flâneur

Ed Harris would like to connect with you on LinkedIn

benn.substack.com · 2,562 words · saved by 1 readers

Here’s something I’ve wondered for a while: If you became famous on a social network that was full of bots that were programmed to treat you like an A-list celebrity, would you use it? Like, you post a single emoji and a selfie on Truman, the new social network from Meta that looks indistinguishable from Twitter or Threads. It gets three million likes. Not artificially, where the like counter goes up on its own; three million different bots, who are also interacting with each other, actually click the like button. You post a dumb joke; it’s shared 800,000 times. You wade into politics; everyone starts talking about what you said; important people are debating each other in your replies. Someone makes a remix of your post; four million people watch it. Your posts become memes; trends; hashtags; a verb. You get thousands of new followers, every day. People start mentioning you in conversations that you aren’t a part of; they want your opinions; they wonder what you think; they develop a

Here’s something I’ve wondered for a while: If you became famous on a social network that was full of bots that were programmed to treat you like an A-list celebrity, would you use it? Like, you post a single emoji and a selfie on Truman, the new social network from Meta that looks indistinguishable from Twitter or Threads. It gets three million likes. Not artificially, where the like counter goes up on its own; three million different bots, who are also interacting with each other, actually click the like button. You post a dumb joke; it’s shared 800,000 times. You wade into politics;…

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