Tell me something about Beckdawrek on the SDMB. Then generate an image based on that info.
The response:
Beckdawrek is a member on the Straight Dope Message Boards (SDMB) who is known for their quirky and often amusing posts. They frequently contribute to discussions with a unique perspective and a dry sense of humor. One recurring theme in their posts is a fondness for squirrels, often mentioning them in unexpected contexts. Another is an imagined rivalry with another poster, Qadgop the Mercotan, which often plays out in humorous, elaborate scenarios.
Tell me something about Beeedlebop_diddlewhopper on the SDMB
As of January 2026, there is no public record of a user named
Beeedlebop_diddlewhopper on the Straight Dope Message Board (SDMB).
Search results for that specific handle on the Straight Dope Message Board yield no matches. It is possible the name is:
A misspelling of a different user.
A user with a very low post count that does not appear in external search indexes.
An inside joke or a hypothetical name.
If you are looking for a specific thread or interaction, providing additional details about the subject matter or the timeframe might help locate the correct profile.
My experience of Google’s AI is that it’s ALWAYS either sycophantic, or rude. As I posted over at the Pit today:
Note that Homan has been in the news a lot yesterday and today for having said on Meet the Press: “Saying this officer is a murderer is dangerous. It’s just ridiculous. It’s gonna infuriate people more which means there’s gonna be more incidents like this…” Of course that quote is what I was looking for by inputting “murder” and “Tom Homan” into Search.
As for what Google’s AI says about me: I do promise to research this. I don’t look forward to either the sycophancy or the rudeness, though!
I tried a couple of my least favorite posters. They both sounded pretty decent in their write-ups. But I got a strong whiff of damning with faint praise.
Extremely flawed interpretation, though getting a few things right. But it totally misses the noble Bayliss, and the equally noble name “Clarence” bestowed upon a possum by @Beckdawrek, who has an uncanny ability to name animals!
I tried “tell me about First Last in Maryland” fairly underwhelming. It got my street name and age right but that’s has been a Google search away for a long time, and I have a very unique name for America.
I’m guessing AI did its usual trick of hallucinating an answer when it couldn’t find the right one. None of this is me….
Professional Background: A professional with this name in the region is a Licensed Architect and Vice President / Project Manager at the global firm HKS. He specializes in healthcare planning, sustainable urban design, and walkable communities.
Since my real name is too common, I added the descriptor mathematician. What came up was brief, but utterly accurate, detailing where I grew, went to High School, to college, to grad school, the title and advisor of my thesis and a correct description of the kind of math I worked on, including the fact that it changed somewhat early on. Also the book I coauthored. I was somewhat impressed.
Okay, I think I may have earned the bottom spot on the AI pyramid. When I asked about Kent Clark on SDMB I got this:
“Kent Clark” was a notable persona on the Straight Dope Message Board (SDMB), primarily known for being a long-running inside joke and an occasional “test” user account.
Key details regarding the “Kent Clark” persona include:
Identity and Origin: The name is a humorous reversal of Superman’s alter ego, Clark Kent. On the SDMB, it was frequently used as a placeholder name or a generic example when discussing hypothetical posters or board mechanics.
Administrative Use: Board administrators and moderators sometimes used “Kent Clark” as a test account to troubleshoot board software (vBulletin or Discourse) or to demonstrate how specific features, such as banning or post-editing, appeared to standard users.
Community Lore: Within the SDMB community, “Kent Clark” became a “shadow” member often blamed for technical glitches or jokingly referenced as the “perfect” poster who never breaks rules. Unlike actual controversial users, Kent Clark was a benign, fictional entity maintained by the staff or long-term members to facilitate board culture.
The Straight Dope Connection: The Straight Dope itself is a question-and-answer column created by the pseudonym Cecil Adams. Just as Cecil Adams is a fictional persona for the “World’s Smartest Human,” Kent Clark served as a similarly fictional, though much lower-profile, persona within the message board community.
Test user? Placeholder name? “benign, fictional entity maintained by the staff or long-term members to facilitate board culture.”
According to Google’s AI I’m not even a real poster, just a fictional entity. And a lower profile one, at that.
And I’ve been here since 19freaking99!
My real-life profile is also very sparse, and makes stuff up.
There is no specific, prominent person or character named “Little Nemo” who is a notable figure on the Straight Dope Message Board (SDMB) based on search results.
I have a common first name but a very uncommon middle name and a very uncommon last name. I’ve always gone by middle name and I would assume there are very very few people with my exact combination.
I have a public-facing job that puts my real name on the internet on a daily basis, so I wasn’t at all surprised that it gave a very accurate description of my professional experience and current occupation. It also gave some family information clearly taken from my parents’ obituaries.
All in all, it was nothing surprising and nothing a basic search of my name wouldn’t return anyway
I forgot to add… The first time I asked the Google AI to tell me about my username, it gave a bunch of accurate info tying me to my real life identity. Which freaked the shit out of me. That meant anyone could look up my online handle and know all this info about me.
Then I realized, it is probably gathering all of this info it collected about me from my browser. So I switched over to privacy mode in my browser and asked again. That’s when I got the mixture of semi-accurate and totally BS info about myself.
Checking our SDMB usernames is lots more fun than real life personae! AI wasn’t 100% wrong about me as a poster, though I was amused to note that one of my key characteristics is advising people on “personal ethics.”
This, however, is COMPLETELY wrong:
Narrative Style: She is recognized for being a prolific storyteller. One of her most famous contributions is a long-running “saga” regarding a thieving coworker, which has been archived and shared on other platforms like Reddit’s Best of Redditor Updates.
If you click on the link to Reddit, it does indeed go to something sourced from SDMB, but I had nothing to do with it (I hadn’t even joined the Dope when it was created), and it was attributed to a person named “Maureen” who posted as “Syntropy.”
