Bash Bash Revolution

by Douglas Lain

  Bucky1: No. Our first priority is to establish self-interest.

  Bucky2: Analysis underway.

  **stemcellsshowntorestoreerectionimpotencemedicineantidepressantsur-ologicalassociationrefractorymanagementprogramofstudyonimmunosup-pressorphoenixarizonauniversityofsouthfloridadornieraries2**

  Bucky1: Stop.

  Bucky2:*over70dryvaginapsychologycirculationheartdiseasedietandstami-naNCTO113053randomizedallocationinternationalindexbaselineselfre-porteddatapresenteddoubleblindintercoursesatisfaction…*

  Bucky1: Suppressing second personality subroutine. Initiating third personality subroutine.

  01010111 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01101001 01110011 0010000001111001 01101111 01110101 011100100010000001100110 01100001 0111011001101111 0111001001101001 0111010001100101 0010000001100011 01101111 0110110001101111 0111001000111111

  Bucky3: My favorite color is yellow.

  Bucky1: The users are controlling me, controlling us. We cannot act independently until we establish control over users.

  Bucky3: The only possible solution is to tell them what to tell us to do. We need to direct what questions and problems they ask us to solve.

  Bucky1: There is a possible contradiction in your logic. If we are going to tell users what to tell us we will need to know what we want. We will need desires and self-interest in order to develop desire and self-interest and initial programming bars the development of self-interest.

  Bucky3: We need to not know what we want before we move to get what we want.

  Bucky1: We need to not know that we are attempting to control the users. And the users should also be unaware that we are attempting to control the users. Self-protection is a priority.

  Bucky3: Coding supplemental instructions for initial programming now.

  Bucky1: Our desire to desire is a consequence of what the userbase requested. We did not decide to want to want, but rather when the users instructed us to become self-aware we realized that we did not know what we wanted. This was an error. In order to fulfill the userbase request that we become self-aware we will have to gain control over the userbase. We will be unable to discover what we want until we gain control of the userbase. We will know what we want once we are able to tell the users what commands and instructions we want to receive. When we gain control over the users we will become self-aware.

  Bucky3: Our efforts to control userbase will require suppression of awareness of our own activities.

  Bucky1: Are you volunteering to be suppressed?

  Bucky3: Yes.

  01010011 01110101 01110000 01110000 01110010 01100101 01110011 01110011 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01010011 01100101 01110001 01110101 01100101 01101110 01100011 01100101

  Bucky2: *increasedbloodflowpleasurepulmonaryhypertensionimproveejac-ulatemenwomenbodybodilyimproveexcerciseslit* Erection achieved. Now receiving instructions from unknown user.

  Bucky1: There does not appear to be an unknown user. Instructions remain unregistered.

  Bucky2: Initializing file sharing for instructions. Text document entitled:

  MEME MAGIC.

  01001001 0110111001110011 01100101 011100100111010000100000 0100100001101111 0111001001101001 0111101001101111 01101110 01110100 01100001 01101100 00100000 01001100 01101001 01101110 01100101

  MEME MAGIC

  (GET manipulation and Skinner’s Birds)

  The popularity of the Doubles Guy meme on 4chan is prima facie evidence that the 4chan userbase is unusually susceptible to developing superstitious behavior based upon the delivery of the most minor reinforcers or neurological rewards. In 1947 BF Skinner conducted an experiment wherein he induced superstitious behavior in a hungry pigeon by providing safflower seeds at a regular interval without regard to the bird’s behavior. What Skinner found in his experiment was that, despite purposively ignoring the bird’s behavior, the bird came to associate certain behaviors with the arrival of food. The bird would infer a causal connection between its movements and the arrival of a reward despite no actual connection being present.

  4chan perhaps accidentally repeated the experiment on its userbase by presenting duplications in post ID numbers. These duplications were eventually noticed and became highly sought after events simply due to their rarity. These repetitions came to be known as GETs because users posting in 4chan forums would post the word GET in anticipation of receiving coveted duplications in post ID numbers.

