(Meta) What's up with the recent influx of posts here and on nostupidquestions asking borderline insane questions as if written by people who have never encountered another human before?

Hello, may I acquaint you with our lord and saviour, Artificial Intelligence?

Edit: That came across way more flippant than I'd intended it to be; I apologize. Yeah, I've noticed it too, you're not alone.

Just like to say that I really appreciate you apologizing and checking your tone, though I thought it was fine! :) the Lemmyverse needs more kind people like you
- Back atcha :)

I think the questions are from bots, testing topics to farm controversy or outrage points. The greater the number of replies, the more likely the topic will be used in a future marketing or agit-prop campaign.

So you get these really stupid, controversial, psychopathic takes that no one should be taking seriously. The point of the exercise is the emotional reaction, the outrage, not getting a serious answer.

I don't know whether to be flattered that they consider Lemmy a serious enough platform to farm responses or be pissed that they have infected Lemmy like they did with sites like Reddit.
- Definitely the pissed one. It costs next to nothing to farm any particular platform via bots, so why not go for anything that might have niche demographics? Destabalizing leftist groups seems to be sort of a goal of certain other groups these days so..

Examples?

Personally, every time I see a “Where did all this racism come from?” type post, I always wonder if OP is twelve years old.

Noticed that as well, it's absolutely ridiculous. But judging by the amount of serious replies most people don't seem to care.

Any examples so we don’t just have to guess at what you and OP saw and neglected to highlight the ones in question?
- This one comes to mind https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/30857370

Everyone's saying bots but I think some of it is human-generated ragebait. Like that person who posted twice like "why did my friend block me" with screenshots of them devolving into crytyping as they tell said friend how stupid they are for being autistic.

(I took that bait, don't judge, it was cathartic 😔)

As for why, I couldn't tell you. Maybe they're not getting enough engagement on Reddit anymore or maybe it's not fun because Reddit already hates autistic people and will side with them. Who knows.

What’s crytyping, I’ve never heard that word before 😅
I would sure hate to be that person, assuming it’s not an alt or someone who’s in on the bait (like their sibling pretending to be the other person)
- I guess it's more of a Tumblr term. It refers to when someone starts typing really sloppily to signify they're having a breakdown.
  I guess it's kind of a mean term but I really think people should walk away from the keyboard if they get to that point.
Oh yeah, that person was banned from my instance 😂
I genuinely can’t tell if that was a bot, a troll, or an emotionally unstable person.
From what I remembered, recent account, no profile picture, barely commented.

Anything with bullet points is LLM

but if it's
exclusively bullets
who can truly say?
- don't listen to this guy, he's a bullet list haiku bot
I use bullet points; they probably learned it from me. Sorry.
I use them sometimes.
Don't hate me because I like Markdown. :(
Pew!
Pew!
Bang! (Switched guns at the end there)

They're trying to sow the seeds of outrage. Do not take the bait.

I’ve noticed it too. I came here because Reddit has become increasingly toxic, with bots of outrage and division thriving there. I really hope Lemmy doesn’t follow the same path, but I suspect efforts will be made to make alternatives to controlled media even more toxic. I’m not sure what the best strategies are to counter this kind of malevolence.

HA HA HA HA. IMAGINE HAVING NEVER MET A HUMAN PERSON LIKE US! THEY PROBABLY DON'T EVEN EAT NORMAL HUMAN FOOD!

Zuckerberg discovered lemmy

Dead Internet incomming.

Hey most people here have never encountered any other human being who wasn't involved in their creation.

Not in school? Kindergarten? Heck, neighbours, people in shops? Not a single one?
- A lot of amerikans are homeschooled or haven’t left their small town. True for some Canadians too.

It's the great slopification

They're all like 7< days old aswell

It ain't recent.

True, just some users are posting more oddly recently

I blocked NSQ because a bot is a mod. I don't see anything particularly odd here. It just seems like people asking general random stuff like real people

We're finally hitting the big time!

Are you by any chance referring to the user who posted stuff like this? (Not from NSQ but they did post there.)

That's so mean! I wish people were nicer about stammers, and speech impediments in general. When I got my first service job, I had a handful of customers like that, and I got a glimpse of how much it affects their daily lives. People got impatient and walked away from customers and hung the phone up on them all the time, they were excluded from everything just because they didn't speak as clearly.
And that's just what I noticed from waiting on customers. If they're friends, why isn't OP empathetic?
- I know 🫂 It’s horrible. You should also read their other posts.
  Either this is a bot/troll or she is mentally ill with no empathy.
That’s the user that keeps asking why their friends don’t like them when they only respond with one worders or all caps, right? Yes, that is one of the users I was referring to, lol
- Seems like a bot or an edgy teen.
- Yes, her!!
  Or maybe I should say “YES.” 😂
omg, that whole comment thread is just so incredibly wholesome. i'm a weirdo too, btw, in case anybody wants to be friends 🤗
- Hello, fellow weirdo!