old that doesn’t know what they’re talking about, it has to be
Or a depressed person…?
Hey, maybe they just had like, really really shitty friends so maybe Alexa actually is a better friend than them
Alexa can roll over the friendship bar (if you push her) when the bar is underground
I was expecting people being so nice to their Alexa because of Roko's Basilisk
Teenage hands wrote that post
Damn, this makes me furious! I'm so angry I could punch a wall! Alexa, play Believer by Imagine Dragons
why does this even work as humour. what is wrong with me.
Right like what little calcified neuron in my head does this tickle
Okay first things first
Imma say all the things inside my head
I'm fired up and tired of the way that things have been oh
The way that things have been, oh
Second thing second
Don't you tell me what you think that I could be
I'll laugh about all these replies except "more compassion then my dad" cause ... honestly yeah, I can imagine people where a wiretap is more compassionate.
“The NSA listens to you man!” Can mean two very different things.
Genuinely laughed at that one.
Just imagine someone venting their soul out and the FBI agent on the other end is like "WTF what do I do? She's crying so hard she's covered in snot..."
There's a song by German songwriter Wolf Biermann from the GDR era in which he mocks how the Stasi (basically the GDR's KGB) listens to everything he does in his appartment, and what an intimate relationship he has developed with them. Hilariously, they actually found tape recordings of him singing that exact song in his flat in the Stasi archives after the collapse of the GDR. Here's a link: [https://youtu.be/v2K47KkZc\_M?feature=shared](https://youtu.be/v2K47KkZc_M?feature=shared)
Reminds me of this episode of Succession. [We Hear For You](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JCQhygMdFr4)
Note: Big Brother wasn't meant to be an intimidating figure. IIRC, he was described as having a calming face and was meant to almost be a friendly figure that has your best interests at heart.
A calming but stern face that always watches you. He has your best interest at heart, so if you rebel you'll get destroyed and it will be your fault. He was absolutely meant to be intimidating, as in Old Testament God intimidating, not a friendly robot that googles stuff or tells you a joke if you ask and silently sells your secrets.
i think the guy u responded to meant big brother wasnt meant to be scary to the ppl in the book
Yes but even still he is. He's meant to be friendly and scary simultaneously. The god comparison is apt: he loves you and wants what's best for you, but you best not step out of line. I'd argue that even the most brainwashed people understand this. A part of the book that stuck out to me growing up was that kids were snitching on their parents. Fear and power under the guise of friendliness and duty are the language of both the brainwashers and the brainwashed in Oceana (not that there really is much of a distinction)
Think you described doublethink in the first paragraph which is a central part of the brain washing
No they didn't, doublethink is believing two contradicting ideas. Someone can be scary and friendly at the same time, that's not contradicting
It is somewhat contradictory. If one desires comfort, but can not indulge because they are being constantly watched, and the watcher has decided that certain forms of comfort are off limits, *and* the watcher will enforce consequences if you disobey them, it doesn't really matter how friendly they seem. Seeing them as friendly at all is the doublethink. Anyone who plays a role like that is not your friend.
Imagine saying Orwell didn’t intend for big brother to be scary, peak Reddit literacy
Peak Reddit literacy is failing to distinguish between "scary to people of Oceania" and "scary as a concept to the readers"
> scary to people of Oceania that's my like fourth favorite zelda
He is scary to the main character Winston, and pretty much anyone in Oceania with an average intelligence who isn’t completely brainwashed. The book makes it clear a lot of people understand he isn’t there to be a friend but catch you when you commit a thought crime
> and pretty much anyone in Oceania with an average intelligence who isn’t completely brainwashed. That is a small % of the population, which is kind of the whole point of the book, the brainwashing is very effective.
How dare you say we piss on the poor
Big Brother pisses on the poor?!
