Tressie McMillan Cottom

Hello.

I am easily convinced to quickly reshare any sort of funny man on the street content.

There was one of a guy saying something that I thought was very funny in a way that I found hilarious.

I shared it very quickly.

This was Instagram, I'm pretty sure.

But something in my gut said that was too funny.

You know, it was too perfect for me.

And I went back and rewatched it and then caught the sort of unnatural emotion on the face, which I think is funny.

for the time being anyway, is still a tell for AISlop.

And so I unshared it so that I wouldn't participate in the AISlop economy.

But my defenses are much lower when the content is funny, which I suspect is true for all of us.

Can you describe what that emotion was?

Well, one, I felt tricked.

So there's that sense of betrayal.

And then there was also, if not shame, certainly a little chagrin.

If all people, a person who studies and teaches and thinks about and writes about digital technologies and our authenticity crisis and affect and emotion and all of that stuff, the idea that I could have gotten gotten was a little, you know.

Oh no, there's no way that we can become more savvy.

I think one of the things that people certainly in my world who think about the digital space and the social world are pretty much in agreement about is that this is not a problem that developing the right skillset is going to solve.

As Emily points out, everything about the affordances of digital technology, meaning what the app or the tool allows you to do, how it sets up and controls and directs your attention, is designed to overcome pretty much anything that we would train a person to do.

So Web 2.0, for example, and certainly Web 1.0, we would say to people, right, you check the person who is sharing it.