By chance I've stumbled upon a blog post that contains pieces of writing that are rather peculiar with and without context.
The post
First, I'd like you to try to analyze the narratives for each of these scenarios as if they were original short stories, try to see if these have anything in common. I'll provide the context afterwards. These sound like something that came out from a psychological horror literature, but they're not, this is a response provided in a blog post.
Scenario 1
Billy wakes up every morning in his familiar house. He loves his house, he's lived there all his life. He sees his mother every morning, kisses her and walks outside to greet his friends. Friends whom he's known as long as he can remember. They're always together, playing, going to school, going to movies. Billy loves his life, sure there have been rough times, but he could always count on his friends and family to be there for him.
Suddenly, Billy is ripped out of his world. He's not aware of it, but his poor little body is duplicated and placed in stasis for a god-like race of beings to pick him out of a list of others like him, like a shopping bin in a cheap dime store.
Somewhere, in another place that Billy has no knowledge of, he wakes up. He feels a bit strange at first, but isn't too worried, everything around him looks the same. His house seems empty, his mother and father nowhere to be found. Walking outside of the house he doesn't see his friends anywhere. None of his favourite toys are in the yard. Beginning to worry, he rushes off to the places where he and his friends liked to go. He can't find any of them. He sees a few people he's never met before playing with a shiny new toy that looks like fun, but as he approaches the strangers, they begin shouting at him, throwing rocks.
Billy runs away, frightened and lonely.
Scenario 2
Mandy and Robert always wanted to have children. They couldn't wait for the challenges of parenthood. They tried for years with no success, until one day Robert, who happened to be a brilliant chemical engineer, discovered a way for their dream to come true. He built a private lab in his home. For weeks he worked day and night, devising a concoction for his wife and himself. Finally, he emerges with 2 syringes. Injecting his wife, then himself, they try again with renewed hope.
9 months later their dreams come true. They are the parents of twins. A boy and a girl.
Everything is blissful for a few years, but quickly the proud parents realise that they don't enjoy the whole parental experience. Feeding them is a tiresome chore, sometimes the children simply won't eat anything if they don't like how it looks. Finding time to play with them is a hassle, and going out to buy new toys to keep them busy is a nightmare. Sometimes the children are sad and crabby despite all their toys, the crying grates on the nerves of the once happy parents. Mandy begs Robert to think of a way to make their life peaceful again. Robert locks himself in his lab again for week. When he emerges, he shows his wife what he has done. In the lab he has created 3 chemical mixtures, each in it's own huge tub. Enough to last a lifetime. He explains that the first chemical will take away the need for them to ever have to feed the children again. The second chemical will take away all the children's boredom, they'll never have to go shopping for expensive toys again. The third chemical will make the children happy all the time, no more crying, no more sad faces. Just smiles and giggles.
He injects both the children, who quickly begin to settle down. Mandy and Robert pick them up, placing them in special chairs that the children will never have to leave, except for baths. For a year the children are given their shots every day. Mandy and Robert love their lives again, spending time watching their smiling children, tickling them to hear them giggle. They never have to worry about sad faces or bored tantrums.
On their tenth wedding anniversary, Robert gives his wife a huge box wrapped in paper. She opens it to find a strange looking machine that floats up out of the box. Robert explains that it is an automatic doctor. They will never have to worry about when to give the children an extra shot, they'll never have to prepare the chemicals themselves again. The automatic doctor will monitor the children 24 hours a day, injecting them with chemicals when they need it.
"Oh Robert! it's such a lovely gift! Now we can always enjoy our children." Mandy turns to her children in their chairs, the automatic doctor hovering above them, sticking needles in their arms. "Don't you love your wonderful parents?"
The children sit still and smile, drool collecting on their chins.
Scenario 3
Ricky grew up just like any other small-town kid. He watched tv, played baseball, went to school. On his eleventh birthday he got lots of toy cars from his parents and friends. He was elated. These were the same sort of toy cars all his friends had. Now he had his own set and could play with them the way he wanted to. No more hearing about how his buddies were lucky enough to have some.
Ricky quickly found out that he didn't play with his cars like his friends. He liked to set up ramps and pits so he could jump the cars. He would crash them together in pretend races. His friends would set the cars up in rows, slowly drive them through imaginary cities, dusting them off and keeping them shiny and clean. Ricky thought nothing of this. They were his cars and he could have fun with them anyway he wanted. He wasn't hurting anyone.
One fateful afternoon, he was jumping his cars off a ramp into a big mud pile in his backyard. He had been playing for hours, enjoying the quiet afternoon. Behind him he heard a few murmurs then a loud collective gasp. Some of his friends had dropped by and had been watching him for a few minutes. They were outraged that Ricky wasn't playing with his cars like they did! They couldn't believe that someone would intentionally get their cars dirty. They saw how some of the cars had scratches and dents. They all realised what Ricky had been doing. Ricky sat on the ground, unable to comprehend why people were screaming at him. Calling him hurtful names. The other boys went to the mud pile and began rescuing the cars, throwing handfuls of mud at Ricky until he finally ran into his house in tears, not able to understand what was happening.