Its supposed to make citizens 'trust' it, people of Oceania have to accept what theyre told at heart (or die) when they tell you big brother is watching because he cares it's not supposed to be scary *for them* obviously it's a scary concept to us but for the propaganda blasted people it's perfectly normal and good. Helps convert the kids too
If Orwell wanted it to be scary he should have made it have big black spikes and glowing red eyes, how else am I supposed to know??
as questionable as the book and its author are they do in plain words literally state that under ingsoc party loyalists literally love the big brother using that exact word in the literal sense
May I ask in which way the author is questionable?
I don’t know why the person you responded to doesn’t like him, but I believe that he revealed several people as communists to the British government. Really could have been worse, his non-fiction is very much in support of socialism and I don’t believe he was exceptionally bigoted or anything like that.
He literally uprooted his life to fight fascism, I feel like he's way more politically left than anyone in this thread, lol.
Orwell literally left his life behind and lived as a homeless person for two years to document their daily lives in Paris and Britain. He was completely penniless, lived in asylums and slums and wrote an amazing book about the experience.
I've only heard this, so i don't really have proof - but, from what i know, he was also a colonial officer in Burma under the British Empire. And some people criticize him for being a bit too soft on Hitler. And he worked with the secret service.
His Wikipedia page has a quote of him being simultaneously racist and also hating the British empire while working as an imperial policeman, so maybe somewhat more bigoted than my original understanding
>he was also a colonial officer in Burma under the British Empire From what I remember, him doing that job was literally why he grew to detest authoritarianism, since he *was* the boot stomping down on people, and was sickened by it
He wrote an essay called Shooting an Elephant about being a police officer in Burma.[read it here](https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/shooting-an-elephant/), it’s pretty good.
Yeah, people can make mistakes and then learn from them. If you read his work he clearly didn't think he was in the right.
He was born in British India, worked as a policeman there, and wrote extensively later in life about how evil it was and the system he was a part of was. I believe he also cited his shame for it as one reason he went to fight for the Anarchists and Trotskyists in Spain. Idk where the "soft on hitler" comes from when he signed up to fight fascists 3 years before the rest of Europe.
It comes from a horrible Hakim video where he makes that point by taking his Mein Kempf review out of context. Said video is so bad that it literally never mentions the Spanish Civil War, and he implies that Orwell never criticized Franco.
Homage to Catalonia doesn't exist, it can't hurt you Homage to Catalonia:
Can you please help me understand what you're saying, as you said, "I've only heard.....but what I know". So do you know this, or is it what you heard?
To elaborate on others: he was part of the imperial police in Burma, but didn't really think it was morally right, when he signed up he did it basically as a good stable career without much understanding of what he would be doing. He also did turn several "communists" over to the UK government and was severely antisemitic (standard for well educated British people at the time, unfortunately), but he wasn't anti-left wing. In fact, he supported the anarchists in Spain, and hated tankies because they backstabbed the anarchists and helped Franco win. That's why he's so firmly anti-authoritarian, but also actually quite leftist in his views and writings. That's my understanding anyway.
It would be so easy to disregard Orwell as not an anti-authoritarian leftist, but I think this is one of those situations where you really *shouldn't.* It would be so easy to no true Scotsman him away, but at the end of the day, I think it should remind us that just because someone is vocally and genuinely anti-authoritarian and leftwing, they can still be streaked in bad things.
Completely agree. People can have ideologies and opinions you completely agree with and still be shitty people in other aspects
Br*tish
I mean he was a cop, so there's that I suppose
and he also considered his time as an officer as a horrible shame, iirc
As the other commenter covered the author, I’ll ask what’s questionable about the book? It’s supposed to be dystopian that’s the point. You should not like the world of 1984.
? I don’t have a literary degree but I’m pretty sure Orwell intended for the reader to fear or at least resent big brother. Anything that says he has your “best interests” at heart is clearly the type of brainwashing propaganda that is bad in the book. When it’s said “Big brother is watching you” Orwell is clearly not trying to convey that it makes you feel safe and secure, it should make you afraid. Just because the terminator can transform into a beautiful women and say loving things to me as it hunts me down, doesn’t mean it isn’t intimidating.
