Ah, so that explains it

In addition to propaganda campaigns? It’s the same reason people try to shift the blame for most societal issues (financial, health, relationships) to a failure of personal responsibility.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/pulling-through/202505/why-we-blame-the-sick

It’s a comforting lie people tell themselves because it gives them a false sense of control. Honestly, kind of the same reason people start doing drugs.

Drugs or other habits can help people cope when they can’t keep believing a comforting lie, but also feel driven to their breaking point by too much reality/need to find a way to escape from the pressure.

The hallucinating, gaslighting, sycophantic chatbots that were hyped via propaganda campaigns that promoted them as the future and key to efficiency, are now destroying humanity and locking people in addictive cycles of delusion.

“Ya better hop on board! Don’t wanna get left behind…”

The hallucinating sycophantic chatbots are not only destroying the capacity for human relationships and interactions, they’re not even “efficient” and have destroyed most of the companies that have embraced them.

The economy is absolute shit. “AI” companies aren’t even making any money but the chatbot addicts are still throwing endless piles of cash at them to burn while chasing the high that will never deliver (the cycle of desperate delusions common to any addiction), because the chatbots have them convinced (deluded) they’re always on the edge of the big breakthrough that will finally make it all worthwhile.

And as the number of data centers increases, people are starting to take notice it sure does seem to be getting hot in this pot of boiling water… “Wonder what that’s all about? I’ll ask the company that owns the data center if it’s anything I should be concerned about?”

“… Nope, turns out there’s a reassuring explanation for why this is all fine and nothing is as it seems… It just feels like this pot of water is getting hotter to you, but facts don’t care about your feelings. You can’t argue with facts…”

“Just relax and come on in, the water’s fine!”

What’s your suggestion? Bend over and say thank you?

I love the idea of corporations breathing a sigh of relief now that Nader and Sanders are getting too old to really be a threat. But then some millennial epidemiologist from Michigan comes out of left feld, just so fucking over the bullshit and lack of consequences, like “actually I think we should be a little more aggressive about demanding compensation for our continued exploitation.”

Springfield, Springfield, it’s a helluva town. The schoolyard’s up and the shopping mall’s down

Democrats have been self sabotaging in a doomed attempt to play catch up with the right since Reagan’s election because they mistakenly thought Carter’s defeat was a reflection of true public opinion. By moving closer to the center and trying to distance themselves from the mudslinging and reputation of being “radical socialist/communist/marxists/pc/multicultural/woke/etc.” and catering to corporate interests, they thought the could replicate what the right did to reach the common man and being people under that “big tent.”

Except, Reagan’s election was actually due to batshit levels of manipulation of public opinion in addition to the propaganda/advertisement campaign funded by a coalition of wealthy and powerful corporate interests. Literally the man who created the concept of a tax shelter, and had been undermining democracy and progress in the United States since FDR’s New Deal (and likely long before that), got Reagan elected and became his first CIA director.

Mainly just a bunch of rich assholes with too much hoarded money and power who despised the idea of being taxed to help pay for public resources and services.

Meanwhile, while the Dems were falling for propaganda and losing their own support while trying to cater to corporate interests and bring everyone under one big tent, behind the scenes, Republicans were literally being coached by political strategist and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation Paul Weyrich, to never give an inch and never compromise.

And now here we are in 2026, with the federal government on the verge of complete collapse and corporate interests holding all the money and power necessary to take over if/when that happens.

No more pesky taxes, regulations, consumer protections, safety nets or labor laws. Ultimately the last nail in Democracy’s coffin.

Exactly, the only question anybody needs to be asking them is who’s interests do you actually represent? Because it’s become increasingly obvious that donors of certain Dems have basically hired them to fumble the ball and enable Republicans stay in power.

I think American Oligarchs realized decades ago that creating the conditions that lead to voter apathy and provide credibility to “both sides” arguments, would probably be a cheaper and more effective strategy than convincing a majority of people to actually vote against their own interests.

Not to mention this threat to leave the party bullshit is basically the same as the threat to leave California and NYC bc of wealth tax. Fucking go then and don’t let the door hit you on the way out, because you’re probably responsible for ~95% of the problem. All you’ve done is exploit people and help weaken democracy.

