The Weekly Wit: False Advertising

The racism of fake tan; Harry and Meghan's escape from NY, and why I can't find my car keys.

The Raffenburg Family by Wilhelm Bendz (1830)

Welcome to The Weekly Wit, a satirical review of news and culture.

Artificial Intelligence

Last week, the Irish Times proved without a doubt that artificial intelligence is certainly artificial and certainly not all that intelligent.

The Irish paper of record landed itself into the soup after publishing an opinion column which argued fake tan was racist and oppressive.

By applying fake tan, Irish women were ‘devaluing the authentic experiences of individuals with naturally higher melanin content,’ and ‘reducing their identity to a mere fashion accessory.’

The author, bylined as a Latin American migrant named Adriana Acosta-Cortez, even had the requisite blue-hair and smug demeanour of those paid to peddle piffle.

It went on. “In the spirit of solidarity and sisterhood, I encourage you to explore alternative methods of self-expression that do not contribute to the appropriation or fetishisation of melanin. Let us work together to challenge, and to dismantle.”

The essay entitled ‘Irish Women’s Obsession with Fake Tan is Problematic,’ surged to the second-most read piece in the Irish Times.

What, reader, was wrong with this picture?

By Sunday, the editor of the Irish Times had apologised. His paper was ‘genuinely sorry.’ Why? Did the essay trigger a phalanx of people oppressed by fake tan? Did it not consider the lived experience of minimally dextrous peoples who struggle to apply fake tan without it streaking? Perhaps those allergic to fake tan took umbrage?

Nope. The paper fell victim to a ‘deliberate deception’. That is, a student prankster asked ChatGPT to write a Woke piece on how fake tan is racist.

“It was a hoax; the person we were corresponding with was not who they claimed to be. We had fallen victim to a deliberate and coordinated deception,” he said.

Isn’t that statement an apt metaphor for Wokeness itself?

The prankster has earned themselves a lifetime subscription to Oxford Sour, and twos on every cigarette I smoke—forever.

Explaining their actions, the prankster said all they did was chuck a few derivative prompts into ChatGPT, whilst even suggesting what the columnist’s profile photo might look like. The result? A passable canniness for every Woke columnist and ‘thinker’ ever.

The best part? The prankster pitched another article to the Irish Times. Remembering the days when journalists had higher standards, the Times asked for the prankster’s phone number. The prankster provided a Dublin telephone number for a clown-for-hire service.

The prankster said they were having a laugh with their mates, keen to highlight the ridiculousness of seeing everything through the prism of identity.

The reaction was predictable but wrongheaded. My lord, they cried, this thing will put us all out of work. No, no. Do calm down.

What this little saga unveiled is that the current vogue of identity politics is as unthinking and crude and tiresome as 92 percent of us know it to be. If a computer can passably regurgitate your entire worldview, you’ve got problems. Whose intelligence, I ask, is artificial?

In essence, ChatGPT is a giant copy-and-paste machine, incapable of original thought. Ergo, Wokeness is a giant copy-and-paste machine, incapable of original thought.

The real threat from AI is not that it’ll surpass human creativity (Spoiler: it won’t) but that it’ll churn out thoughtless, derivative bumph.

That thoughtless, derivative bumph is why I don’t read anything published after the year 2010.

In these bland times, most works are written in that same faux confessional style and with that same faux sentiment which just so happens to confess all the correct opinions and sentiments of the all-powerful literati.

Such work, what Christopher Lasch called a ‘parody of the inner world,’ moves without moving, reveals without revealing, confesses with confessing. It’s as if it’s written by a robot.

Perish the thought.

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Pics or Didn’t Happen…

A famously hermetic couple who loathes the limelight found their way, like moths to a flame, into the limelight.

This week, Harry and Meghan revealed a ravenous pack of paparazzi had sharked the couple around Manhattan in a two-hour death dance.

According to their hangers-on, the couple were ‘involved in a near catastrophic car chase at the hands of a ring of highly aggressive paparazzi.’

On that fateful night, Meghan, whilst dressed in a £1,500 ensemble and surrounded by other oppressed beings, collected an award for being a woman of vision. Or something.

Over the next two hours, she and Harry zipped through the streets of Manhattan desperate to evade the clutches of the paparazzi, the attentions of which they definitely do not crave. This ‘relentless pursuit’ had ‘resulted in multiple near collisions involving other drivers on the road, pedestrians, and two NYPD officers.’

Given Harry and Meghan’s economic grasp of reality, I wondered what the NYPD had to say about this danse macabre.

“There were numerous photographers that made their transport challenging. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex arrived at their destination and there were no reported collisions, summonses, injuries, or arrests in regard,” said the NYPD.

So, Harry and Meghan cheated death. But in the same sense, reader, that you and I are alive right now and technically cheating death.

Harry and Meghan play a strange game. Clearly, they crave celebrity and recognition. And yet, they pretend to loathe all forms of media attention, whilst curating every aspect of their lives in packages curated for media consumption.

They remind me of those jilted lovers who hate their ex, yet won’t stop talking about their ex, and despite being totally over their ex, find themselves hiding in their ex’s attic, and taking candid photos of their sleeping ex.

What a time to be alive, eh?

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Stars in Their Eyes

Over the last month, I’ve felt a little out of sync. Perhaps it’s the sauce, I thought. Perhaps, I am not drinking enough fluids made primarily from grapes. 

And then it hit me. After reading a piece in The Independent, I found out exactly what was the cause of the tumult, and why I keep misplacing my car keys.

Apparently, Mercury was recently in retrograde. And one-fifth of British people believe this is a thing.

‘Mercury in retrograde’ means a floating rock called Mercury is moving around a floating fireball called the Sun more slowly than that of our floating rock called Earth.

Apparently, because I was born during a certain period of time, all of this has huge implications on my mental state and whether I can find my car keys.

Consider this. An Aries born just seconds before midnight on April 19, later learns the midwife’s watch was slow and that Aries was actually born the next day, making them a Taurus.

Does Mercury account for slow watches and human error? Would the fake Aries sense they were actually a Taurus? During Mercury’s retrograde, would they endure what their real sign endures or what their purported sign endures?

I suppose I’d better consult the stars.

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Witticism of the Week

“Every age and every condition indulges some darling fallacy; every man amuses himself with projects which he knows to be improbable, and which, therefore, he resolves to pursue without examining them.”

— Samuel Johnson

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What I’m Reading

• The Free Press: How Therapists Became Social Justice Warriors by Lisa Selin Davis

• Wall Street Journal: The Problem with TikTok by Julie Jargon

• Harper’s: Why are we in Ukraine? by Benjamin Schwartz and Christopher Layne

• New York Times: The False Promise of ChatGPT by Noam Chomsky

• The New Yorker: A Club for the Cancelled by Emma Green

• Tablet: We’re All Bored of Culture by William Deresiewicz

• Book: The Soviet Century by Karl Schlögel

• Podcast: How Hitchens Can Save The Left — That’s Debatable! (Free Speech Union)

If you missed it…

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A personal note…

Thank you for reading Oxford Sour. Feel free to send this column on to like-minds. Follow me on Twitter. And of course, consider a paid subscription below.

Up the Hammers,
Christopher

Oxford Sour

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