Today's adventures in hating Gen-AI

[rynling]

This past Saturday, I posted a review of the manga Mushishi on my book review blog. As per my usual schedule, I linked to the review in a Monday-morning promo post on Bluesky (here). I used the hashtag #booksky, which is cringe but sometimes helps these posts connect with people.

My post on Bluesky was quote-tweeted (here) by an #booksky account with 5.5k followers. What this account does, apparently, is quote-tweet posts made on the hashtag with text about the book generated by AI. Is the account making money? No. Is the account promoting anything? Also no.

A friend of a friend recently posted an observation (here) that a lot of people running Gen-AI accounts aren't doing it for any reason other than to watch numbers go up, and that seems to be the case here. But like, why? Why do this?

I suspect that, in the case of this particular #booksky account, there's some sinister underlying purpose involving a study of engagement metrics, which will then be used to train more Gen-AI bot accounts. God I hate this.

Comments

[shinon]

I have no idea what this AI weirdo is getting out of this, but wanted to say that I put a hold on Mushishi vol. 1 at my library after reading this post a week or two ago. I was finally able to pick it up the other day and man, the vibes are impeccable. I really like it. This is the value of thoughtful media reviews by humans!

[rynling]

Happy New Year! 🎍🌟

And it’s so good to hear this. I love how weird and quiet Mushishi is, and I love that you of all people have discovered it. I’m going to consider that my good deed of 2025. 🥂