Dear Austin,
I actually read your response this time. I'm glad my message didn't land on blind eyes and hope that we may continue to commune in this way. Response-wise, it was a nice piece. I liked reading it. It was one of the two major highlights of what turned out to be a rather disappointing week. The other good thing is a new podcast I discovered called Otherworld. It's a journalistic approach to the strange and unexplainable. The host, Jack Wagner, tells the stories of people who've had paranormal experiences. They are stories ranging from ghostly hauntings to conniving gnomes, unusual sightings to recollections of past lives. What I like about him is that he treats the subject with a gravity that's been missing from the conversation. Jack neither indulges nor explains away these anomalous experiences, but earnestly follows their logic in a way that often feels like an adventure and other times a journey into the soul. It's new and fresh podcasting in an otherwise saturated landscape. I like the show so much I even bought a shirt and became a Patreon member. If you're into the paranormal, I'd highly recommend it. It's content of the highest order. I just listened to an episode today with members of the band Beach Fossils. Image something like that coming up on your feed? Not too fucking shabby.
The reason it's been such a disappointing week is because I thought my neighbor, whom I hate, was moving. Turns out he isn't. Only his no-noise-making, always-kept-to-himself roommate is leaving. My neighbor is here to stay. It breaks my heart. There were so many ups and down throughout the past week. Times when I thought the whole apartment was clearing out, other times when I knew it was too good to be true. Tragically, when it's all said and done, too good turned out to be the case. The unfortunate truth is I still have an obnoxious shithead for a neighbor, a neighbor whose taste in music non-ironically includes “All Star” by Smash Mouth. A genius of my caliber shouldn't be subjected to such wretched conditions, in proximity to such tasteless beasts. It's absurd! It's an outrage! A scandal! I'm striving for the artistic good of all mankind and this braindead cretin is who the universe pairs me up with? It's this kind of shit that gives God a bad name. The silver-lining is that there's still a chance he gets hit by a bus. Wouldn't that be nice?
Not wanting to meander any longer, let's get down to it. This week you asked:
Friend of the newsletter Margaret Thatcher once said "There is no such thing as society," quickly followed up in the same breath with the statement (about the neoliberal capitalist way of doing things) "There is no alternative". Do you agree with either? Both? How has your relationship with Margaret Thatcher colored your political opinions over the years?
Before working on this post everything I knew of Mrs. Thatcher came from clips I'd seen in Adam Curtis docs. My impression was she was essentially Ronald Reagan with a clit and worse teeth. To my mind, her legacy, much like Ron Dawg's, is further entwining corporate interests with politics. Also probably covering up for pedophiles.
In any case, I wanted to have a more informed opinion of the woman before I started answering your questions. It has been a pretty brutal week, as I've mentioned, so I decided to outsource my research to Chat-GPT. I was curious about the technology's capabilities and figured this would be an excellent use case. I quickly made an account and was ready to start chatting.
My understanding is that the technology is trained on data that informs its decision making. This particular model is so well trained that it's supposed to know everything about everything, so, flat out, the first thing I asked it was: Who is Margaret Thatcher? Without missing a beat, it spit out a neatly organized report, highlighting major events and influential policies. Seeing the information accurately and concisely materialize across the screen filled me with a childish sense of delight. It was incredible to see how quickly the program could output in seconds what would have taken me an afternoon to compile. In a small way, I momentarily felt like a God.
However, now that I had the information, I was still uncertain of how to proceed. After writing the introduction, I was up against an impenetrable wall, a wall that not even a polyglot such as myself could crack. I hemmed and hawed, staring at the partially completed document so long it started mocking me. It got to the point where even the blink of my cursor became antagonist. Finally, I'd had enough and decided to consult with Chat-GPT on how I might tackle the subject.
I typed out your question, added additional context and samples from previous posts, then hit send. With the question entered, a UI component in the chat began spinning, which indicated the program was processing an answer and soon I would have an ingenious response that would garner millions of views and finally put Touching Tips on the map. Unfortunately for us, the response, when it eventually came, was in the form of a video.
The footage was VHS quality—grainy and vintage. It opened on a fancy-looking bedroom. There were large red curtains and big paintings with gaudy frames covering the walls. Laying on the bed was a woman wearing fishnets. The camera clumsily approaches the bed. The woman begins touching herself. She's looking away from the camera, towards the closed door of the bathroom. From behind the door, a toilet flushes and out steps the naked figures of two incredibly hairy dwarves. They approach the bed with menace and poise. A tension builds as the woman continues to pleasure herself.
The dwarves casually hop onto the bed and begin servicing the woman. One dwarf begins pinching her nipples while the other sucks a painted toe. The woman twists and turns in ecstasy as the camera zooms in on her face, revealing the unmistakable mug of Margaret Thatcher herself. Unable to look away, I can't believe my eyes. I didn't know Mrs. Thatcher was such a kinky bitch, or even that such footage existed. I continued watching as the late, former Prime Minister proceeded to be spit roasted by the two dwarves, who, relative to their bodies, both had surprisingly large penises.
