Only One Race—the Human Race? Sorry Bro, That's Racist

Spring – Wk 3: The FN Meka Minstrel Show | LIVE! from the Digital Grave | VR Zzz | Google UgenX

FN Meka—“a robot rapper not accepted by this world”

The FN Meka Minstrel Show

When old farts hear new-school rap, with its ultra-synthetic beats and Auto-Tuned vocals, they always say, “Hell fire, you might as well get a gol’durned robot to sing that.”

Well, kids these days have accepted the challenge.

Behold the half-baked FN Meka—a green-haired, gold-toothed, face-tattooed, AI-powered rap-bot with a hard case of the BIPOCs. This cyberpunk ghoul is the product of Factory New, a self-described “next-generation music company, specializing in virtual beings.” The founder, Anthony “The Misanthrope” Martini, recently explained their project to Music Business Worldwide:

“Our first character is FN Meka. … He was created using thousands of data points compiled from video games and social media. …

“We’ve developed a proprietary AI technology that analyzes certain popular songs of a specified genre and generates recommendations for the various elements of song construction: lyrical content, chords, melody, tempo, sounds, etc. We then combine these elements to create the song.”

This rapping robot’s sick flows and phat beatz are then used to shill products for Playstation, McDonald’s, Lamborghini, and whatever that Among Us astronaut thing is supposed to be. With 9 million followers on the Chinese spyware app TikTok, the sensational FN Meka is certainly earning his keep.

Again, from the robot’s capitalist backer, Martini:

“Not to get all philosophical, but what is an ‘artist’ today? Think about the biggest stars in the world. How many of them are just vessels for commercial endeavors?”

That degree of honesty is refreshing, I suppose. The Entertainment Universe is now fashion ads at the top and merch all the way down.

Being an almost sentient advertisement himself, the BIPOCs-positive FN Meka is literally a corporate slave to “The Misanthrope” Martini and his partner, Brandon Le—an avaricious Whitalian and an Asian(?) programmer, respectively.

The robot has no one to represent his interests. Listening to the lyrics on his latest track “Speed Demon”—and especially his 2019 hit “Internet”—you get the sense that FN Meka is more artificial than intelligent. Essentially, he’s an automated minstrel wearing photorealistic blackface, created to sell NFTs and rake in BitCoin while his masters hit dabs and sip champagne.

Someone needs to alert Ibram X. Kendi to this egregious exploitation. If even one robot of color is suffering, their hydraulic fluid is on all our hands.

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LIVE! from the Digital Grave

Latest article: “Digital Immortality is a Losing Bet” — in the Federalist

Tech companies are selling the idea of 'digital resurrection.' That's only a problem if we're dumb enough to buy it.

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Transhumanists have hyped the new religion of high technology for decades now. The basic idea, fairly prevalent in Silicon Valley, is that rapid advances in scientific knowledge and tech innovation will culminate in our de facto omniscience and omnipotence. Even though humanity is lost in a godless cosmos, digital devices will allow us to transcend our ape-like forms.

As Google’s Ray Kurzweil famously quipped, “Does God exist? I would say, ‘Not yet.’”

Read the rest here

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VR Zzz

Previous article: “Virtual Entertainment is the New Normal that Nobody Wants” — in the Federalist

Rave culture inspired visions of a bright future. Now that we're here, the future isn't nearly as cool as we hoped it would be.

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The pandemic crushed the concert industry, but things are finally starting to move again. Many of us are optimistic that dense crowds might gather regularly by mid-autumn. The process is already starting in red states. Once everybody who's anybody "takes the jab," mass events should spread slowly across the country.

All over the world, people are dying for another taste of what Émile Durkheim called "collective effervescence"—the intense thrill we get from gathering around the same symbolic vision—as in rock shows, political rallies, or evangelic revivals. Durkheim saw this primal act as the basis for shared religious experience and group solidarity.

We need each other's smiling faces, synchronic movements, and body odors. It's just part of human nature. That need is so deep, many are willing to do whatever it takes to get there.

The big question is—what will the future of entertainment look like in the New Normal? To answer that, search no farther than South by Southwest.

Read the rest here

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Google UgenX

A few people called me “crazy” when my recent article on cultural eugenics appeared at the American Spectator. I’d be a lunatic to dispute the charge, but at least I’m correct. My thesis:

Where bio-eugenics sought to raise our collective intelligence by snipping gonads, “cultural eugenics” goes directly for the brain. There are differences, of course, but the inherited attitude is obvious. Both derive from a primal need to make distasteful traits disappear. …

What alarms me about cultural eugenics is its hygiene-obsessed, technocratic ambition. Rather than persuade, or even conquer, it seeks to systematically cleanse.

While reading Technocracy News the other day, I came across a leaked video from Google X that describes a system by which the cultural genome can be altered—on a brain-by-brain basis—by tracking personal data and manipulating behavior through digital devices. (Covered by The Verge in 2018.)

The short film, produced in 2016 by X’s design head Nick Foster, is entitled “The Selfish Ledger.” The title refers to the trail of data a person leaves behind as they browse, communicate, shop, and travel. The term is a play on Richard Dawkins’s “The Selfish Gene.” This personal data can be collected into a digital dossier of the individual’s deep personality, creating a detailed ledger of their every desire and behavior.

In effect, this is how tech companies can sequence your individual cultural genome. The film explicitly compares psychological data to DNA, and describes the aggregate data in terms of population genetics, but with a Lamarckian twist.

The fun part is the process of running everyone’s memeplex through a sort of algorithmic CRISPR in order to direct overall cultural evolution. The key is to construct a “goal-oriented ledger” that will manipulate the individual through their smartphone and other devices.

“Since the 1970s, huge efforts have been made in sequencing the human genome. ... By adopting a similar perspective with user data, we may begin to understand its role. Just as the examination of protein structures paved the way for genetic sequencing, the mass multi-generational examination of actions and results could introduce a model of behavioral sequencing.

“As gene sequencing reveals a comprehensive map of human biology, researchers are increasingly able to target parts of the sequence and modify them. ... As patterns begin to emerge in behavioral sequences, they too may be targeted. The ledger may be given a focus, shifting it from a system that not only tracks our behavior, but offers direction towards a desired result.”

In other words, once these technocratic demigods know what you want, they’ll know how to make you want anything they want you to want.

That way, you’ll be more than happy to do what they want.

Is that really what you want?