I Built The Torment Nexus (Political Podcast Edition)

Six years ago cartoonist Zach Weinersmith made a joke about a 24/7 AI podcast endlessly talking about polling numbers. I've made it a reality.

Let’s be clear: this is all Zach Weinersmith’s fault. Zach seems generally a good guy: he’s the man behind the webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal and, with his wife Kelly, wrote a great book on space colonisation. But when I was aimlessly browsing the internet a few days ago, I came across the comic he published in 2019.

Obviously this idea sounds absolutely horrible. But in the far distant past of about six years ago, it was also mostly silly and infeasible – it was essentially a post saying “wouldn’t this be a horrible way to use a technology” and “imagine being so broken by politics and the internet that you might listen to this”.

In other words, it reminded me of a famous social media post: