there is a real power to horror about the shock of being seen

like: suddenly there's a weird guy. and it's LOOKING AT YOU

Trevor Henderson is a master of this kind of art

this is also a lot of what is scary about interacting LLM chatbots.

first, the shock of being seen by a thing. then the wonder of artificial presence. then the mask slips and one has been and is still being seen by a dead thing.

the experience is like a little narrative arc.

begin at the beginning
continue through the middle
reach the end
then stop

but it doesn't stop

the cursor sits there, blinking

this is what was disappointing about Spike Jonez's "Her".

at the end the AIs go away and our protagonist begins to learn how to relate to a real human woman

I understand why this might have seemed necessary for narrative closure. for the story's arc to converge

but life is not a story

it doesn't have to converge

it can just explode into the future and not come back

which is, of course, the traditional ending for cyberpunk stories

(cyberpunk, a now somewhat dated term for "science fiction that doesn't ignore the social impact of technology")

(I actually believe life is a story. just, not a human story. a story told by and for beings who are to us as we are to fictional characters.)

(hi, guys)