We Don't Need Comedians Anymore. This AI Bot Is Way Funnnier

By Petr Navovy | Miscellaneous | February 24, 2022 |

By Petr Navovy | Miscellaneous | February 24, 2022 |

Here, in case people need a bit of light relief. There is an AI bot that uses machine learning to analyze text you plug into it to try to continue the text based on what it thinks is stylistically and narratively coherent. You can find the bot here. I’ve taken a moment to pop in parts of my own articles to see what might come out of it. Some of it is pretty damn funny.

Here’s a bit from my recent Beastie Boys piece as an example:

The Boys shook things up immediately following that, shedding their early preoccupations and heading off into far more interesting and daring territory with the pioneering, sample-based ‘Paul’s Boutique’ in 1989—an album that was a commercial failure at the time but which has since rightfully been re-appraised as one of the greatest hip hop records of all time. Burning things down and rising from the ashes in a new form yet again, the Beastie Boys returned 3 years later with ‘Check Your Head’, an album featuring a hybrid approach: Woven into its structure alongside the scaled-back use of sampling was (as hinted at by its cover) a recorded instrumental skeleton laid down by the three members themselves. Here were the Boys, reaching back into their earliest days as a hardcore punk band and bringing elements of that into the present, to mix it with what they had learned in the intervening years.

And here’s what the bot thinks should come next:

One can imagine that a similar mixture of ambition and technical abilities was at the heart of the mix that Ol’ Dirty Bastard made for ‘Abbath’s Chosen Session’. The sprawl and eclectic (and (usually) questionable) attitude of Ol’ Dirty Bastard was part of what made him so compelling—but as a rapper, he could also be stodgy, monotonous and often prone to crass or embarrassing vocalizations. Before his untimely death from a heroin overdose, ODB released only four solo albums (including the forgotten ‘Get Low’), and had toured with such rap luminaries as Snoop Dogg, DMX and the Geto Boys

I’m gonna combine the bits written by me and the bot-created parts into one blockquote from now on, with the bits in bold belonging to the bot.

From my Jackass Forever review:

And, look, this stuff certainly won’t be for everyone. Jackass Forever is 1 hour and 44 minutes of dicks and tasers and cackling and people screaming in pain. But for a potent illustration of the virtues of Jackass as a whole, look no further than the legions of YouTube ‘prank’ shows that have followed in its wake. Typified by the execrable Paul brothers, these cheap and vacuous videos adopt many of the surface trappings of Jackass without understanding what actually makes it great. Narcissistic displays in which their creators always come out on top, often at the expense of suffering third parties, they thrive on self-parody and bombast. And at its best, Jackass videos are genuinely, genuinely funny: the spinning bike hitches; Bubba Jay putting the belt from a record player around his head and jumping off a roof; Mel Gibson with no pants on; Donnell Rawlings having a nutmeg; Steve-O covered in hot glue; Johnny Knoxville beating a fellow punk to death with a baseball bat.

We need people like the Jackass guys because we are all stunted, humorless and dull as dirt.

Here’s a bit from that AC/DC cover piece:

As a rapturous crowd welcomes Andrew onto the stage, Matt briefly fiddles with his guitar and then greets his new stage mate with a hug. The bassist looks on and smiles joyfully while the drummer takes a quick swig of his drink. So far, so routine. All par for the course for a band bringing on a guest.

And then, without being aware of the time stream-splitting power that was suddenly and silently handed to him by the invisible gods of metal, Matt goes ahead and starts to rock out on one of the strings. ‘This one’s for you, Andy! You have nothing to worry about!’ he sings, ignoring his own advice from earlier. There’s no time to contemplate the blatant contradiction. He quickly begins to yank on the string, playing the riff with his other hand as the rest of the band joins in. It sounds awful. It’s awkward. It’s a horrendous, awful mess. In fact, it sounds like a complete disaster. It’s nearly unbelievable that the band were able to finish it with not one major melt-down.

Here’s a horse kicks a tree, farts on dog, and then runs away:

Horse kicks tree, farts on dog, and then runs away?

Well, it’s a darn good thing the horse didn’t crap on the dog. It’s likely he would have peed on it too. Funny how different peoples’ dogs and horses respond to dogs. I’ve heard from a few owners who claimed their horses would never pee on or poop on their dogs. The horse apparently thought otherwise. I read a report that said a horse was at a dog park while the dog was there and kicked the dog, then peed on it, then ran off. There were about 40 witnesses. It was sad to see. Some people have babies and children, then they get a horse. Then they wonder why their horses don’t listen

Here’s a piece on favourite childhood memories:

There used to be a group of us here, a little rascal-y gang of kids, that would run around town and the surrounding countryside, causing mischief. It was before the era of mobile phones and it was magic. One of my main partners in crime was a kid who lived just across the road from me. His name was Karl, and he was one or two years older than me. We used to roam around town, doing stupid shit, like little kids are meant to do.

One of my favourite memories is of the day we found a massive hornet’s nest in the tree at the top of our road. I think I was about 8 or 9 at the time. So my friend, I, and a mate of his that I didn’t really know went up there with our bikes, and started taking the nest apart. I remember us taking it off the branch it was sitting on, and hanging it on a piece of string, and my mate just walking around there, shaking his head, wondering why we didn’t just go and ask someone for help. That was our daily ritual, one of us would be all “What’s happening today boys?”, and the other would be all “Oh, I dunno… Yeah, can I go get us some fucking trousers off the washing line?”

When he was right in the middle of his “what the fuck are you doing?” moment, I just walked right up to him, threw my arms around his neck, and we had a pretty huge cuddle. Then I went on my merry way, the “determined adventurer” I am.

Here’s a piece about a cliff-diving dog:

Titti the Jack Russell just loved the feel of the air rushing through her fur. It was all about jumping just at the right moment so as to synchronise with her beloved human. It was tricky at first, but she’s smart, she got it quickly. It was worth the effort. To soar together. To hit the water together. He used to sing old war songs with his dad. You know, those silly old songs you get as a child from your parents that you were too young to even appreciate then but that are somehow resonating now and you realise you love every word of them. Like the old ‘You’re too young, you should know better, you should know better’.

And here’s that piece wondering about the thought process that led to certain clips, including the elderly man trying to blind an alligator with a jumper:

‘Hey look, it’s an alligator. I should probably stay away. It’s not actively attacking me, so I should probably stay away. In fact it doesn’t even seem to be impeding my day in any way. It’s just hanging out in a ditch. I should leave it completely alone. Yep. But what if! What if, actually, instead of leaving the thrashing tank lizard well enough alone I should help it? I should touch it, instead. Maybe I should grab a towel from the bench nearby and try to push the turtle back into the water, somehow. Maybe I should carry it like it’s a dog on a leash and push it back into the water. Yeah, that’s what I should do. Then he won’t be an alligator anymore. That’s my solution.