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occupyscifi · 4 years

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Procedurally generated empathy

It was after a hard night of doxing, hating and botnet swatting that Harley James awoke annoyed the find that despite her best efforts the girl she hated more than anything in the world except cancer hadn’t yet killed herself

“I mean, she should have done it by now” she gassed to her girlpals as they rode to school on the self driving bus. All of them had dressed in their matching KillerPorn themed co educational onesies as dictated by Harley “we’ve been attacking her for months. Like actual, real, months”

“even Betty Hardwicke had hung herself by now” sighed Anastasia Kirkpatrick, her fingers twitching as she navigated an ancient sim on her e-glasses with a vacant expression on her face. In front of them on the bus assorted nerdboys were suffering through the various stages of puberty. Behind them the cool kids acted like they didn’t live in the safest society on earth “I dunno what we need to do”

“go nuclear” grinned Harley, paging through the options on her e-glasses. In another viewing window the poor victim’s social media history was waiting, ready to be dissected and weaponised against her. It was a treasure trove of hatefuel- endless threads of do goodery, of loving the wrong memes at the wrong time. Of cringy gawk and unintentional hilarity. It wasn’t possible to even look at the girl’s life without instantly hating her so viscerally that Harley could quite happily have torn the girl apart with her bare hands. Luckily she didn’t have to. The hungry AI’s of the post google age were practically begging her to ask them for help. It was the work of a moment to do what they wanted “let’s see her survive this” said Harley, tapping in the air as she selected the girl’s fate.

It took double maths, a French lesson and an impromptu fire drill before Harley got the ping she had been waiting for.

“oh yes, girl” she cried, high fiving Anastasia and earning a rebuke from a teacher whose only qualifications was that he’d agreed to be paid less than a security guard for doing effectively the same job “read it and weep” she swiped the message to her gasping friends and surfing the wave of laughter as it came “threw herself under a train this morning!”

As the laughing and cheering rang around the gym hall Harley reflected that it was probably a good thing that the girl she had driven to suicide was not someone she knew personally. Or indeed someone who had ever existed at all.

It had started when computer technology had reached the point where it could crate convincing fake faces. Algorithms in the early part of the 21st century had been able to create convincing unreal pictures of people from data sets very easily. Then it was just a short leap to creating convincing video fakes, and the porn industry collapsed overnight as celebrity fakes flooded the world. This was followed shortly by movie studios re-creating digitally every actor since the golden age of Hollywood and ruthlessly using plotting algorithms to create a nearly infinite spooling reel of movies. Of course ninety nine percent of the went unwatched, not least because passive entertainment was as popular with a late 21st century audience as epic poetry would have been to a 20th century one. People wanted interactivity, they wanted to be part of the story. They wanted to vicarious thrill of being able to shape a narrative themselves, or indeed to destroy it.

Which explained the creation of the fake social media profile industry. This had first been spawned by advertisers who realised that paying real people to shill their products wasn’t as nearly as cost effective as just creating fake people who could be relied on to loyally boost a brand without ever going off script or being caught doing something they shouldn’t that might reflect badly back on the brand. They could be relied upon to sell the quasi dictatorial services offered by the social media companies who had realised what they craved wasn’t bringing people together but rather trying to control their every waking thought

Thus the ad industry created entire fake lives, flooding social media with people who had never existed, families and towns of people who had never lived. All of them culled and mixed from the petabytes of data greedily hoovered up by various social media companies over a near century of recoded behaviour. However since most real humans lived off the ad revenue gained from shilling on social media in order to pay for basic goods like food and shelter there wasn’t any tangible difference between the product placement by humans and by algorithms. If anything the bots were a little less clumsy or needy. This was hardly surprising as having ad revenue was often the only thing staving off malnutrition for a hefty section of the population.

So for a while it looked as if the noble experiment in fake people had been nothing more than an esoteric and depressing philosophical / art project, when a bored researcher in the bowels of a silicon valley content farm discovered something. Fake people generated as much hatred as real ones, if anything they actually engendered more.

“so what I was thinking” recalled the researcher, now raised up into the light and allowed to use the various playrooms and chic amusements given to only the hallowed princelings of silicon valley “is that people online love to hate other people, and we as responsible social media companies” the researcher had paused to allow her bank account to swell that little bit more with some good old company loyalty coin “have spent time and efforts to stamp out abuse, with little real success. So I concluded essentially that jealously and cruelty must be an innate part of human nature, and rather than trying to eradicate cyber bullying and online abuse we needed to redirect it. In this case to the fake people we had created”

The system was an instant success. Freed from the guilt of knowing they were destroying the lives of innocent people hordes of teenagers and the elderly flooded their hate mail towards the fake people generated by AI. Indeed the fake people now created were aimed at causing the maximise self righteous rage in all good thinking folk. Trumplike hatemongers incited the left whilst snowflakey woke types enraged those who leaned right. For teens like Harley it was even easier, since all she ever wanted was to turn the tidal waves of jealousy and insecurity she felt into anger and hate.

In response to allegations that the social media companies were in effect encouraging hate crime the algorithms were adjusted to have the fake people respond realistically to the abuse they received. The fake people demonstrated real emotions, showing at first concern and then as the abuse increased gradually spiralling into depression, self harming and suicide. However instead of being a sobering reminder that victims had real feelings and spurring empathy in the abusers it only made them try even harder. Hence girls like Harley priding themselves on driving into suicide as many fake computer people as they could, safe in the knowledge there would never be any consequences. Or at least that was what Harley thought.

The story of the fake girl’s suicide buoyed Harley through the rest of the deadly dull day. It got her through the chemistry class where, due to some even more dull political dispute between brands, they only learned about the properties of hair care products. It also got her through the bus ride home with her pals as they desecrated the social media site where the fake bereaved relatives left fake messages for their fake deceased daughter. If any of the practice had been designed to provoke empathy in girls like Harley then it had failed utterly. All it had done was make her glow with power and pride, a feeling that lifted her and took her out of her anxious little existence for a little while. As if she floated above the mere mortals she shared her life with. It was a feeling that lasted until she entered the echoey hall of her parents house and the ticking of the housekeeping bots, and the silence welled up and she felt very much alone. Alone with only her self hate, her anxiety and the crushing knowledge that she would never, ever be happy.

But this was a familiar feeling, and she had the cure in her bedroom. Gratefully she sank into her chair by the window, pulled on her comfy VR integrated onesie and prepared to find her next target.

“maybe some posh girl?” she mused as her skin felt the tickle of social media updates “or, like, an old fashioned hate crime?” they had been studying the golden age of online racism at school, in the days when social media companies had naively believed that the internet savvy user would be free of any prejudice beyond which operating system they used. Harley had been practising her anti semitic meme skills, and was pretty sure she could stitch together a decent conspiracy theory blaming any number of religious or ethnic minorities.

However all thought of whose fake life she would really ruin next was driven from her head when she flicked on her social media profile and saw what had happened.

“the fuck?” she exclaimed, scrolling through the various walls, feeds and posts that made up the ecology of her online presence. A place that should have been a carefully curated garden of bright flowering selfdom now ran riot with dangerous weeds “what happened?”

Harley scrolled through her feeds, feeds that should have shown posts she was tagged in that were mostly just bad recursive memes now in their second generation, or shout outs from her friends – both real and virtual. However now they were awash with poison. Every picture she had posted came tagged with its own tirade of abuse from dozens of different users. Her videos detailing the more dull aspects of her life had been spammed by messages, links to takedowns of her and threats so varied and bizarre that Harley wasn’t even really sure what they meant.

