Simulacrum

Unable to decide if I’m more frustrated by being attended to by a chatbot, or having my technical issue actually resolved by a chatbot (yes, talking to you, Substack, you oddly efficient thing). In theory, we’re sitting at the unnerving point of struggling to discern whether or not the being at the other end is human or not. Then again, perhaps everything we know about online interaction, with its diminished capacity for empathy, mutual understanding and basic decency, has prepared us for this point.

Social media has been the ultimate training ground for the inevitable future, in which our capacity to dehumanise our other is now a bizarrely apt first principle for most interactions. They’re probably not a person, right? I can imagine, one day, begging someone at the other end to believe that I’m a human being. Maybe I’ll be trying to convince myself the same. I could of course, be the fine tuned simulacrum of the man you once were, you once knew, down to the finest detail.

What’s the difference, one may ask? I guess if you had to ask, perhaps you’re already too far gone, no?