The Internet Is a Cruel and Enticing Place, Week #1237

Welcome to RATED AND SLATED, the column that’s terminally online so you don’t have to be.

This week, I’ve been distracting myself from the horrors of a livestreamed war by playing a relaxing new video game which lets you pilot a military drone.

I’ve been enjoying Remote Reaper: FPV Drone so much that I’m packing in the day job to focus on my YouTube channel, where I’ll be streaming myself carrying out combat missions. Subscribe now!

I’ll be modding the simulator so that I can drone bomb my favorite cities around the world. I’ve got no time for anyone who says this game could be used to generate military training data or perform real combat operations.

In fact, I’m so confident that this is all just a load of harmless fun that tonight I’ll be sending the reaper to pay a visit to my own home. Tune in live below!

RATED AND SLATED

AI FLIGHT BUDDIES

If this is the baseline level of AI psychosis for the general population, it won’t be long before you find yourself sitting on a commercial flight next to an LLM fanatic who’s “having a full-on kii with the bot” about how he’s about to hijack the plane—AND YOU MADE IT ON WITH THE BOX CUTTERS TOO MISSION ACCOMPLISHED TWIN NAHHH BUT BE FR… YOU REGRET NOT BRINGING THE BIG SUICIDE JACKET NOW? —oh well, at least you won’t have to worry about popping your ears for much longer.

ROBOT SECURITY DOGS WITH INDIAN ACCENTS

Does the robot security dog have this accent because it’s manned by a human operator or because it was abandoned as a pup, stuck in India, living on the streets, surviving, being a tourist guide, smoking on the fucking roads?

3D-PRINTED SALMON

I’m sick of going on X and seeing you complaining about 3D-printed salmon. I don’t want to hear that it’s not real meat, that “it contains zero fish at all”—grow up! This looks every bit as appetizing as all those AI-generated food menus. Well, it’s your loss; more for me. In fact, strap me into an eating chair, stick me under the specialized food-grade nozzles, and print those fake layers of muscle and fiber straight into my mouth, layer by layer, until I contain more slop than my own timeline.

THE FUTURE OF JOB INTERVIEWS

To be fair, if my AI agent does the video job interview with the AI recruiter while I’m not in the room, then I’d say that’s actually getting my new employer ready for what I’m going to be like at work: dissociating at my desk before vanishing off for 40-minute shits on company time. My agent had better work on his innocent face for when he’s asked who blocked the toilet in the gender-neutral restroom with partially digested 3D-printed salmon.

GOD’S OWN INFLUENCER

I know Cyber-Apostle of the Eucharist Saint Carlo Acutis isn’t technically “alive” anymore, but what’s to stop him from being the Pope? Maybe the real reason Leo XIV hates AI so much is that, like the rest of us, he’s worried it’s going to steal his job.

MARK ZUCKERBERG PRETENDING TO ENJOY GUINNESS

Pintbaby Is Now 42, You Won’t Believe What He Looks Like Now.

3 small mercies

“WHERE IS GONE?”

This melancholy duet sounds as if it could’ve been written to be Fontaines D.C. frontman Grian Chatten’s dream collaboration with Lana Del Rey, if only she wasn’t too busy recording a GTA VI radio station with her airboat captain husband to jump on the track. Fortunately, ROSALÍA was free to cut a yearning vocal take—presumably because there was no one around to take her on the alligator tour she’d originally planned for the day.

CAMERONWINTER.FILM

Want a sad night out with the boys? Well, great news: The Cameron Winter concert film is coming to a cinema near you. Why not cheer up your pals by buying the official Live at Carnegie Hall grand piano popcorn bucket? Stick it on your lap, tell ’em to reach to the bottom, and then you, too, can bust out the falsetto.

THE RETURN OF GIRLS

If you promise to reboot Girls every ten years, then I will commit to the internet’s most stringent longevity protocol. I need to be around to see what happens to the bloodlines of Hannah, Marnie, Jessa, and Shoshanna. You will find me in the hyperbaric chamber 100 years from now, watching their febrile descendants resort to increasingly extreme measures to keep their little dreams alive amidst the spectacular, decayed opulence of a futuristic New York City. By that point, I’ll be the last millennial alive, the only person in the world who still believes that Lena Dunham is the voice of our generation.

Follow Adam on Instagram @yungtolstoi

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