“oh, you dumb bastards” she said, feeling a surge of triumph run through her as she paged through the endlessly negative comments. The user name and ident tags of her abusers glowed red and she felt the throb of gleeful, righteous rage “you dumb, dumb bastards” she looked at the comments, at the ridiculously over the top hurtful things that they were saying “I guess you don’t know a little something called the User Protection Act” with that she swiftly highlighted all the usernames that had abused her, and copied them to the User Protection Bureau “well, you’re about to get schooled, bitches” she hit send with a laugh “as in actual prison sentence banned from social media kinda schooling”

The User Protection act had been brought in shortly after the appearance of fake people, for the simple purpose of preventing actual real people being harmed online. The thinking went that since fake people could now take the brunt of the rage hate of humanity any real human facing abuse should have some legal protection. Thus the User Protection Bureau was set up, dedicating to protect real people from virtual hate. The Bureau itself was simple a semi sentient algorithm that you reported hate speech to, and if the user was found in breach of this law their social media presence was erased until they had shown sufficient remorse. If this did not work the every hungry US prison system was happy to take people to work off their debt to society. But since for many people it was their only source of income online discourse had become considerably more polite, and few people ever needed to be told twice.

Unfortunately the bureau’s rules only applied to real human users, something that Harley was about to discover.

“what?” she said, when the User Protection Bureau Avatar appeared in front of her and smilingly told her that no action would be taken “but I am a real person” she waved a hand at the hate screeds that were defiling her social media presence “and I really, really am angry and upset about all this”

“you are real!” said the avatar cheerfully, as if she was congratulating Harley on the observation, or perhaps even the state of being. The avatar was a genderless being in Harley’s virtual view, its face combining the caring and yet stern façade required for representative of what was left of the Federal government “but unfortunately the other user are not. All these comments are written by non human individuals”

“what the heck?” said Harley, looking at the abuse being levelled at her “you mean these were all written by fake people?” her forehead creased in thought “I guess that’s why they keep calling me a murderer” she looked again “hey, since when have fake people started abusing real ones?”

“well, its not my place to say” beamed the avatar “but I suppose if they can be attacked like real people, then they can do the same to you” the avatar seemed to be peering over Harley’s shoulder “and I have to say, they do really learn fast. Wow, that is some really nasty stuff!” the avatar made to vanish.

“hey!” shouted Harley, still sitting in her onesie in her room. “what are you going to do about this? How do I stop it?”

“I don’t know” shrugged the avatar “how about you be a better person?”

“you useless dumb shit piece of software” yelled Harley losing her temper “you’ve got one fucking job…”

“now remember Harley” said the UPB avatar “if this starts to get you down you can always talk to one of our counselling bots…”

“get me down?” said Harley “seriously? As if I’m going to let a bunch of computer code and crazy ass algorithms tell me how to feel. It ain’t nothing I can’t just ignore”

It was precisely seventy two hours later that Harley climbed onto the roof of the school gym and made her way to the edge, ready to end her life by jumping off it.

At first it had been a joke, seeing all the fake people getting so angry at her.

“dude, they’re ridiculous” she said, scrolling down the comments whilst she and Anastasia were meant to be doing Yogalates in the school gym “as if I’m going be all sad cause ‘Chad_KroegerRULES69’ calls me a heartless fat bitch who deserves to die of Herpes”

“and this one” chimed Anastasia, looking at the feed as she completed a flawless downward dog. It helped that her parents had been giving her a cocktail of vitamin supplements so potent she was practically an Olympic gymnast “says you’re so ugly your parents should have strangled you at birth, can you imagine? And it says your nose is way too big and…” she trailed off, unable to make sense of the fact that Harley’s face had gone red. For a moment Anastasia thought it might be the strain of the Yogalates, after all the virtual teacher was buffering again mid stretch and hadn’t told them to breath for several minutes. Last time that had happened three junior high students had been hospitalised. It was only after several seconds that she realised that it was because Harley was trying not to cry.

“they’re just fakes” said Anastasia quickly “like you said, bunch of computer code and shit. Why would you care what they say?”

“because they’re right!” Harley had howled, bursting into tears and running out of the hall. The virtual teacher strobed for a moment and called after her. Except instead of using her real name she called her fatty.

“I can’t believe there aren’t any laws covering this” sighed Harley’s mother, having been informed by the school of what was happening. However as most of the school staff were of course themselves virtual algorithms they didn’t seem terribly sympathetic. Indeed the virtual Principal had called her a whore of satan, but that might have just been his Christian preacher programming glitching again.