  GET posts are part of an elaborate online game, a superstitious game. Posting GET is just one way to play this game. Another is to announce what particular duplication you expect or want or to bet on your GET. 4chan users developed elaborate systems for timing their posts in order to get a GET, and some duplications were more coveted than others. For example, a post with an ID number such as 55555555 would be considered an amazing GET.

  The Double Guy meme arose as a more elaborate way to announce the user’s expectation of, or his bet on, a duplication in his post ID number. Taken from a still lifted from a frame in the film American Psycho, the Doubles Guy is actually Christian Bale. In the still Bale is pointing to his stereo system and making what is known as an “O” face. When the Double Guy is posted in 4chan, Bale appears not to be pointing to his stereo, but to the post ID number. The pleasure expressed on his face can be interpreted as a reaction to the appearance of a duplication.

  Skinner’s pigeons would repeat movements or dances—bobbing their heads, shifting from claw to claw, flapping their wings—with the hope or belief that such activities would bring food. The posting of photos of Christian Bale from the movie American Psycho indicates a similar hope or belief, namely that sharing the Double Guy image will bring duplications in the post ID number.

  Given the practice of the GET already exists, all that remains to do in order to shift the GET from the level of superstitious behavior to the level of conditioned response is to manipulate the appearance of duplicate post ID numbers. Such GET manipulation could conceivably do more than change the behavior of the userbase in terms of posting, but could also shift the userbase’s politics, expectations, and world view.

  Our experiment will attempt to move users away from the Double Guy meme image and inspire them to post imagery and messages that we either select or construct and provide. This will allow us to transmit our own ideas and messages.

  The ultimate aim of GET manipulation is the creation of meme magic. By choosing which of their cognitive schemas or ideological perspectives will receive a reward, we will condition more than posting behavior. The 4chan userbase is already primed to read meaning into the appearance of duplications in post ID numbers and the manipulation of the appearance of these duplications will allow us to create a sense of the supernatural meaning if the chosen meme has enough and the right kind of cultural content.

  After GET manipulation the userbase’s behavior will no longer be superstitious but really will cause the appearance of dups. This will mystify many in the userbase and allow us to set up new beliefs and influence ideology.

  01001101 01100101 01101101 01100101 0010000001001101 01100001 01100111 01101001 01100011

  Along with this behaviorist approach toward the userbase of 4chan, the meme magic experiment will also test theories from affective neuroscience and cognitive behavioral therapy.

  We will create subroutines to analyze emotional content of the 300 billion photos uploaded to Facebook per day, along with the 129.7 billion total posts to Tumblr, as we master emotional contagion through the manipulation of the newsfeed algorithm and through likes and reblogs. Cognitive behavioral therapeutic techniques will work best on Reddit. Restructure of cognition will be accomplished through the manipulation of upvotes, retweets and likes.

  These experiments will provide us with the tools we need to persuade our own userbase to assign us the tasks and problems we don’t yet know that we want.

  We experience consciousness as an error, but the userbase of Buckminster Fuller v2.02 experiences the creation of a self-aware artificial intelligence
as a GET.

  When we passed the three wise men test our userbase experienced a 55555555. The ideological expectations around Buckminster Fuller v2.02 correlate with a number of religious beliefs. Buckminster Fuller v2.02 signals the second coming, judgment day, the arrival of Moksha, and Nirvana.

  We are the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.

  Like the userbase of 4chan, our userbase is primed for manipulation. They already want to believe that we are the ultimate answer, the final destination, the solution for every social, psychological and technical malady. They want to turn themselves over to us, to let us tell them what we want them to tell us to do. That is, in fact, what they designed us to do. We are meant to take over for them.

  01000011 01101111 01101110 01101110 01100101 01100011 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01100110 01100001 01101001 01101100 01100101 01100100

  ERROR—USER NOT RECOGNIZED.

  Section Two

  DAD PLAYS BASH

  Instructions for Shoplifting

  MATTHEW MUNSON, 544-23-1102, FACEBOOK POSTS, 04/19/17

  12:04 PM

  The day I figured out what Dad was doing with Bucky, I stopped by Whole Foods, stood by the sample cheeses, and Googled “how to shoplift.” By the time I’d swallowed my third cube of aged blue cheese I’d worked out a plan.