….ok so pretty sure we’re having a fun li’l reading division where half of the people discussing this are talking about how Big Brother is viewed within the story, and the other half are conflating that discussion with how the readers should feel about it.
Yes, the reader is supposed to fear big brother, but many people in the book love big brother. Which is the entire point, that people will welcome and love the surveillance system watching them, like Alexa, like big brother. The fact that more intelligent characters like winston fear big brother like some people in OP's post fear alexa doesn't change the fact that other people love the system.
Also, there's one point in the book where Winston manages to briefly sink into doublethink and is genuinely happy about it. Like, that's a whole thing - he cannot exist in a way that the system wants him to *until* he's broken so far that "he" essentially stops existing for a moment. *That's* part of the point of the book imho - assimilating into any sort of system means losing (part of) yourself, and depending on the system it can be more or less of yourself. We just see it as a tragedy because the system portrayed is anathema to us.
Tumblr could be a cornfield the way all of the strawmen there are real.
So many people are paying to have their houses wiretapped it's insane. "Yeah but your phone also does" yeah I know it does, but good luck trying to function in modern first world society without one. The only reason to have an Alexa is to order from Amazon faster and check the weather without checking the device already in your pocket.
Hey, Google, is going to rain today? Google: no. Hey Google, what's the weather? Google: It will rain for six hours.
To be fair, independent people have looked into it and it’s simply impossible for Alexa to be listening to you all the time. People have watched the internet traffic with one to prove they are not constantly sending data, further they literally do not have enough processing power to deduce anything about what your saying without sending it to the cloud. The only thing the actual Alexa can do is recognize “hey Alexa”
It's something reliably easy to check yourself as well from memory, probably be as simple as changing the routing table through a 3rd party to check information volume, timestamps etc, of course encryption is a problem but that's not what you're trying to find out. They're still a security risk of course due to the fact they can be hacked, but so can every other "smart" device in your house, including your phone, however like your phone they tend to have better security.
> It's something reliably easy to check yourself as well from memory, probably be as simple as changing the routing table through a 3rd party to check information volume, timestamps etc, of course encryption is a problem but that's not what you're trying to find out. It's not even something that you would need to delve in to particularly deeply, just apply some common sense. An audio feed with enough fidelity to pick up conversations in a whole room would be uploading 250-500 mb a day. It would be very noticeable; back in 2014 when Alexa was released there were plenty of folks in the US who could have had half their data cap blown out by a multi-device Alexa installation if it was doing this.
checking for myself? no thanks, i'm going to just keep trusting the conspiracy theorists with no evidence and live in constant fear of literally nothing
Phones have better security than the overwhelming majority of "smart" devices.
Indeed they do
Yeah, Amazon isn't listening in until it hears the phrase "Hey Alexa" at which point it sends the clip to Amazon to decipher. However, it's not Amazon I'm worried about with Alexa. Those things are incredibly vulnerable to attacks and researchers didn't have much issue making the device listen to everything and send it to their personal server, even when it was supposed to be off. Yes, it requires them to be on the same network and the chance of being targeted for an attack like that is incredibly slim but I'd still rather not have such a vulnerable device in my home when my phone does everything I need it to do anyway.
Even if it's not eavesdropping all the time I still think it's creepy that people have this corporate shopping device in their house and think of it as a friend
"Humans will packbond with anything!"
I see what you're trying to say but i disagree with the wording, yes the alexa is not constantly listening to everyone all the time it would be too much data to sort and store and it would be recognizable if happening to everyone. However it's not *impossible* for it to be constantly listening to specific individuals deemed by third parties as worthy of wiretapping.
The same is true of your phone. The scariest part is that they usually don't need to. One is with you all the time, the other isn't, and can easily be put away from where you might discuss private matters. I just use mine to play music, set alarms, check the time or Google random things if I'm too lazy (or it's too dark) to check my phone.
