I grew up in the noughties (British) and for ages since then, I’ve always had this fragmented memory of this episode of a tv show, likely on CBBC or CITV, it was a live action show. In this episode, a teacher instructs the caretaker to construct a cage for the back of the classroom. Later in the episode, as the teacher is teaching, you can see a student stood in the cage watching from the back of the class.

Always struck me as kind of a weird thing. Any idea what this would be? What show and what episode it might be? It’s been driving me insane for years and Google is no help (nor Reddit)!!!

You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried lol

This is not AI. Google it.

For those who have seen it, what’s your favourite bit?

Load of shit, nobody trusts it, and the article barely goes into anymore detail than saying ‘it runs off Amazon’.

What… A pile… Of shit!

source

This was long before 9/11. Obviously, it was purely a fantasy thing (there’s no way some amateur teenage Guy Fawkes-wannabe could’ve single handedly pulled off what a major terrorist organisation spent years rigorously planning). However, I do find it interesting how manic minds think alike — even if their ideology is completely different.

Like so many social media platforms, Pinterest has gone way down the plug, and sadly I don’t think it was redeemable.

Way back in the early 2010’s, when there was no AI or shit algorithm, you uploaded what you wanted — no spam, slop or mass editing. That was the way it should be.

Inevitably, with the rise of online protection laws, AI junk effort (both the users and the staff) and mass internet creeps, Pinterest has become a cesspool of utter crap. All the best images gone — either banned for crap reasons, or the former account owners are driven away, or they may still exist out in the aether but the damn ai algorithm makes it impossible to find.

Sadly, as many people here point out, Pinterest is completely (and out of control) so sodden with AI that it’s barely even worth using anymore.

Today, I randomly remembered a bunch of images I’d seen and, feeling nostalgic, I went to look. I typed in some search words related to the pre-AI age images I used to love. Instead, I was met with nothing but AI generated images. Crap, crap, CRAP!!! I couldn’t believe how far it had fallen.

In some way, it almost makes me hope that the dead internet concept will come true, if only to slap open the eyes of these big AI corporations and force them to scale back the damage they are doing, and maybe, just maybe, formerly decent platforms like Pinterest might possibly return to some form of normalcy. For now though, I think I’ll retire from that ‘platform’.

To be clear, it’s not AI images in and of themselves I am complaining of. I have no issue with such things in moderation (like say you upload 10 natural images, complemented with 1 or 2 AI things. That is fine for me). My gripe is with the sheer mass of uploads and the way such things have vastly changed the social media/image sharing platform landscape in the last 5-6 years.

Mini-rant over, thanks for reading (if you did).

Only problem is: if it be so, how does one reclaim it?

Randomly, or course!

They’re both off-white in color and they’re both frustrating right when you don’t need or want them to be.

The only real difference is that wallpaper paste tends to get less sticky as it ages.

For many years, multiple Pinterest accounts used a very sly method of exploitation to garner more clicks. They all followed a very similar approach that can be broken down into something like this:

• Identify target
• Create fake content en masse (both before and after the advent of AI and deepfakes)
• mass Publication and promote for clicks

They would first identify a ‘target’, which would usually be someone with limited view in the public eye. The reason that they would choose someone who had limited public visibility is to avoid detection. If they chose a big-name celebrity like Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp (not that some haven’t, but were not successful) then they would be found out and banned very quickly. Most instead chose to use more obscure celebrities, such as small-scale actors and models (people who have some pubic visibility, but not so much that they would be easily identified as an exploitation target).

Once they had selected their target and built up their accounts around such personas, they would then use whatever they could (photoshop, AI, etc.) to mass-produce fake or misleading media around them. This sort of media would often contain controversial aspects, yet because of Pinterest’s poor detection algorithms and user’s abilities to circumvent systems, these accounts would often go undetected, sometimes for years.

Interestingly, I believe that the rise of AI content has been both beneficial and detrimental to these people: while the mass production of AI content on Pinterest (and other platforms) has undoubtedly diluted the reach and appeal of these accounts contents, these accounts still exist out in the aether of Pinterest’s murky web, and likely get off on the use of modern AI tools to further their greedy exploitations for clicks.

Signs to look out for

If you use Pinterest, the main signs to look out for are:

• accounts centred around real celebrities
• accounts centred around obscure celebrities (Google the name of in doubt)
• accounts which are not necessarily named after a celebrity, but primarily posts media based around a specific celebrity or small group of celebrities
• accounts which produce unsettling content around celebrities

One of the biggest getaways these creeps have is a general behaviour habit on Pinterest, that general scrollers don’t tend to visit often the profile of the account that has uploaded, instead usually looking and either liking, saving, or simply scrolling past. But we can break these habits by scrutinising suspicious pins all the better.