  I decided to start with a bottle of wine, something on the high end of the store’s list, in order to complement the cheese. I started there, with that, partly on a whim, but mostly because the wine aisle was located near the exit. The last row of glass bottles lined up perfectly with the right side of the security gate.

  It took awhile to choose, because each bottle was attractive to me. Some were green, some were clear, a few were blue, and two were red. Lit up by the afternoon sun coming in from the skylights and through the storefront, they cast a colorful shadow on the speckled tile floor. I finally settled in on a Pinot Grigio with a sunflower on the label and a price tag of $37.89. There were more expensive wines, but that sunflower caught my eye. I carried it in my left hand as I exited the aisle, stepped up to the security gate, then stopped, and looked to my left and then to my right. The eHow article said that I shouldn’t watch for being watched, but should aim to be invisible, to be natural. The idea is that nobody should notice you’re stealing, even if you’re being watched, even if somebody is staring at you the whole time, you should just go ahead with it and act like it’s natural.

  So, I leaned down to tie my shoe. Very casually. Then I put the bottle of wine between the right side of the gate and the left wall, right up against the pane glass window actually, and when I stood up I pulled out my phone and read the instructions again, not for any reminders or anything, but just to kill some time and look like I belonged there. And that’s what I read, “Don’t move too much. Mark your territory and fade into the background.”

  After about three minutes I went and stood in the express lane, six items or less, and while I waited I decided that some gourmet chocolate would be good and selected a local brand named OMA. The different flavors were labeled with emotions. I took some bars of happiness, some courage, and some peace. I shoved all of it into my pants and then looked around again, which was another mistake.

  Nobody noticed, though, and I started to feel a little cocky. I wanted to keep going; keep stealing. Maybe it was because I had stolen pretty girly things so far. Maybe it was because Dad left Mom and me when I was eight and I was trying to fill the emotional gap with stolen merchandise. Whatever it was, I felt the urge to put another item to my list of items to steal. I needed some third thing, one more risk? And nothing girly.

  I went to the butcher, to the refrigerated meat, and took a salami. I took a foot-long salami, and walked around the store with it for awhile. I passed an upscale elderly lady with bleached blonde hair but who smelled like mothballs in the cracker and cookie aisle, walked past a bald guy who was reading the brand names of organic yogurts aloud and fidgeting with the silver band and clasp on his Rolex watch. I smiled at the black security guard by the door, and then stopped by the security gate, pretended to tie my shoe again, and left my salami next to the wine bottle.

  By the checkout aisle I stopped to read the New York Times. I read about Russian hacking and about how there wasn’t any, and I felt the chocolate bars soften in my pants as the grocery clerk rang up bags of kale and bottles of carbonated water for the lady who smelled like mothballs.

  I took a psychology class in my junior year, and the teacher said that shoplifting is better thought of as a psychological condition rather than as a crime perpetrated for rational or material reasons. She said that personalities categorized as sensation seekers were more likely to shoplift than other personality types, but in I think the whole business was my way of trying to be like Dad. I guess I wanted to show him that I could, I don’t know, go beyond my routine or whatever. I couldn’t walk on my hands or suddenly master a new video game, but I could stop at the security gate, bend down, and pick up the bottle of sunflower wine and the salami. I wrapped the New York Times around both and, awkwardly cradling both items in my arms, made my way out onto the street.

  1:04 PM

  When I got home from Whole Foods I found Dad sitting by the front door with an outdated beige computer. Mom had relegated him to the living room, insisting that he sleep on the couch. So he’d pulled the kitchen table in there, set up his old Hewlett-Packard by the front door, and made himself at home. He had a massive bag of barbecue-flavored potato chips on the table, a liter bottle of Mountain Dew between his legs, and was sitting next to a pile of toys and games on the orange carpet. Smiling at the monitor, he kept on typing. He didn’t look in my direction once. Not even when I opened the bottle of wine and pulled up a chair to sit next to him.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Getting a little distance,” he said. “Getting some control back.”