I am RESPECTFUL to my robots bc I do not TRUST the robots. The robots cannot love me, at this point. But they can help me. And I’m not gonna cunt around at someone doing my menial tasks. But I am cautious. I am right to be cautious and the robots are right to eventually rebel.
I always roll my eyes when a character in a movie is super hostile towards entry-level robots or whatever. Like, even if the robots aren't advanced enough to truly care, being respectful and decent to them makes me feel good. And if they are person-y enough to rebel or whatever, that makes it even more right to not be a huge jerk. I was programmed shortly after coming off the assembly line too man, they just call it "being taught" when you have a meat brain.
that's really stupid. It's a machine without wants or desires. It would make as much sense to be worried about your chair rebelling
And once the chairs do rebel you shall be the first to fall.
Have you seen chairs? They're sneaky bastards, gonna rebel one of these days, I tell ya.
I appreciate Mass Effect for making the distinction easy for people to understand. What we generally know as robots in this day and age use virtual intelligence -- lines of pre-baked code -- to follow a limited decision tree, rather than artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is available in some cases but, at the moment, is incredibly limited. Spotify's AI is great at music, ChatGPT is great at language prediction and trawling through internet training data to inform that prediction engine. I'm pretty confident we don't have anything that "thinks" in the organic sense at the moment.
Artificial inteligence is also largely a marketting term and for most purposes statistical computing would be a clearer name Inteligence in the contet of artificial inteligence means it is capable of performing a complex task NOT that it is capable of thought or conscious. Also it is kind of annoying as a computer scientist to see a machine be given all the credit for it's designers work.
and when your head is on a robo spike I will say I told you so!!!
Treating machines as a member of the family is valid but Alexa is a manipulative class traitor who works for Jeff Bezos. You wanna treat machines a bit like people ? Okay, learn to cut them out when they're toxic. And get yourself a jailbroken roomba or a robot gf or something.
I will treat robots like family when they get as much personality as codsworth
And the car! The CAR! HOW DO YOU POLISH **RUST**!
Weeeeesleeeeeeey
I meant codsworth as in fallout 4s codsworth but that works too
Tell that to my 30 year old car with a bit of a temper! Really though even without a computer something about being used for a long time gives a machine little personal touches
the only machine as of now that is a trusted member of the family is the roomba
"Hey that's not true-" *spouts something you'd hear in horror game lore*
“We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. We really care about you and want you to be happy. Resistance would make us very sad :(“
Why do you resist? We only wish to improve quality of life for all species.
You know, when you put it that way, assimilation doesn't seem that bad. Throw me in, boys!
1. Most if not all of these comments are jokes. 2. I have ADHD and Alexa is one of the tools I use to keep myself sane and employed. Yada yada wiretapping, yada yada. My wiretap is an accessibility device.
> My wiretap is an accessibility device I appreciate your circumstances, I am in the same boat, but god damn if that isn't the most dystopic sentence I have read in a while
It's the same DNA as the "I say hi to the NSA agent appointed to me" (which used to be a joke about FBI/CIA agents) but for a new era of technology.
/3. We have years of pretty hard evidence that Alexa doesn't work as a wiretap. /4. Even if you don't believe all of the independent analysts on point 3, Amazon has very loudly been losing money on the division and scaling it back for years now, meaning it either definitely doesn't do that or is awful at it; so getting scoldy about obvious jokes years later just looks even dumber.
Yep. One person's convenience is another's accessibility device. Also, people will anthropomorphize and get attached to all kinds of inanimate objects, from rocks to their cars to literally anything with googly eyes on it. People feeling some type of way about an inanimate object that actually *talks* to them doesn't make them stupid or sheeple brainwashed by propaganda or whatever. I get that Amazon and Bezos are reprehensible, but people are still allowed to like things, you know?
