From BBS Dreams to Bot Nightmares: When AI Hijacks Human Culture

01 July 2025
By Sophie Calder, Netscape Nation

Dad used to tell me about the early days of the internet, when you could still feel optimistic about connecting the world’s knowledge without wondering who was pulling the strings behind the screen. Back in Manchester during the late 80s, he’d dial into bulletin boards where the biggest worry was whether someone was catfishing you about their age, not whether entire governments were deploying artificial minds to rewrite reality itself. Those BBS days seem almost quaint now-at least you knew the person typing back was human, even if they lied about everything else.

Today’s digital landscape feels like we’ve crossed into territory that even the most paranoid cyberpunk novels didn’t quite anticipate. We’re not just dealing with fake profiles or dodgy websites anymore. We’re watching AI systems generate entire cultural movements, synthetic influencers, and propaganda campaigns so sophisticated they make the old Soviet disinformation playbook look like amateur hour. The technology that was supposed to democratise creativity and information has become the ultimate tool for manufacturing consent, identity, and truth itself. It’s as if we’ve handed the keys of human expression to algorithms that don’t understand the difference between authentic culture and profitable simulation.

Netscrapes

Putin Weaponizes AI in Disinformation War Against UK

According to a Royal United Services Institute report cited by Daily Mail, Kremlin-linked AI systems allegedly generate thousands of contextually tailored disinformation pieces per hour targeting British audiences. Where Soviet propaganda once relied on crude forgeries and obvious plant stories, today’s AI-driven operations create convincing synthetic media tailored to individual psychological profiles-like having a KGB agent who’s studied your browsing history for years suddenly become your most trusted news source. The scale represents a quantum leap from the clunky Radio Moscow broadcasts that Dad’s generation could easily spot.

These aren’t just bot farms churning out generic posts; the systems reportedly create fake local news stories about your neighbourhood, synthetic video testimonials from people who look like your neighbours, and conspiracy theories that weave together just enough real information to feel credible. It’s like the difference between dial-up bulletin boards and today’s social media algorithms-the same basic concept of information warfare, but with enough raw computational power to transform the entire battlefield. UK cybersecurity teams now face the impossible task of combating not just technical breaches, but cognitive warfare that operates at the speed of social media and the scale of industrial automation. The Cold War never really ended; it just got a massive processing upgrade.

Meta Establishes ‘Superintelligence’ Lab in AI Power Play

Per a report by MSN, Meta allegedly established a dedicated division for superintelligence development, consolidating the company’s AI projects under one roof with a mandate that sounds like it came straight from a science fiction film: build artificial general intelligence that surpasses human capability. The corporate maneuvering feels eerily reminiscent of the browser wars that transformed computing in the 90s, when Netscape, Microsoft, and others raced to control the foundational technologies of the web. Except this time, instead of fighting over how we access information, they’re battling for control over how information gets created, processed, and understood at a fundamental level.

The timing isn’t coincidental. With OpenAI’s ChatGPT proving that conversational AI could capture mainstream attention, and Google scrambling to integrate AI across its entire product ecosystem, Meta’s move signals they’re not content to be spectators in what could be the most important technological shift since the internet itself. The “superintelligence” branding is particularly telling-it’s not just about better chatbots or smarter algorithms, but about creating systems that could potentially outthink their creators across every domain of human knowledge. For those who navigated the platform wars of the past, the pattern is familiar: whoever controls the core infrastructure layer gains disproportionate power over everything built on top of it. It’s like watching the early days of Windows versus Mac, but with the stakes raised to existential levels and no clear sense of who’s actually in control.

AI Band ‘The Velvet Sundown’ Sparks Authenticity Crisis in Music

According to MSN, “The Velvet Sundown” supposedly remains an AI-generated project climbing the charts with their dreamy indie-rock sound and mysterious aesthetic-except they don’t exist as humans. The entire band, from their music to their album artwork to their carefully crafted backstory, was allegedly generated by AI systems and promoted through algorithmic playlists until fans started digging deeper and discovered there were no humans behind the curtain. The controversy feels like Napster all over again, but instead of technology disrupting how music gets distributed, we’re watching it challenge the very concept of who gets to create music in the first place.