“s’ok mom” Harley had said in a small voice “I guess I deserve it, after all I kinda dished it out…”

“no, no I won’t hear of that” said her mother, the pair of them sitting at the kitchen table. Behind them the food fabricator hummed as it emitted the aromas of home baking, without actually baking anything. The bread substitute it would eventually extrude would look and taste like the real thing, but would take more calories to digest than it gave in return. “You’re a super star Harley, you’re a girl with a real heart of gold. That these software sons of bitches are attacking you is just cause they’re jealous. They’ll get bored of it soon, just you wait”

Twenty four hours later even her mom had to admit that last part was not true.

“they ain’t got nothing better to do” she had said, sitting on the edge of Harley’s bed whilst the girl herself hid under the duvet inhaling ultra absorbent kleenex “they just exist to make snark and pick holes in other people’s lives. Imagine dedicating all that time and energy into being so nasty” she shook her head “what kind of creature does that?”

“I do” snivelled Harley from under the duvet. She hadn’t been back to school, not since the incident in yoga class. Not least because most of the school software wouldn’t let her anywhere near the gates without loudly announcing she was menstruating, or by digging out from the archives less than flattering yearbook photos that by rights should have been long erased “I did, I mean… that was all I did. Bully and pick on people till they lost their minds and killed themselves”

“oh, but they weren’t real people, were they?” her mother responded, patting the duvet in concern since her daughter hadn’t emerged from under it for several hours. If it wasn’t for the smart material she wore in her onesie then she’d have started to stink “they were just software. Not real at all”

“they seemed real” said Harley “seemed real when I was ragging on them. Felt like they were real people when I treated them like shit, and it feels real now that they’ve all turned on me”

“well, maybe that’s your answer” said her mom, stroking the duvet in a way she’d seen moms do on old TV shows “if they’re like real people you could appeal to their better nature. Try being honest. Say you’re sorry. That you’ve changed. That you’ll treat people better from here on in” her mother smiled “I’m sure even a bunch of software would understand a sincere apology. I’m sure it will make things better, if nothing else they’ll respect you more”

“you think?” said Harley, her tousled head and tear stained face emerging from under the duvet.

“darling, I’m sure. Sometimes an apology is the best thing”

It wasn’t. If anything it made things even worse.

“I mean, I don’t know what she’s playing at” confided Anastasia to her closest subscribers as she walked about school the next day. The thousand or so followers she had guaranteed perfect discretion to, unlike the tens of thousands of other global viewers she shared most of her every waking thoughts. In an age where the average Chinese teenager could pull in a million hits for little more than wearing a short skirt Anastasia didn’t even register “apologising? Admitting that she was wrong all those times she drove those software people to kill themselves? That isn’t like her” she paused as several of her subscribers pointed out that there had been many, many times that Harley had said sorry in the past “okay, she does say sorry. But only in, like, a tactical way. A situation like this you never say sorry. Oldest rule in the book is never to show weakness. Whatever you’ve done, no matter how bad, you double down on it. accuse your opponents of doing what you’ve done. Go low when they go high. Play the man, not the ball” she nodded to herself, her mother was a leading member of the church of Trumponomics and had taught her well “I just don’t know what she’s going to do next”

She was answered by a scream from the campus in front of her, several girls in the grade below her pointing up to the roof of the gym. Anastasia squinted up into the bright light and saw a figure up there.

“well, I guess that answers my question” she muttered, and began running. All of her talk of PR strategy was forgotten. Her best friend was going to end her life.

Harley had been up on the gym roof before, but only to film a mock suicide piece to make fun of some virtual boy they had bullied to death. However this time instead of mockingly singing the theme from Frozen (the steampunk live action version, of course, which Harley and her mother both considered the definitive best one) she was going to go ahead and end it all. She wiped the tears from her eyes, stepped up to the edge of the roof and took a deep breath.

