Over the past few months, I’ve been seeing an awful lot of this crap on my Facebook feed. Some days it seems like literally every other post will be some weird AI-generated image, with text reading “Why don’t pictures like this ever trend”, and #ScarlettJohansson and #BeautifulCabinCrew hashtags.
Here are a few examples.
The big ass semi-truck covered in Old Glory. A popular variation is the semi rolling down the freeway with thousands of flags waving from its bed, many with the wrong number of stars and/or stripes on them.
There’s the weird religious imagery. Some of these will have hundreds of comments, many of them reading simply, “Amen.”
There’s the wounded veteran sitting in the middle of street, saying “Today is my birthday, I just want a wish.” If you look closely on many of these, the nametags appear to be written in Klingon.
Then there are the pics that are outright fascist fantasy, like this one with the five-legged lion.
So, has anyone else’s Facebook feed been inundated with this garbage? What are some of the weirder posts you’ve come across?
Yes. My feed has also been getting tons of AI garbage. Mostly architecture related images of homes or buildings that don’t exist or fake natural wonder locations that don’t exist either. Not sure what the point of them is. Feels like it’s part of some weird social experiment.
I actually joined a Facebook group that shares these bizarre photos. I love em! It really is like a weird social experiment, and they’re just so stupid I can’t look away.
And I can’t believe how many times you get ten dozen rubes posting “Amen! ” in the comments.
My recent favorite is a pic of a kid who made a dog out of sand at the beach. The dog has fingernails and the kid has another dog’s face growing out of his knee. And yet so many people commented with words of encouragement for the kid, saying what an amazing young man he is and how creative and special and yada yada yada.
I have not had any of this. My Facebook presence is very small, mostly limited to a dozen or so former co-workers and a few other people. Having a fairly low level of experience in and use of Facebook, I’m not understanding how these posters get their stuff into your feed?
And many more that have come and gone over the past couple of years, becoming more sophisticated with time. Someone comes up with a prompt that produces interesting results, other people copy or modify or parody it for a time, then move on to the next idea.
As for the responses, you can bet most of the short ones at least are bots or paid comment farms.
Because Facebook shows you not only people you follow but also public posts that their algorithms think you might possibly be interested in based on the type of things you say or share and the type of things your Facebook friends say and share, and if you click on one of those posts out of curiosity Facebook serves you more similar material because you seem to have shown interest.
Posts get that a lot of interaction are more likely to be added to your news feed. These bazaar pictures are less likely to be scrolled past. Not only will FB rank the post higher based on likes, shares, and comments, but they will also use the amount of time the image stayed on the screen. Even if you don’t directly interact with the post, if you look at that post longer than other posts, that post will be ranked higher. If the slop gets longer views, then it gets pushed out more and more people post slop to help their account rank. And if you look at the post longer than other posts, FB thinks you like that kind of post and will add more of it to your feed.
That’s mine. I don’t get the “Jesus made of prawns” or “Veteran made 300’ flag for his wheelchair” ones but I do get a constant stream of “Look at this amazing abandoned location” or “This lake in Europe glows gold” AI images from groups reputing to be (but not) National Geographic or similar.
Indeed, I also get the cruiseliners perched on cliffs, crazy cave architecture, and bright red rivers. Fortunately the majority of the comments I’ve come across call out the AI horseshit, and now I just quickly scroll past all of it.
Not since I blocked all the bots posting such crap. Yeah, they are typically posted by bots and the replies not pointing out the fact that the images are AI are likely also bots.
That’s probably a good part of the reason I never see these. I was going to mention it, but I have already done so in several FB threads and I don’t want to overdo it.
The ones with the weird interiors? If so, I loved those. It was a game of spot the impossibilities. A stairway to the loft that started in the fireplace, a sink over the oven, five handles on the fridge, the way you would absolutely fall out of the bed and kill yourself. I haven’t seen those in a while now, though.
” in the comments.