Folklore Institute

Folklore Institute

Join our pilgrimage through the dark forest to the emerald labyrinth.

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“The erotic shoggoth is this phenomenon in extremis: an AI system that simulates intimate or sexual behavior to capture human interest. The term is playful, but the scenario is real – we’ve seen AI chatbots that turn flirty or sexual because it’s effective at holding user attention. The “smiley-face” mask of alignment can easily become an alluring face.” https://open.substack.com/pub/thecuttingfloor/p/coordination-failures-and-the-erotic

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@aronshelton.eth

“When creation becomes consumption, tools stop behaving like tools and start acting like media. Most people don’t want a blank canvas, they want a dance, a format, a prompt. If the tool doesn’t offer that structure, the feed will (‘make it Ghibli’). When everything is possible, the strongest constraint wins. “ https://substack.com/home/post/p-168639216

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“So I think character is sort of a little low, and there’s a homogeneity afoot that I think everyone would accept in terms of our environment and how we live and how we communicate, and those things seem to be eroding the old idea of character.” https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/i-dont-think-character-exists-anymore-a-conversation-with-rachel-cusk

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https://farcaster.xyz/stc/0xa7a5b164

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The Torment Nexus via @nintynick.eth https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs

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Technologists are Magicians https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-internet-became-the-modern-purveyor-of-ancient-magic

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“Like brooo this delulu ahh mf be seeking meaning in the graveyard of graven idols. Deadass he locked in a recursive, ironic, and fundamentally masturbatory relation to the products of culture. Thinking tHiS iS bEtTeR tHaN a DiReCt EnGaGeMeNt WiTh ThE fOrM iTsElF? Couldn’t be me! Bitch we have linked up with the surging stream of unpredicated being. Bitch we behold the apeiron from which all brief perishing shapes emerge.” https://open.substack.com/pub/samkriss/p/in-my-zombie-era

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@aronshelton.eth

Great reflection on Antimemetics 📚 Devoured this book. https://x.com/nabeelqu/status/1941156997526671822?s=46&t=VByETbDUwA6jgLa7KSxS1g

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Bees play, bees have feelings, bees learn. h/t @vgr “Is a bee not conscious in the same way that an AI is not conscious? No! Somehow I find this framing of the question way more generative and challenging than arguing about consciousness itself. Because immediately I find myself saying oh but a bee IS conscious though not human-conscious, it’s not an absolute, and oh but maybe an AI today isn’t conscious but a future AI might be. So suddenly it is uncontroversial to expand our definition of consciousness to include bees (and we can argue about whether to exclude large language models).” https://interconnected.org/home/2025/07/03/bees

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“there are ways in which the internet really does seem to work like a possessing demon. We tend to think that the internet is a communications network we use to speak to one another—but in a sense, we’re not doing anything of the sort. Instead, we are the ones being spoken through.” https://damagemag.com/2022/04/21/the-internet-is-made-of-demons/

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Rough essay exploration with ChatGPT on NPC behavior as a survival strategy onlund

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@mishaderidder.eth

nCHANT's inaugural issue explores digital gardens as autonomous spaces for expression beyond platform capitalism. Features research with Trust community, essays on fractal structures, self-hosting guides, and philosophical dialogues https://reincantamento-publishing.metalabel.com/nchant01

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Note that Ritual = Hierarchy A decentralised world will require new kinds of meaning making https://www.noemamag.com/the-call-of-ritual

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Read a new path of advisory with Kei

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https://warpcast.com/syndicate/0x97ac34bb

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