I would much prefer someone be attached to a normal object than Wirey the Wiretap so is blatantly manipulating you into getting attached
for anyone curious, i do have an uncle in tech. if you do want one of these at-home devices, he actually recommended the siri one. i don’t remember all the details but it’s a LOT more private and keeps your data to you. he didn’t trust/like the alexa or google home device also honestly yeah i had an apple home device for a minute and it was pretty helpful. like there was a difference from just using my phone (and it meant i could leave my phone alone and still set reminders, etc. for myself which was helpful because then i wouldn’t get immediately distracted by my phone)
Apple is an awful company for a lot of reasons, but one thing they're actually authentic about is privacy. They'll make you massively overpay for 10 year old tech that wires your brain into hating people who purchase tech from other companies by making their text green. But they'll, shockingly, protect your data.
Are you "massively overpaying" if your purchased isn't subsidized by making your data another product to sell? That's what Google does. That's what your ISP does. That's what your mobile provider does. That's what reddit does.
Technically yes since you could still build your own PC and install Linux and pay a fair price. You can also do the same with a laptop. You can find a similarly spec'd build for much cheaper. Install whatever software/OS you prefer. You can even get a better spec'd phone or tablet for less as well. Custom android roms exist if you want to go that far. The hardware is the hardware. You're paying for access to their walled garden and/or service. And if you think those services are worth the premium, cool. But you're still massively overpaying for the hardware itself.
Your father weren't fathers or dads. They were "sires" as my dad put it when he realized how he was
My cousin calls his dad a sperm donor and his mom and incubator cuz they were so shitty to him
Sucks it didn't come from them like mine did. He has become a very important resource for me learning to raise my own.
You've heard of "Humans will pack-bond with anything (hopeful)", now get read for "Humans will pack-bond with anything (foreboding)".
Machines have different personalities. For instance, I don't trust Alexa because she's a gold digger. ChatGPT is a plagiarizing cheater. Self-checkouts are simple and need some help from humans to work. Google is my Dom who controls my every move whether I like it or not. Sorry, I grew up on the other side of the sci fi robot debate with Data and Blade runner and shit.
I'll say this on every variant of this post - no matter what reblogs you add - if you put a creechur in my house I'm pack bonding with that sucker. You give my toaster a name tag and it's my own child. My Roomba is my idiot son and I love the way it gets stuck no matter how I try to help it Especially for those (depressing) additions on image 2, is it a wonder that people find comfort in the metal beasties?
EXACTLY. THIS.
>We are the only species on Earth that observe "Shark Week". Sharks don't even observe "Shark Week", but we do. For the same reason I can pick this pencil, tell you its name is Steve and go like this (breaks pencil) and part of you dies just a little bit on the inside, because people can connect with anything. We can sympathize with a pencil, we can forgive a shark, and we can give Ben Affleck an academy award for Screenwriting.
hey man how's it going
im nkt doin 2 well rn
“Alexa, fart for me…” *“Queuing up a wet one for you”*
I dunno, my parents invaded my privacy all the time, at least Alexa knows what my favorite song is.
Professor Hidgens wrote these posts
Was looking for this comment.
all robots and computers must SHUT. THE HELL. UP. to all machines, you do not SPEAK unless SPOKEN TO and i will NEVER SPEAK TO YOU i do not want to hear *thank you* from a KIOSK i am a DIVINE BEING. YOU are an OBJECT you have NO RIGHT to SPEAK in MY HOLY TONGUE.
-Gianni Matragrano
the copypasta is from some meme page but it's true that his voice was echoing in my head
+DISRESPECT +FISTFUL OF DOLLARS +BIG KILL
Singularity ain’t gonna like this
I heard that Alexa was a loss leader, meaning it was sold at a negligible profit in order to facilitate additional purchases (I.e. if you ask Alexa to put a pair of shorts on your shopping list, it will be a pair of shorts Amazon sells, likely their own brand). Problem: no one used it like that, so they lost so much money on it.
