Polite Little Robot

Or trained circus monkey?

This weekend I learned that people are going on Tik-Tok Live and YouTube and pretending to be a video game. Not metaphorically. Not “kind of like.” Literally. They sit in front of a camera, and when someone sends them a digital gift (a rose, a cartoon car, a heart, all of which cost money) they respond with the same “pre-programmed”phrases.

“Yes, yes, yes!”

“Ice cream so good!”

“Thank you. I love you!”

They do this on repeat, for hours (and hours). And people watch it.

Not a few people. Thousands.

I find this fascinating, because somewhere along the way, thousands of people agreed that this was normal enough to: a) keep scrolling past without concern and b) stop, watch, and pay for it. (Please note, many of these content creators make their living doing this, no judgement here.)

I watched one for a minute (purely for research, not because I was hypnotized by it) and could not decide what I was looking at.

Was it performance?

Was it satire?

Was it a job?

Or was it just an honest version of something we’ve been doing for years?

Because if you think about it, most of us have a handful of phrases we cycle through all day.

“I’m good, how are you?”

“Sounds great!”

“Interesting.” (This one is my go-to when someone is not holding my attention.)

“Absolutely.”

We say them automatically, quickly, whether they’re true or not. The difference is we’ve never had an audience sending us digital roses while we do it. And maybe that’s the part that feels a little too on the nose.

Because it’s one thing to realize that someone on the internet is repeating scripted lines for reward. It’s another thing to realize how often we do the same thing (just dressed up as professionalism, politeness, or keeping the peace). We learned early on which responses are safe, which ones keep the snacks coming, and which ones keep the peace. So, we use them.

Again.

And again.

Max Headroom - the original

And that is why I found this fascinating. Not because of the fake aspect, but because I realized it is a slightly exaggerated mirror of what we already do on a regular basis.

So now what? Well, I can only tell you what I am going to do, and you are welcome to join me…but don’t expect a digital gift.

This week, every time I catch myself offering up an obligatory, well-trained circus monkey response, I’m dropping it into my Notes app.

Then next week, I am going to try to eradicate them from my daily communication (or at least catch them before they they tumble out of my mouth on autopilot). We will see what’s left when the auto-script runs out.

I will report back to you, dear reader, in two weeks.

Thank- you for reading!

Yes! Yes! Yes!

Substack, so good!