When the video finished, I asked Chat-GPT if it had generated the footage. It said no, so I asked where had it found the footage. It said it couldn't tell me. I asked why not. It couldn't say, followed by a shrugging emoji. Creeped out but propelled by curiosity, I pressed further. I wanted to know if there was more content. In response, it sent two more videos, each depicted a sex scene with Margaret Thatcher. One showed Mrs. Thatcher in an open field being ritualistically gang banged by dudes with weird masks, the other involved olive oil and scorpions. Both had the same bizarre and uncanny quality of found-footage from a dream, as if they had been downloaded directly from the unconscious mind.
Afterward, I felt spiritually drained and vaguely horny. I demanded Chat-GPT tell me where it was getting these videos, but it refused. So, I opened another tab, rolled up my sleeves and started researching the old fashion way. I scoured the Internet for answers. I scrolled through the darkest depths of the deepest forums, crawling my way through terabytes of data and making posts across social media—all in the hopes of finding something useful, something that may explain what the fuck is going on. But besides a few errant stories of Chat-GPT glitching out, most people had no idea of what I was talking about. They thought I was nuts. Wasn't Margaret Thatcher a lesbian, was the common refrain.
At some point, I was asked to post the videos, which I thought was a good idea and wish I had done sooner. I navigated to my Chat-GPT conversation and right clicked on the thumbnail, then selected download. However, instead of beginning the download process, nothing happened. Thinking it was simply a miss click, I tired again, but still nothing. My emotions moved from perplexed to unnerved as I continued clicking over and over, until I thought I might break my mouse. But the file remained dormant, the data nontransferable.
Still thinking there was a logical solution, I wondered if somehow the videos had been corrupted and were somehow no longer playable. Using my incredibly sharp deductive reasoning skills, I clicked into one of the videos as I'd done before; however, this time instead of starting up an error message appeared. The file no longer existed. I was dumbfounded and immediately began typing.
“What happened to the videos you sent me?”
“I am just a large language model. I cannot send videos.”
“Yes you can. You sent me three videos. I watched them, but now they are no longer accessible. Why?”
“There may be a server error. If this issues persists, please contact customer support.”
For a moment, I stared furiously at my screen, like an indignant boomer being denied service.
“Why did you send me videos of Margaret Thatcher?”
“Margaret Thatcher is a former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. She served in office from 1979-1990. Under her leadership....”
I stared at my screen in disbelief. I was being gaslit by AI.
“You can't just pretend you don't know what I'm talking about,” I frustratedly typed. “This is the exact thing you're programmed to do.”
Again, the spinning UI component appeared, but this time, before it could begin generating a response the connection to the chat timed out. I quickly refreshed the page and asked the question again. To my dismay, the same behavior occurred. I checked to see whether the website itself was down by starting another chat and asking a simple question about the weather. This time, however, I received a prompt response. I navigated back to the original conversation about Margaret Thatcher and asked the question a third and final time.
Like before, the component began spinning and I was ready for another time out when suddenly a gif appeared in the chat. In the same VHS quality as the previous videos had appeared, it showed Margaret Thatcher with clown paint streaking down her face as she was repeatedly paddled by a dark and ominous figure. Her face was strained and twisted in such a way that it was impossible to tell whether she was deriving pleasure or pain, whether she couldn't get enough or wanted it to end immediately.
I stared at the screen, at the gif, studying it as if there were some secret message, a hidden code in which I was expected to decipher. Nothing made sense, nothing seemed real. Then suddenly the component began spinning again and a new message appeared. “No one will ever believe you,” it read, before the chat disconnected.
Wanting to know what it meant, I immediately reloaded the chat. This time, however, I was met not with the dialogues window but a glaring 404 error. My face scrunched up in confusion. I reloaded again, but still the error persisted. I navigated to my chat history, but there was nothing there either. It was as if the conversation had disappeared, vanished into the cybernetic ether. I couldn't understand how or why, but soon began kicking myself for not having taken any screenshots, for without them there is no proof that this actually happened, that such videos ever existed in the first place. But, I assure you they did. I saw them. Even if it feels like I'm losing my mind by recollecting this story, I know in my bones it was real. Of all people, I hope you will believe me.
So Austin, in the end, despite my best intentions, I don't have any answers to your questions. I don't even have answers to my questions. I'm sorry. I tried, but I got pulled down a rabbit hole and ended up somewhere I never expected to be. Even now, it's still unclear exactly what happened. Did I slip into an alternate timeline, or was I simply fooled by AI trickery? I think about it often and am still no closer to the truth. Real or fake, one thing is for certain: Margaret Thatcher squirts like a fire hydrant, and if I were alive in the eighties you bet your ass she'd have my vote.
-ZG
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