The next morning, Ricky woke up and dressed for school. He got his mother to drive him since he was scared of what would happen on the bus. Once in class, he tried to ignore the hateful stares of the other children. It seems that the boys who saw him told everyone what he had been doing. Ricky felt like the whole entire world hated him.
Later in the day, Ricky went to his locker to put some books away. When he opened it hundreds of notes fell to the floor. He opened one. It was a promise from someone that they would make him pay for what he did. Another said that he should run away and never come back or he would get hurt. The next one said that he should just kill himself. Ricky read all of them, note after note promising him death and torture for what he had done to his cars.
Ricky fled from school, running all the way home. He ran up to his room and hid in his closet, cowering in the corner, hoping this was all a bad dream. He eventually fell asleep, still crouched in the corner of his closet. He awoke some time in the middle of the night to hear noises outside his closet door. Thinking it was his parents looking for him, he opened the door and stepped out. He felt something close over his head, blocking out all light. He felt hands grabbing his wrist, forcing them behind him as he was forced to the floor. He felt something strike his head. Stars flashed in his vision as another blow was struck...
Ricky woke up again, his head throbbing. Trying to reach his hand over to feel for a wound, he realised that he couldn't move at all. He had been chained to a brick wall. He cried out for help, but the answer he got was a chorus of giggles. he could make out a large group of kids from school standing in front of him. All of them looking at him with pure hatred in their eyes. One of the boys approached him, holding a long metal stick with leather gloves. Ricky could see the end was glowing white, as if it had been held over a flame for a long time. "This is what you get for being different from us", was all Ricky heard before a searing heat was burned into his stomach. The screaming began just before the renewed laughter of many voices..
Contextless Analysis
Each of these scenarios are quite chilling, like something out of Black Mirror. Without even getting into the implications of what these narratives allude to, I'm impressed by the author's skill of building up such fascinating and disturbing collections of horror stories.
The first scenario subverts normalcy through a cosmic horror. But there's no monster or a villain, and Billy is not threatened or tortured. Only god-like entities beyond human comprehension that caused the kid to be duplicated in a parallel world, and that's it. The other Billy may as well not have noticed a thing. But this Billy has to live in an eternal state of uncanny valley. Everything works the same, but the circumstances are completely alien. He doesn't recognize anyone and nobody recognizes him. It's not even clear if it's really his house or he only happened to be in the same place. There's a chance that he can adapt and explain himself, but the violent reactions are somewhat abnormal and make that unlikely. Despite not being restrained in any way, Billy feels completely isolated. On a greater scale, this shows a complete indifference and disregard of higher entities who treat him as a doll. Billy is completely innocent, and he's neither punished nor hurt out of cruelty, but in a single gesture his entire life, memories and connections are rendered irrelevant and void.
The second scenario is a grotesque parody of parenting. The couple wants to have children, but they don't want to actually parent them. After miraculously managing to give birth with the assistance of sci-fi means, Mandy and Robert demonstrate that they can only truly love themselves. The story gradually turns their wish for comfort into something repulsive. Due to the hardships of parenting, the couple's solution is to chemically lobotomize their children to become docile, in practice undoing them having children in the first place. They do want to have kids, but as toys in their possession. Love simply becomes an excuse for dehumanization. Constructing an automatic doctor finally transforms the kids into low-maintenance dolls, rendering them completely vegetative before they even have a chance to grow up. The parents never recognize there's problem and genuinely believe they have succeeded as parents, demonstrating their delusion of happiness at the expense of others as the only thing they strive for.
The third scenario is the most terrifying due to lacking any speculative or fantastical elements. This is just cruelty one can find in reality if one looks deep enough. Ricky simply wants to play with his toys imaginatively, but becomes a victim of mob mentality. Even if he's not a part of the group, the violence escalates with childish malice simply because he's different. Unfortunately, such cases are common both historically and currently. Not confirming to a groupthink can get you punished with sadistic enforcement. In the story these are just kids, but in reality people get lynched just for having a different preference and minding own business.
The stories masterfully build up violation of someone's innocence while being disguised with a mundane front. Each of the scenarios uses the themes of invalidation of individuality and corruption of familiarity. The powerless are doomed to suffer by the hands of a grand authority, with their rights to personhood becoming meaningless, and a self not allowed to exist. The abusers don't even see the abuse, to them oppression is a normal expression. Being threatened by an unexplainable situation is a strong foundation for an existential horror anthology.
Context
The 2001 blog post by AntiNorn describes the attitude of the fanbase for the 1996 videogame Creatures.