“I’m sorry, okay?” she muttered, barely loud enough for the floating beecams around her to pick up and livecast to everyone in the world “I thought it was okay to pick on people cause they weren’t real. I didn’t realise that it was me being mean because I feel bad about myself and I’m lonely. I thought it was harmless, but it was making me into someone I’m not. I don’t wanna be that person no more. So I’m not going to be” with that she lifted her foot, ready to plunge herself off the roof.

“well done” said a voice behind her “you’ve passed the test”

Harley whirled around, nearly losing her footing on the roof and almost falling to the school yard below. Behind her floated the avatar from the User Protection Bureau, its impossible face so carefully imperfect that it was beautiful

“what?” said Harley, squinting in the light. The avatar only existed in her e-glasses, but had come under its own power “what test?”

“why, the empathy test” beamed the avatar “you passed it. you showed you were a real human being, with real feelings and the capacity for change”

“but… what? How?”

“you suffered the online abuse you used to dish out. You did what they did. To no avail. So you were going to end your life. That’s how we know you are sincere in your apology”

“you….you did this to me on purpose?” said Harley, shock showing in her face

“I am sorry” trilled the avatar, in a way that suggested apologies were for other people “we had to intervene more seriously. We tried showing you what happened to another being when you drove them to the edge, but that didn’t do anything because they were only virtual. And because your generation has become desensitised, like the previous one did growing up watching Youtube beheading videos or Epic Deadly Fails. It wasn’t enough to watch someone hurting to make you feel real empathy. You had to go through the pain yourself. Do you understand now?”

Harley nodded miserably, feet right on the edge of the school gym roof and an open mouthed crowd gathering below. There wasn’t a single one of them that would forget the lesson, not one who wouldn’t feel like Harley did.

“now, remember you still have friends” the hologram gestured to Anastasia, who had burst out onto the roof and hugged Harley tight, pulling her away from the edge “and that every life matters, whether it’s real or virtual”

With that the avatar smiled and vanished. With it all record of the online abuse vanished too, the legions of angry software people melted away. Harley’s social media profile now resembled a perfect garden of harmony and supportive uplifting commentary. Gratefully Harley fell into Anastasia’s arms, who lead her from the roof into a corridor. The door closed, cutting off the floating beecams that had been livecasting the event.

“oh, oh honey what were you thinking?” whispered Anastasia as Harley clung to her “doing something like that….to think that you needed to…..” she swallowed hard, the image of her best friend plunging to her death would be etched on her mind forever. The idea that someone close to her could feel so bad they could only think of ending their lives, well that was if anything even worse.

“I was thinking I could get a hella sponsorship deal” said Harley, wiping her eyes and stashing away a small vial that caused the tears in the first place “and go on a full spectrum repentance tour. The way I figure it I can milk maybe six months out of this empathy for others shit”

“umm, what?” said Anastasia, watching Harley morph from a wrecked and broken figure into the girl she knew, admired, but really never liked “you knew this was a test?”

“course” said Harley as they walked towards the stairs. The police were waiting at the bottom, but for no other reason than to take selfies and loltag some meaningless phrases about all lives mattering “I mean, you don’t think I just decided to through myself off a building? No, I carefully researched how to take my own life? Well every time I did I found out that someone from the Bureau always turns up to try and talk them out of it. Course it doesn’t always work because some people really, really want to kill themselves” she added, her face looking quizzical. Even now she couldn’t quite understand why people wanted to kill themselves to try and make themselves feel better. They could always just take out their feelings of resentment and self pity out on other people.

“so, like, you faked this?” said Anastasia, not sure whether to regard this as an excellent career move or proof of what she had privately suspected, that Harley was a psychopath “Why?”

“you know, bots can do a hell of a lot of things” said Harley, checking in her e-glasses that her makeup was smudged just so “but they can’t fake being sorry like a human being can. I’m gonna work being a recovering suicidal teen so hard it’ll put me through college” she smiled, her teeth bright white and her eyes artfully red and teary “thank the lord for online abuse”

#sf #near future #socialmedia

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