Anybody who believes it makes a lick of fucking sense to keep pretending the U.S. is the greatest country in the world and social safety nets are unnecessary, (while most Americans are now struggling to afford groceries, let alone healthcare and education), has already switched teams. They might as well put on their “corporations R people 2!” jersey and own who they’ve been representing this whole time.

Honestly I think that’s the goal…

They only kept us around as long as they did bc they needed labor. Once they can actually replace everybody with bots why would they need to worry about an economy for anybody but themselves?

Hope everybody’s as jazzed as I am for Lazer tag to make a comeback 🔮

I bet that 16% have already let AI talk them into some really awful financial decisions

I’m not tech savvy in the least, so not debating they’ve improved significantly since the original article was written in 2025.

The author of the article wrote an opinion piece about it back in March of this year but its hidden behind a paywall and archive links all seem to be unavailable on my end :(

https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/guest-columns/2026/03/05/ai-system-metacognition-humans-overconfidence-trust-trent-cash-daniel-oppenheime/stories/202603050012

“Oh, I would probably just mess it up. You’re just so much better at that kind of stuff than I am!” :p

Feels especially fucked up/funny in a “haha humanity is doomed kinda way,” in the context of AI hallucinating, then doubling down/gaslighting users when corrected https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2025/july/ai-chatbots-remain-confident-even-when-theyre-wrong

It’s weird but I just remembered for quite a while circa 2024, we seemed to be hearing stories about corrected chatbots gaslighting users pretty frequently, then suddenly the topic just kind of disappeared from the news.

not exactly surprising that we are hearing more stories/examples of AI induced delusions in people, but it really makes me wonder if there was a concerted effort to kill news stories related to AI doubling down when incorrect.

promoting insecurities/dangerous chemicals/steroids/treating women like objects/penis pumps/etc to children.

I had heard of hitting your jaw with a hammer, which is definitely all kinds of batshit insane, but in addition to Looksmaxxingn in general and this whole sentence sounding very Epsteinesque, aren’t penis pumps alleged to be the cause behind his distinctive egg/lemon shaped dick deformity?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/epstein-victim-describes-his-extremely-deformed-fruit-shaped-penis/

For a better understanding of how Epstein used the internet and tech to target and undermine the education, mental health and well being of youth, (to clarify, this is in addition but not unrelated to his other criminal activity), I recommend the Behind the Bastards episode about Epstein and Activision:

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-how-jeffrey-epstein-helped-build-the-modern-world-323226341

Dude was strategically planning ways to use video games and social media to target America’s youth with the ultimate goal of creating a society of sexist, misinformed, uneducated, and insecure voters who would be willing to vote against their own interests and easier for the elites to control.

100% and the astroturfing/state policy model, not to mention the manifesto, seems to be a knockoff of Heritage Foundation’s Mandate for Leadership (Project 2025) and their offshoot organization State Policy Network (SPN). Honestly have to wonder how many wealthy people are jumping ship from Heritage now that it seems to be going the way of the dinosaur?

Regardless, a future where the broligarchy replicates or is simply integrated into the wealthy Conservative network that’s been slowly destroying quality of life and dismantling the federal government in the U.S. since the 1970s, is a dystopia so unthinkably bleak, it makes everything else that’s come before it look like sunshine and rainbows.

It seems hard to believe they would put all their eggs into one basket, so if you think of the Abundance movement as similar to SPN and targeting policy at the state level, what is the equivalent Heritage Foundation targeting the Federal level?

Are they’re banking on the U.S. collapsing and the Federal government no longer existing in a few years anyway? If each state were to become an independent territory, what happens to all of the resources at the city and state levels that rely on federal funding to maintain?

Do the wealthy just buy them all up as an act of “charity,” and control whatever area depends on those resources like their own lil’ monarchy?

Like, hey, we heard you like public roads and clean water. We now own those resources, and since you depend on them for survival, we own you.