The game is an alien colony raising sim where cartoonish creatures called Norns can be taught behaviors through reinforcement learning and breed to pass on traits. Norns go from room to room, interact with objects and each other, and react to words. Across generations, Norns can be trained to act in a specific way. The save files can be shared with others on the forums. The game was praised for being one of the earliest practical utilization of artificial neural networks and genetic mutation algorithms, compared to dynamic but still scripted learned behavior in games like Tamagochi. The game has received multiple sequels and compilations.
Today we would well understand Norns as digital pets. Back then, there was a serious discourse about the ethics of teaching pain to Norns despite them being digital simulations. While of course there were people who only treated it as a game, due to novelty a notable portion of the fandom was talking about Norns as if they were alive.
Among the fandom, there were emergent communities who would collect Norns based on some kind of theme or would try a specific experiment. Among those, there were those passionate enough who would collect "traumatized" Norns and "rehabilitate" them by training away the behaviors they didn't like. And in response there were players who deliberately made Norns unhappy.
AntiNorn is the kind of a player who liked to push Norns to their limits, making them respond with pain to everything, and publicize the results on the Tortured Norns blog, for scientific interest. For which he has received some notable notoriety and online harassment, to the point of death threats. His blog article in response to the hate mail brings up the rights of a player to play a videogame as they see fit, and raises questions if the fans seriously treat their save files as alive. The stories have some subtle allusions to various parts of the game or the community.
Re-review
With that in mind, the context transforms the horror stories into a brilliant and depressing allegory. AntiNorn is using horror fiction as a philosophical argument about the relationship between gamers and games and fandom hypocrisy.
The first story is depicted from the perspective of a Norn, whose save data is shared and uploaded to a new game environment. The "god-like race of beings" mentioned are the players, who pick Norns from the forums based on their personal interest and take them to their world to play with. The Norn may feel completely uncomfortable with the local Norns who were raised under different standards, and may be subject to different treatment than what it used to. The player may love Norns as pets, but Norns themselves may not like being treated such way.
The second story is another criticism of the players, and even more specifically of rehibilitators. The perceived point of the game is to train Norns to fit your vision, so if Norns were to be considered alive, the ethics of it would be questionable. But the players who specifically train Norns to always be happy are compared to those who perform a lobotomy, trying to "fix" their attitude for not fitting the ideal. The allegory accuses the players for not wanting treat Norns for what they are, but maximize personal scores. While in the story Robert and Mandy force happiness to avoid taking care of their kids, the players force happiness to avoid dealing with Norns' complex emotions.
The third story is the most blatant and autobiographical. Ricky is a parallel to AntiNorn, who is being lynched to what he sees as simply playing differently. There's nothing wrong with exploring, but other kids wanted the toys they don't even own to stay sterile and punishing those who don't play by their rules. AntiNorn's getting death mails from the mob finally pushed him to call the fandom out.
In conclusion
AntiNorn tells us the fandom culture that existed in 2001. While this is a period where people are already well familiar with how videogames work, fandoms can be quite passionate and forget the line between fiction and reality. The blog points at the problem with attitude of the fandom acting protective of the virtual creatures, when at the same time they don't treat them like they would a child. If they were, there would be more vocal concerns in the community about ethics in digital life.
Even disregarding the game, I really like how nightmarish these "scenarios" are written, I wouldn't mind reading a series with more of them.
Could AntiNorn be at fault for doing something he knew was extremely unpopular? Are the stories somewhat exaggerated? Probably. But I don't think this is something that should have deserved hate mail. Even today, fandoms often have self-appointed warriors who seek people talking about their media and attacking those who go against community consensus. But as online culture has evolved, such policing is not very popular. AntiNorn's response was appropriate, sharp, and profound.
Steve Grand OBE wrote this on the matter:
Take cruelty, for example. One Creatures fan (who I believe is in the US Navy) started a Website entirely devoted to ways in which people could be cruel to these creatures. He devised various tortures to make their little lives a misery, and I think he did so with his tongue firmly in his cheek and a challenging grin on his face. I was so pleased about this (although I didn't dare say so publicly while I still represented the company that made Creatures, for fear that it would upset our customers), because it forced people to think about whether this really was cruel,. I expected him to elicit some response from the other Creatures owners, but not quite such a hostile one as ensued. The poor guy received an enormous amount of hate mail, and was excluded from the Creatures Internet community for a long time. Much of his hate mail showed a greater regard for the creatures than it did for the life of this one human being. Less traumatically, I was pleased to see people start up Websites of their own in response, setting them up as rehab centers and adoption agencies to provide shelter for the poor victims of this virtual abuse. This was not the behaviour of people who felt that life had been debased by the existence of artificial beings, nor was it the behaviour of people who were scared of artificial intelligence. These people were going out of their way to protect and care for these creatures, and they held them in equal regard to other more natural forms of life. They may have been overreacting, but I was glad of the sentiment.
AntiNorn appears to have passed away in 2004 in his 30's. I wished AntiNorn would become a popular writer or AI researcher.
Also see the video by Yapsome that inspired this topic and a relevant Reddit thread.
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