Comment on Women laughing alone with AI-generated content spam

Women laughing alone with AI-generated content spam

A woman laughing alone with salad, one of The Hairpin's most famous posts.avdeev007The Hairpin was a beloved indie women's interest website that ran from 2010 to 2018.Something happened where the domain owners didn't renew it in time, and a DJ bought it.Now the site has new spammy content written by AI and its old bylines have been replaced with men's names.In 2011, the small women's interest blog The Hairpin broke new ground in the field of visual journalism with the iconic post "Women laughing alone with salad."It was just a collection of stock images of women eating salad, and yet it said more about the state of women and society than hundreds of thousands of words.That blog post still exists, but instead of Edith Zimmerman's byline, it says it was written by "James Nolen" (who almost certainly does not exist) and has a bunch of AI-written text all about how "women laughing alone with salad" is an internet phenomenon and meme.Across the site, other AI-generated articles and wonky things seem to appear, and there's a spooky deadness: Something bad happened here.Wired got to the bottom of what happened: The domain for "thehairpin.com" was accidentally not renewed by its owners, and was bought by someone who snatches up recently expired domains to turn them into zombie sites that can grab ad revenue.

 

Comment On This Story

Welcome to Wopular!

Welcome to Wopular

Wopular is an online newspaper rack, giving you a summary view of the top headlines from the top news sites.

Senh Duong (Founder)
Wopular, MWB, RottenTomatoes

Subscribe to Wopular's RSS Fan Wopular on Facebook Follow Wopular on Twitter Follow Wopular on Google Plus

MoviesWithButter : Our Sister Site

More Business News