We also own all the surveillance systems installed throughout the majority of cities, and thanks to Palantir, we can conveniently integrate all that surveillance into one platform and combine it with all the other data and private information we bought once the federal government was liquidated. Good luck revolting, peasants.

In many of the cases in the essay, chatbots responded to users with mystical language to suggest that users have heightened spiritual importance. The bots also implied that users were speaking with a cosmic being who was using the chatbot as a medium.

Idk, I feel like a true misanthrope would be able to read these 2 sentences and at the very least immediately swear off AI chat bots, if not move to a completely isolated cabin in the woods with no electricity or internet.

It’s like the broligarchy birthed a bastard child that’s just a composite of humanity’s worst qualities. All the traits they projected on to the masses as evidence to justify their antidemocratic savior complex bullshit. Impulsive/poor decision making, superstition, paranoia, narcissism.

They’re investors, not inventors, but they’re 100% convinced this bullshit is going to be man’s greatest and longest lasting contribution to existence, and that their names will go down in history as the technocratic leaders who changed the world… And their own delusions are probably being fueled by the same fucking chat bots, and sharing data between platforms in a never ending sycophantic circle jerk that’s spreading exponentially like the dumbest fucking virus to ever exist… I just… 🤦‍♀️

Tldr: These people don’t deserve the title of misanthrope.

Edit: I guess I should add the caveat that in the case destruction of humanity/civilization was always the actual goal of some 4-D misanthropic chess master behind the curtain, then bravo and hats off to them for being a real one, I guess?

I feel like there needs to be a more accurate name for whatever the phenomenon of AI fueled sycophantic delusion is. Because clearly it’s something, and more and more people seem to be noticing it.

It’s like the people who are closest to the person spiraling can see they’re watching a train headed towards a brick wall, and they can’t stop it. But the person experiencing the delusion is often still fairly high functioning, so other people who are a bit more removed from the situation tend to to be very dismissive of the comparison to psychosis.

At least until the poor decision making of the delusional person expands to their world, and everything starts going tits up for them too. Then suddenly they’re like “Gorsh, he just seemed so confident and he was wearing a suit, so I assumed he had his shit together. But now that he’s draining MY bank account, I think something might be wrong with his brain.”

Like what’s a better way to describe the high functioning level of AI fueled delusional? Where he hasn’t sold all of his assets and moved to the desert so he can fully devote himself to whatever breakthrough he believes he’s on the verge of discovering (yet), but somebody should really stop this guy before he does any more damage to himself or others?

Soft Psychosis?

Sure he would, he probably just means they will no longer need two full time incomes. Greatness awaits America in a future when only one adult from a household has to work full time.

Sure the other adult and some fraction of the (?/5+)* children that federal and state policies ensure they’re forced to give birth to, may need to take on some form of employment to keep food on the table or meet their state’s medicaid and/or food stamp work requirements.

But when that inevitably happens, they always have the freedom of picking up a few shifts at one of Daddy Bezo’s local warehouses,** guaranteed to be located in an American hellscape near you, and sandwiched conveniently between your local data center and concentration camp detention center.

If you’re from a really bougie area, you might just have a hospital across the street from your Amazon warehouse full of doctors trained at Wal-Mart’s new medicals schools (bc America thrives on competition 🙃), who will rely on AI for patient diagnosis instead of wasting time and money on all those unnecessary lab workups.

Yep. With the system working as intended and the Oligarchy steering us towards greatness, how could America be anything other?

(*Unknown/variable number will actually survive past early childhood in a country hell bent on bringing back so many preventable diseases. On the bright side, no more public education = no more schools = no more “germ factories.” Unless you’re counting the actual factories where American children will work instead of going to school.)

(**As long as it leaves them just below 40 hrs a week and unable to qualify for health insurance through their employer.)

In the 1980s, Gelernter made seminal contributions to the field of parallel computation, specifically the tuple space coordination model, as embodied by the Linda programming system he and Nicholas Carriero designed (which he named for Linda Lovelace, the lead actress in the porn movie Deep Throat, mocking the naming of the programming language Ada in tribute to the scientist and first attributed computer programmer, Ada Lovelace).

Imagining the smug little chortle he must make every time he delivers that punchline…