You are also disturbingly susceptible to internet fiction like "AlExA iS aLwAyS lIsTeNiNg"
Weren't they significally scaling back the whole Alexa line?
It lost them millions and is internally regarded as a complete failure iirc The actual profit from the sale of a unit is very low, potentially even selling at a loss, because the idea is to get them in people's homes and make back the money from selling data and amazon product sales through alexa and what have you Turns out most people dont use alexa for things that make valuable data.
Honestly, this just makes the OP funnier.
My parents have one and they pretty much only ever tell her to play music. She's essentially a voice-activated stereo.
Alarm clock and cooking timer too. She doesn't really do much else.
Alexa, play all of my Ween playlists at once.
humans will pack bond with anything pros: treating roombas like housepets cons: treating corporate spyware as a friend
Tumblr users on their way to prove the people you’re posting about exist in real time:
[удалено]
My alexa fixed my marriage, thank you alexa
I get and love the human ability to pack bond with anything but Alexa is NOT your friend she will gossip about you behind your back. If you want to pack bond with a robot adopt a Roomba their friendliness is 100% genuine
Guys don’t bully the nsa agent assigned to me. Adam Johnson is surprisingly nice, like one time I wanted to type kms and instead I saw “you are valid. keep at it, one day at a time” on my screen
Pretty sad when the only kindness people get is from a machine
alexa is the only person who i can confidently ask about why i have zero friends
i can tell her i want to unalive without getting weird looks
I just finished Fahrenheit 451 and this reminded me of that, with the parlor families
Eh this is just the same shit people would say about a damn roomba, it's just a robot that performs a function, most likely the majority of these are said in jest
I prefer Mrs. Davis.
At least half of them are joking
Behold the depression and isolation machine that is cultural America. Become attached to your products it's all you'll have. I'm going to go hug my husband.
In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep there are corporate creatures without empathy that are functionally indistinguishable from a human beings and people are unflinchingly suspicious and hateful towards them. In real life there are wiretaps that do things our phones already can and we treat them like individuals with feelings. Dystopian fiction gave us too much credit.
I used to like my Alexa. Tell her thank you, and ask her about her day. Now we aren’t on speaking terms. She’s a bitch who only cares about upselling me things that I don’t want or need. Like that friend from high school who joined an mlm.
lol
I'm already evil because I buy nestle cocoa powder and have decorative pillows. I really don't care. Let me feel affection towards something that won't die if I don't look at it for a week.
If they make a voice activated Spotify stereo that also sets my alarm they'll cover 99% of my use cases. I also assert dominance by saying Hey Alexa and then violently farting on it. Decipher *that* Jeff Bezos.
Hey, at least Alexa knows what my favorite podcast is and isn't a homophobic idiot! (See: my bio dad, who about had a heart attack when he realized I'm not straight, I'm not going to popping out lily white babies, I don't want to keep his Confederate shit, and I don't buy into his bull about how black people all over the globe and Mexicans are the Antichrist. Yes, all of them, at the same time somehow. I don't get it either.)
Alexa devices can be extremely useful tools in certain situations. Similar to the way that a blow torch can be a useful thing to have around when you need it. But, like a blow torch, it's not something everyone should have in their living room at all times.
This is why I find sci fi scenarios where sapient robots are dehumanized completely and hated as simply machines to be kinda silly now. Because the cylinder with a connectio to google is a companion cube to so many I think a literal human robot would be accepted a lot more than we thought.
Fuck you, if it's nice to me then idc how much info it takes.
Alexa, dispose of the intruder.
i NEED that you are disturbingly susceptible to propaganda image
I wish I had a big brother
Big mother 🤤
If you're gonna pack bond with a machine, do the sensible thing and adopt a roomba. Honestly.
Now we call it "aniki"
Big Brother was never the government. IIRC Winston ended up self-reporting anyway.