Thanks for reading. I’m aware I’m probably not saying anything that’s ‘new’ or ‘unknown’, but it’s something I’d like to help bring to attention, if only to help in the pushback against it.

A few days ago, I took the liberty of reporting a 10+ year-old Pinterest bot account (or possibly bot-aided account) that was stealing images from everywhere for clicks. That account received ‘Limited Distribution’, which is effectively a shadow ban.

Unless they appeal which is unlikely to be successful in any case, since they received it for ‘adult content’ their thievery content is most likely not going to be pushed out to the masses anymore.

You’re welcome, Pinterest.

Before y’all get all riled up and such, this is not me about to defend something the world over said ‘no’ to, but neither is this me about to join in and condemn it, either. It is not a slight at the fans, and it is not a slight at the producers of the show. Instead, this is a short discussion on some thoughts I had on how both Russell T Davies (RTD) and the fans, collectively may be entirely missing the point here.

First, context, for those who don’t know:

In Doctor Who lore, Davros is a character who was introduced in 1975 as the creator of iconic villains the Daleks (about 12 years after the debut of the Daleks themselves). According to the story, Davros became a deformed, chair-using maniac after some sort of explosion (I’m not 100% up on this, but the point is that Davros was depicted as always using this Dalek-style wheelchair-like device).

In 2023, RTD wrote a mini-episode sketch titled “Destintion: Skaro”. The minisode, which is considered ‘canon’ to the main show, ‘retcons’ Davros into a non-deformed (or non ‘disabled’ person, as per RTD). RTD gave his reasoning and was quoted as saying:

We had long conversations about bringing Davros back because he's a fantastic character. Time and society and culture and taste has moved on, and there's a problem with the Davros of old in that he's a wheelchair user who's evil. And I had problems with that, and a lot of us on the production team had problems with that, of associating disability with evil, and trust me, there's a very long tradition of this. I'm not blaming people in the past at all, but the world changes, and when the world changes Doctor Who has to change as well. So we made the choice to bring back Davros without the facial scarring and without the wheelchair or his support unit, which functions as a wheelchair. I say this is how we see Davros now. This is what he looks like. This is 2023, this is our lens, this is our eye. Things used to be black and white, they're not black and white anymore. And Davros used to look like that and he looks like this now, and that we are absolutely standing by.

As you can imagine, this led to backlash, and strong feelings on both sides. Fans lashed out at what they perceived as over-sensitive, while RTD went as far as to mock fans who appeared to only be trying to engage in meaningful conversation. (I don’t like making jibes, but could the man who gave us ‘Midnight’ really not come up with anything better than ‘oh poor baby’ there???)

However, in the storm of media barbs, I’m looking at this whole debate. And I’m thinking something: are both sides missing the point here?

What if (and yes, this is arguably more controversial, but it’s a point that needs be made) the question we should be asking is not ‘how should Davros be brought back’, but rather: should Davros be a character who is even brought back in the first place?

Hear me out: If there’s one thing that this whole debate brings to light, it’s that Davros is, or at least has become a divisive character. This particular debate between the fans and RTD did not start with them — there has been debate over whether Davros represents disabled users (consider this: both Little Britain and Phoenix Nights, shows which are 20+ years old now, both referred to a character in a wheelchair as ‘Davros’, so the comparison (and therefore likely the question) has existed long before this). Knowing this, it’s almost baffling that RTD simply didn’t think to let past grievances lie, rather than let himself be perceived as some sort of wokeish Mary Whitehouse-type showrunner.

Furthermore, all that aside, does bringing Davros back even make sense simply from a narrative perspective? Sure, they say anything can go on a sci-fi time-travelling show, but what more does Davros have to offer from a narrative perspective, able-bodied or not? In fact, looking back on Davros’ character history, all he ever seems to have really done is sat around and get dominated by the Daleks (and maybe act as their scientist or whatever). The appeal of Davros, therefore, doesn’t seem to be his narrative as much as his cool design. And if there needs to be debate over his design, then maybe it would be logical for the creators to say ‘ok, he had some cool episodes. Let them episodes stand, and let’s move on with some fresh, new villains’ (interestingly enough, RTD is on record as saying that he wanted to bring fresh new villains [that said, he then proceeded to bring back Sutekh, the Rani, and Omega, amongst others]). From a narrative (and design) point of view, Davros is irrelevant to some extent: the Daleks debuted twelve years prior and had already by that time become some of the most iconic sci-fi villains of all time. All without the help of Davros.

To be clear, this is not necessarily my personal opinion, just some interesting thoughts I had as I observed the whole debate. What’s your thoughts?