Tag Archives: Ethics

Oopsies, Boobies & Course Corrections

Dear Readers,

We live in strange times where someone may buy a vibrator for tapping a hamster rather than for—ahem—perfectly innocent guilty pleasures. And ChatGPT can go on a rampage and generate blisteringly hateful… well, hate speeches instead of generating gluten-free cookie recipes. In short, you have lions laying down with the lambs and lambs shanking anything that moves. Anything that looks like it could be gentle fun only turns out to be more creepy and violent than originally anticipated.

All that preamble to say that we’ve arrived at a rather momentous decision… well, momentous for us and probably yawn-inducing for anybody else. Still, we feel that we must pester you about it because we like being annoying. It’s our thing. We are the kind of duo that puts a slavish amount of effort into our writings. We even spend an ungodly amount of hours looking for the best words—ALL the best words—to put into said writing, and we wreck our very brains for the coolest titles. We’re a sick pair, we are. Truly sick in the head.

But even with all of that, there was a point where we foolishly decided that this wasn’t enough and that the addition of wicked cool pictures to our deliberately chosen words would bring us more attention. Naturally, we preferred human made art wherever possible (yes, we still believe that Tony is a human being), but often we would choose the path of least resistance and use AI generated art instead. It was fun for a while, and even seemed pretty danged awesome, but this later mutated into a rather unexpected burden because… well, we just needed to get a visual something, a visual anything, for every upcoming post. And not to mention our growing awareness of the ethics—or lack of—swirling around the production of AI art. That got us wondering if we wanted to be perceived as art thieves in the online space or as the creative geniuses we like to pretend we are. We felt this cognitive dissonance growing inside us like mould on a fungus cake, but lumbered on through the months just following the same old path because we felt it was what worked best for us.

But the time has come. When we began to discuss this, we were surprised to find how closely our visions of unbolt.me’s future aligned. So, we decided to go back to how Unbolt Me used to be, nothing but a gaggle of words and a paucity of pictures on a (borderline racist) white page! You, Dear Readers, didn’t seem to mind that before, so we’re hoping that you won’t mind all over again. Yes, we wouldn’t mind if you didn’t mind. That’s all we’re saying.

During the coming days, we are going to make a spring cleaning (though it’s summer for Tati and winter for Tony… hee hee hee!) and get rid of all the AI generated stuff on Unbolt Me. After this, we’ll add ‘This is an AI free site!’ to our header, and you can be assured that all the shit and fuckups that remain will be purely our own. Consider us the Amish of the blogosphere, if you will. But without beards, bonnets and the mandatory noonday prayers.

Anyway, that’s all we wanted to tell you. We’re going to have a cup of tea and a lie down now.

Toodles!
Your Tati & Tony

P.S. And, yes, we added ‘Boobies’ to the title just to get your attention. 😉

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2024

Tumblevision #22

Ethics & Progress

The cost of progress is always someone.

by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2019

How Ghosts are Made

Death is supposed to be the last, great refuge for troubled minds. From ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and into the big black. It’s the blessed relief of personal extinction. The hidden regret and all-too-public shamings that cluttered up your fretful, spluttering half-life finally get snuffed forever.

But can those things ever truly be extinguished? Perhaps not really. Perhaps they simply lay with your rotting corpse, waiting to be unearthed all over again. It’s probably some gravedigger that does it—a sick sadist with a muckrake and an agenda who drecks through your spell of days like it’s a top priority WikiLeaks scandal that the entire universe must know every last gasp about.

So why does it feel like the universe already knows? Why the nagging guilt no matter how bone free your closet might actually be?

Your social media accounts don’t magically self-destruct within five seconds of you stiffing it. Those secret dick and clunge pics don’t clean up after themselves either. And those passive aggressive status updates you so artfully tailored for maximum jabbiness aren’t fooling anyone—least of all that one person who must never be named for fear of mutual friends finding out you’re just a bitter, judgemental prick.

The internet is the new universe, and it’s watching your every move like the silent, voyeuristic, omnipresent predator it is. Instead of looking out, we look in, and so does it—right inside to our collective core. And while it may have begun life as just another straw god we’ve fashioned for ourselves, this is one straw god that’s grown legitimately and malevolently all-powerful. The internet has the genuine capacity to not only destroy lives but also to completely unmake them.

That isn’t a boon for the cause of social justice by the way—not when you have pernicious shame-baiting disguised as entreaties for ‘correct’ ethics and behaviour. It makes me so mad. I hate the Twitter bullies, the Facebook assassins, and the faux progressives who are just as petty as the next person. An individual’s life can be cherry picked then ripped apart in the kangaroo court of misinformed opinion. Rest in peace? More like rest in pieces! And meanwhile, the self-righteous wolverines of ‘integrity’ continue to parade their brand of alleged egalitarianism within their echo chambers of uncritical acclaim.

“They never knew me.” That’s the nub of it. It’s the one thing we can all truthfully say. No one ever bothered to try to understand. They took a little snippet here, they took a little snippet there, and then decided these snippets were all there was to know about us. Never mind the rich, inner animateness we had going on. Egoists never care for bosh like that. They have no regard for any of the hopes, fears and innate humanity we may actually possess. All they need do is to poke their noses into our private affairs, sans context, and usher in complete ruin—all to declare another someone a moral failure.

So, yeah, this is why I’m still here. I cannot dissolve in mindless repose while this shit is going on. I cannot lie because they cannot let it lie. And what they say hurts me. It hurts those closest to me. The mutual backslapping sanctimony of those serial dogpilers keeps me tethered to this wretched mortal cliché. Yeah, I’m so fired up about it that I even left my cosy grave to go and buy myself a bible today. Me, a ghost, buying a ‘holy’ book! I shouldn’t even be here. I’ve got better things to do than to exist. I’ve had my time.

The internet is just the universe of our modernity, and god is… well, he/she/it hasn’t fully been discounted yet, as much as the human race might wish otherwise. God is the eternal poltergeist that haunts the darkest corners of our minds, a narcissistic tyrant who won’t let go, who displays a rapey kind of ‘love’ that keeps on taking until all that’s left is the detritus of hollowed out ghosts.

I’m going to burn this bible, god. That’ll show you, you spectral thug! I’ll rewrite your Wikipedia page, exposing who you really are, then lock it down so that the evidence cannot be removed or tampered with, and remains viewable for all time. I’ll shame you yet, though I no longer believe in your existence!

No, really, I don’t.

Now, please, just let me lie.

by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2018