Modern Androids
When first reading Mumbo Jumbo, I thought that Hinckle Von Vampton’s idea of using an android and magazine to replace real Jes Grew with something disingenuous to tarnish its reputation was an interesting and novel method. If HVV were to just attack Jes Grew through Atonist essays in his magazine, people could easily brush off and ignore what he is trying to say. But by creating an outrageous spectacle with a talking android, HVV draws more attention and creates “evidence” to back up his Atonist argument that Jes Grew is a terrible and perverted movement that should be gone.
After finishing Mumbo Jumbo, seeing real life versions of Jes Grew and the Wallflower order fighting each other were easy to spot. However, I didn’t pay much attention to the specifics, like the idea of a real life talking android. Once I began thinking about them more, I can say that they definitely exist. In fact, with social media, they have even more potential to spread and misconstrue.
I tried finding some examples of modern day talking androids for this post and found a very blatant one. A Twitter user called Erica Marsh, who claimed to have volunteered with the Obama Foundation, made super liberal tweets in a manner to rage-bait and farm engagement. Conservatives liked to use her tweets to show how insane liberals were. However, Erica Marsh isn’t actually a real person. In fact, the face of Erica is a woman named Courtney who is republican. People don’t know who exactly made the account, but it’s possible that they were a conservative looking to create a talking android of a liberal to paint the left in a bad light. This whole situation is eerily similar to HVV's plan with his own talking android in Mumbo Jumbo.
Nowadays with social media and AI, people have to especially be on the lookout for talking androids whose goal is to profit off of rage based engagement and make certain groups look bad. With social media, it's easier to create a fake persona since all you need are some random images taken from the internet. People don't see the real person behind the screen and can't easily spot a costume like how Papa LaBas and Black Herman were able to see through Safecracker's blackface in real life. I haven't seen any real life examples, but I imagine AI could be used to create videos of talking androids. I've already seen AI being used to draw unappealing caricatures of people. Talking androids are just another aspect of Mumbo Jumbo that can be seen in our world today.
If you want to read more about the Erica Marsh Twitter account:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/04/twitter-erica-marsh-suspended/
Social media indeed creates a wide range of potential for "talking androids" (and it is a funny coincidence that Android happens to be a brand name for an actual smartphone!), and the Marsh example is a good one. There are also a number of incidents in recent years where a white conservative politician or pundit will be unmasked while trying to post in the voice and perspective of a Black person: Dean Browning (R-PA) really took the cake in a quite Reedian you-can't-make-this-up style when he tried a "two-fer," identifying himself "as a Gay Black man" in a tweet where he forgot to sign out of his account and into his fake account (https://www.inquirer.com/politics/clout/dean-browning-twitter-20201110.html).
ReplyDeleteIt's so much easier to make yourself an "android" in the social-media age--we might compare the Dean Browning's outing of himself to LaBas walking up and smearing Safecracker's blackface makeup in the climactic scene of _Mumbo Jumbo_. But what about the androids that *haven't* outed themselves so ineptly? Is it possible that we've been fooled? How would we know?
I love this topic and I really liked the connections you made to AI and social media. It's kind of amazing to me how many parrelels there are from Mumbo Jumbo to really important topics today. With social media there is so much more potential for spreading wisdom and advice and information, but there is also the huge drawbacks of hate filled political debate rather than the substantive spreading of information.
ReplyDeleteIt's so cool how you were able to find an example of this in real life!! (Though like you said, today it isn't as hard to find rage bait from troll accounts). There's so much misinformation online nowadays, basically anyone can pose as someone else and say whatever they want with virtually no consequences. I think that your post was really interesting, you make a great point!
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