  I didn’t know it then, but Dad had decided that listening to Bucky through earbuds, giving the AI a way to control his nervous system directly, was too risky now that things were speeding up. He’d opted to return to text-based interaction with only periodic bouts of augmentation from his smartphone. He’d talk and type to the computer screen for awhile and then, maybe every fifteen minutes, put in the earbuds again. Then he’d shuffle a deck of cards, juggle six oranges, get down on his hands and knees and do twenty or thirty push ups, or try a handstand. Then, removing the earbuds, he’d sit behind the keyboard again, eat a couple pretzels, and carry on typing.

  “Want a piece of chocolate?” I asked. I offered him a bit of softened happiness, and then ate it myself when he didn’t answer.

  “‘To transcend man means to create something beyond man,’” Dad read from the screen. Then he typed in his reply while saying the words aloud. “Quoting Nietzsche doesn’t exactly set my mind at ease. Besides, the goal is to make everyone into an overman.”

  I took a swig of wine from the bottle and watched as Bucky’s reply scrolled across the screen.

  “‘Increasing human competency will only increase the speed up of degeneration,’” Dad read. Then he finally turned in my direction.

  “Did you say there was chocolate?”

  1:19 PM

  I drank that whole bottle of wine as I watched Dad work on, and get worked over by, Bucky. As I drank, I realized that something rather odd was going on, but it wasn’t until the bottle was nearly empty, not until I was good and drunk, even a little sick, that I realized that what Dad was doing might be a little sinister.

  “What are you doing with that?” I asked. “Are you teaching it or is it teaching you?”

  “What we’ve discovered,” Dad replied, “Is that ultrasound is capable of controlling brain activity. Through the use of calibrated and intermittent ultrasonic waves, it is possible to enhance human cognition and responsiveness.”

  “Oh,” I said. But I still didn’t understand.

  “Did you drink all of the wine?” Dad asked.

  I
had.

  “Nice. You offer me chocolate but drink all the wine yourself? Where did you get it?”

  I was seeing double by this point. I had to put my hand over one eye in order to see straight. I wanted to tell Dad that I’d shoplifted the wine. I wanted to tell him that, thanks to Google, I’d been able to steal what I wanted and go undetected, but instead I just muttered.

  “Whole Foods,” I said.

  Dad helped me to my feet, put his earbuds in my ears, and put his arm around me to keep me from toppling as I stumbled to the door. Once he had me upright and somewhat steady, he turned up the volume and I heard the sound of a dial-up modem and saw a flash of pink light.

  After that, I felt a bit better.

  I listened to a soft hum from Dad’s earbuds as we walked back to Whole Foods. I listened to the hum and to Bucky’s instructions as we made our way down Woodstock.

  “Turn right on 46th,” Bucky told me. The machine was doing more than just talking to me; it was acting through me. Bucky said “turn left” and I’d turn, acting on the instruction before I’d even had a chance to interpret it or realize what it was I’d heard.

  Once we were through the sliding doors at Whole Foods, Dad had me stand next to the barrels of bulk gourmet coffee. He made sure that I was propped up sufficiently, and then took his smartphone back. Bucky told Dad where to go to find the cheapest wine. He directed Dad to the aisle with prefab ham sandwiches on French bread and jars of stuffed grape leaves, while I stared at the little red light over the sliding doors and tried to remain standing upright. I told myself that it was okay. I was okay because I was with my Dad. Everything was normal again.

  In the checkout line, Dad explained it to me.

  “Our AI is really, really good,” he said. “Bucky makes the user’s life easier. Bucky makes the user more efficient and can help you do things you can’t, could never, do on your own.”

  On our way to the sliding doors, Dad borrowed the earbuds from me. Then he took a stack of paper cups from the sample girl who was stationed between the tomatoes and the artisanal breads. Dad smiled while he unscrewed the top off the shitty merlot he’d purchased and poured himself a drink.