None of it was true, of course. No one tells the truth these days, after all. We invent these avatars, these characters, who inhabit the on-line space for us, leading the lives we’d like to lead. Or, at least, the life we’d like our friends to believe we lead, while we go about our real business in privacy.
It was, back when the social media were invented, intended that these avatars would be us telling the world about our real selves and our real lives. It only took a few decades, though, for people to realise that – on the whole – none of us have very interesting lives. So, even back then people were inventing aspects to their lives that made them look more interesting, more glamorous, as though their daily routine wasn’t the same endless trudge trough the usual routine.
However, people spent so much time inventing an interesting on-line persona they didn’t have time for a real life anyway. Everything they thought, did and planned they mediated through the prism of how it would look in their on-line profile.
Eventually, people grew bored with this; but at the same time the first lifestyle bots began to appear. Covertly, at first, people would let these bots take over more and more of their on-line persona, leaving them to get back to their neglected lives. Then they found they enjoyed the company of real people doing real things together… or not, as the case maybe.
Meanwhile, the bots got on with inventing a new life, creating a new exciting, interesting and charismatic persona. At least, until one day someone noticed that 90% of the activity on the social media sites was automatically generated by bots. Furthermore, and worst of all for the advertisers who paid for it all, no actual humans were coming to the sites at all any more. Instead, everyone was down the pub with their mates having a nice time.
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