I wonder how many of my readers are familiar with one or another or all of the chatbots. Every tech company seems to have one now, including Gargoyle. They all have vanishingly dumb names. Naming things has never been the intertunnel’s strong suit. Everything is childish gibberish. I love when websites you rely on for business are busted, and you’re presented with a 404 page that says things like wah wah, oops, our bad! our team of trained monkeys has been dispatched to twist your pixels. This from a business larger than the Dow Jones Industrials, combined, from 1990. And when I say I love it, I mean that if I had a rocket, I’d shoot the web developer responsible into the sun.

My wife and I have anthropomorphized Chat GPT, and call it Chad, and ask it stuff. I’ve been poking around it since its inception, and use it for this and that. I’ve looked (askance, mostly) at the offerings of Facefriends, and Gargoyle, and Bingo Was His Name-o, and the Oriental one that you can supposedly run on your 1979 Texas Instruments calculator. They all suck, or don’t, about the same amount. They’ve mostly been trained by looking at the intertunnel. Then again, so were the Kardashians. It’s not a recipe for clear thinking.

But clear thinking is not on the menu. No thinking is, at least not yet. I’m of the opinion that thinking as we understand it is not possible with a machine. Inspiration isn’t keystrokeable. I’ve always ascribed to the theory that genius is the ability to see connections between very different things that don’t seem to have any connections. A goodly dose of intelligence, which is not related to genius, simply means you might understand what a genius says when he boils it all down for you. Regular smart people don’t come up with the theory of relativity. No bot ever could, because the bots are the Dewey Decimal System, writ large.

We don’t watch teevee (I know, I know what that sounds like. But at least we aren’t vegan or anything), but I know there’s a meme with a not very smart guy thinking he sees connections where they ain’t. Off to Chad:

There’s an image of a crazy looking nerdy guy standing in front of a bulletin board with lots of images and newspaper cuttings connected by yarn and pins, indicating a connection between them that isn’t really there. Can you find it for me?

Chad’s answer:

I can’t search the web for images directly, but it sounds like you’re describing a popular meme or scene from TV shows and movies where a character is obsessively trying to connect dots or create wild conspiracy theories—often shown standing in front of a bulletin board with images, newspaper clippings, and strings connecting everything.

This kind of image is common in memes or portrayals of characters like Charlie Kelly from *It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia*, or sometimes in conspiracy-themed shows. If you’re looking for a specific image, you could try searching for “crazy conspiracy nerd bulletin board meme” or similar phrases. Let me know if I can help further with anything else!

Oops, I forgot that free Chad doesn’t search for images. The paid Chad will. But the search he suggested immediately rendered this. If I logged into pay-Chad, I”m sure he would have fetched it for me:

It is labeled Charlie Kelly, so Chad immediately knew what I was asking, even though I didn’t. Chad is like that.

Chad and his ilk make mistakes. People refer to them as “hallucinations.” I’ve observed many people claiming that Chad, etc. can’t give them what they asked for, even though they ask over and over again. In almost every case, it’s because the average internaut cannot read, write, or spell anything but poorly formed vernacular, slangy English. The Zman, who certainly can think and read and write, mentioned an example of one he’d seen on Reddit or somewhere, where no matter how many times the fellow asked, he couldn’t get the bot to generate a picture of of a glass “filled to the brim.” The redditor just kept asking it over and over, more or less in the same way. I’d seen that very example in several places on the interwebs. It’s always presented as a problem with the bot.

But I doubt it. I could test out my opinion, but I’m too dull and lazy to make the effort. Anyway, glasses don’t have a brim. Hats do. Filling a glass to the brim is a vernacular expression. Bots are literal creatures. An older person steeped in finding stuff in card files, encyclopedias, and dictionaries before computers would know enough to back up a step and ask for a glass filled to the rim, or maybe to the top. The iPhone generation doesn’t approach things like that. They stamp their foot and ask more loudly each time. But Chad’s the deaf, dumb, and blind kid. He can do prodigious things, but he needs to be led to where you really want him to do it.

So Chad, good God, y’all, what is he good for? Absolutely — something, say it again. Chad is good for several things, actually. I’ve coded a dozen WordPress plugins with it. It works, if you know how to kick it when it wanders. But what it’s really good for is avoiding having anything to do with the intertunnel. The interwebs are a very large pile of hot garbage, ablaze in a flaming dumpster of suck. Gargoyle ruined the web five different ways, but demanding that SEO crap is the only thing that could get its head above water in search results is exhibit A.

Chad is based on the supposition that there’s a kind of wisdom in crowds. The internet is very, very dumb, at least when it’s not entirely malicious. But Chad has time to do what you don’t. It reads the whole goddamn thing and boils the whole shebang down into one, more or less average answer. For that, it’s invaluable. It’s a search engine and a dessert topping and a floor wax. It’s way better than Wikipedia, something it swallowed whole, and was still hungry.

So let’s ask free Chad about my favorite topic: Me. The last time I asked it for shiggles, it identified me as some guy I never heard of, an honor I’m sure he can do without.

Question: Can you describe the writing style of Sippican Cottage?

Answer: Sippican Cottage, a blog created by the writer “Sippican,” is known for its unique, conversational, and reflective writing style. The tone is often humorous, understated, and filled with a quiet intelligence. There’s an almost nostalgic quality to the writing, with a deep appreciation for the small, everyday moments in life. The author tends to blend wit and wisdom, often exploring themes related to personal experience, family, history, and the passage of time.

The style is also marked by a certain level of erudition, where the writer can effortlessly incorporate literary, historical, and cultural references, without making the prose feel overly formal or academic. It’s grounded in a sense of authenticity and humility, and there’s a tendency to favor detailed, sensory-rich descriptions that evoke strong imagery. Despite a calm, almost leisurely pace, the writing often carries an underlying current of sharp observation and insightful commentary.

In short, the writing of Sippican Cottage feels both intimate and reflective, blending light humor with deeper reflections on life’s intricacies. It’s a style that invites readers to slow down and appreciate the subtleties of everyday existence.

Wow. So Chad is kind of polite, I think. He didn’t mention the fart jokes. But if that’s the distilled version of what the intertunnel thinks of me, I’ll take it. Now if I can just continue to fool the public, I’m sure Chad won’t come up with any opinions of his own, and ruin the whole thing for me.