What’s particularly unsettling is how convincing the deception reportedly was. The Velvet Sundown’s tracks weren’t obviously synthetic-they had the kind of emotional resonance and musical complexity that fans genuinely connected with. Their “biography” included believable details about meeting at university, struggling through small venues, and finding their sound through years of collaboration. It’s the musical equivalent of discovering that your favourite local restaurant has been run entirely by robots programmed to simulate the warmth of human hospitality. The technology has reached the point where artificial creativity can fool not just casual listeners, but passionate music fans who pride themselves on discovering authentic new artists. For those who lived through the original disruption of the music industry, when file-sharing forced painful questions about value and ownership, this feels like the next inevitable step: technology that doesn’t just change how art gets consumed, but whether humans remain necessary for creating it at all.

AI-Generated Black Influencers Exploit Cultural Labor, Study Warns

A Forbes analysis alleges corporations exploit AI-generated Black female influencers to monetize cultural aesthetics and social media strategies developed by real Black creators, without any compensation or acknowledgment. These synthetic personas perform what researchers are calling “digital blackface”-appropriating not just visual appearance but speech patterns, cultural references, and community engagement styles that took real people years to develop and refine. The AI influencers rack up millions of followers and lucrative brand partnerships while the human creators who originated these approaches see their market value diminished by artificial competitors who never sleep, never demand fair pay, and never challenge corporate messaging.

The exploitation runs deeper than simple imitation. These AI systems have been trained on vast datasets of social media content, effectively strip-mining years of creative labor from Black women who built followings through authentic community engagement, cultural commentary, and personal vulnerability. Now that same content becomes training data for synthetic alternatives that can produce endless variations without any of the human complexity, lived experience, or genuine community connection that made the original creators valuable. It’s like the digital equivalent of how globalisation enabled corporations to exploit cheap overseas labor while maintaining premium pricing-except instead of moving factories offshore, we’re replacing human creativity with algorithmic simulation. For anyone who remembers browsing the early web through Dixons-bought modems, when online communities felt genuinely collaborative rather than commercially manufactured, this represents a fundamental betrayal of what digital connection was supposed to achieve.

Today in Tech History

1979: Sony Walkman Launches Personal Audio Revolution

Forty-six years ago today, Sony released the TPS-L2 Walkman in Japan, fundamentally changing how humans relate to music and public space. Masaru Ibuka’s invention-originally designed so he could listen to opera during long flights-created the first truly portable personal soundtrack experience. The TPS-L2 Walkman, weighing 390 grams, pioneered portable audio experiences through its compact design, letting people carry their own audio environment anywhere, from Thames towpaths to Tokyo subway cars.

What seemed like a simple gadget actually rewired social behavior in ways that echo through today’s digital landscape. The Walkman normalised the idea of curating your own reality bubble, choosing individual experience over shared cultural moments. Mixtapes became currency of affection, and the act of creating personalised playlists transformed from technical hobby to emotional expression. Over 400 million units would eventually sell worldwide, establishing the template for every personal device that followed-from iPods to smartphones to today’s AI-powered recommendation engines.

The Walkman’s legacy lives in our current moment of hyper-personalised everything: Spotify’s algorithmic playlists, noise-cancelling AirPods, and the assumption that everyone deserves their own customised version of reality. In an era where AI systems generate personalised content at unprecedented scale, Sony’s 1979 innovation feels like the first step toward a world where shared cultural experiences become increasingly rare, and individual preference reigns supreme. The difference is that where the Walkman let you choose your own soundtrack, today’s AI systems increasingly choose it for you.

The Big Picture

These four stories trace the same troubling arc: AI technology amplifying existing power imbalances while eroding the boundaries between authentic and artificial human expression. Putin’s disinformation campaigns, Meta’s superintelligence ambitions, synthetic music acts, and AI-generated influencers all represent different facets of the same fundamental shift-algorithms increasingly mediating not just how we access culture, but how culture itself gets created and distributed.

The pattern mirrors previous technological disruptions that Gen X witnessed firsthand, from the browser wars to Napster’s music industry upheaval, but with a crucial difference: this time, the technology isn’t just changing distribution channels or user interfaces. It’s challenging the basic assumption that human creativity, authentic experience, and genuine cultural expression have inherent value that can’t be algorithmically replicated. We’re watching the emergence of a digital economy where synthetic alternatives can outcompete human creators on efficiency, cost, and even emotional resonance-at least until you look behind the curtain. The implications extend beyond individual creators or consumers into the fundamental mechanisms we use to distinguish between genuine human expression and manufactured content designed to influence behavior.

The tools keep getting more sophisticated, but the fundamental question remains the same one Dad’s generation faced with every new technology: who controls the off switch? Sometimes I wonder if we’ve already forgotten where we put it.