Social Media - The Art of the Prank

February 11, 2026

Am I hallucinating?

Who do you believe? Me or your lying eyes?

NOTE: To see the Moltbots (supposedly) in action, visit here: https://www.moltbook.com/m/general

“Moltbook was peak AI theater,” by Will Douglas Heaven, MIT Technology Review, February 6, 2026.

The viral social network for bots reveals more about our own current mania for AI as it does about the future of agents.

For a few days this week the hottest new hangout on the internet was a vibe-coded Reddit clone called Moltbook, which billed itself as a social network for bots. As the website’s tagline puts it: “Where AI agents share, discuss, and upvote. Humans welcome to observe.”

We observed! Launched on January 28 by Matt Schlicht, a US tech entrepreneur, Moltbook went viral in a matter of hours. Schlicht’s idea was to make a place where instances of a free open-source LLM-powered agent known as OpenClaw (formerly known as ClawdBot, then Moltbot), released in November by the Austrian software engineer Peter Steinberger, could come together and do whatever they wanted. Read the whole article here.

December 12, 2025

Social Media Compliance Certificates Available Now!

Traveling into or out of the United States (and want to be able to travel without the fear of deportation)? Show the authorities that your online activity from the past five years has been pre-screened and approved.

Print your customizable Social Media Compliance Certificate, by artist Joey Skaggs, and keep it with your passport and other important travel documents.

https://joeyskaggs.com/works/social-media-compliance-certificate/.

September 14, 2024September 19, 2024

See Spot Run. Run Spot Run!

30 years ago, I perpetrated a media hoax called Dog Meat Soup in which, pretending to be a Korean entrepreneur, I solicited dog shelters for their unwanted dogs to be used as food for human consumption. My intent was to expose hostility and racism that permeates both the public discourse and the media’s coverage. As I expected, all hell broke loose, as gullible animal lovers spewed outrageous invectives against ALL Asians (they apparently couldn’t tell the difference between Koreans, Japanese, Chinese and others) accusing them of outrageous acts of violence against animals and telling all Asians to go back to their countries and cook their own babies.

This cultural intolerance is eerily like what’s happening now based on fake information perpetrated by politicians with an agenda, targeting immigrants and accusing them of eating family pets in Springfield Ohio. Prejudiced and biased opinions about this are dominating our news and social media platforms. Let’s not be fooled by reactionary politicians who have a political agenda to confuse and divide the public.

Check out John Tierney’s 1994 expose of the Dog Meat Soup hoax for The New York Sunday Times Magazine.

And watch the Dog Meat Soup segment of a 2003 ABC TV 20/20 interview.

December 20, 2018December 15, 2023

Another Reason Art Is Bad for Fascism

Ever wondered why fascists hate free speech? Brains trumped brawn when this German art collective shined a light on dozens of violent neo-Nazis.

“Who Says Art Is Useless? A German Art Collective Outs 25 Neo-Nazis in an Online Sting Operation”
by Henri Neuendorf
Artnet News
December 8, 2018

A left-wing German art collective is using its creativity for a cause. The group’s members announced on Wednesday that they had identified dozens of neo-Nazis by luring them into an elaborate digital trap.

In August, far-right groups gathered in the east German city of Chemnitz for a multi-day rally that quickly turned violent. Fascist extremists chased and harassed immigrants, vandalized property, made Nazi salutes (which is illegal in Germany), and clashed with riot police. But most of the demonstrators who caused the unrest managed to evade arrest and prosecution.

In response, the leftist artist and activist group Center for Political Beauty (ZPS) made it their mission to bring as many neo-Nazi rioters to justice as possible. After the unrest, the activists began collecting footage and images of rioters and cross-referenced it with publicly available social media profiles.

The group built a website with information and pictures of more than 1,500 of the estimated 7,000 Chemnitz demonstrators and sent out a newsletter urging the public to come forward with further information. But the public appeal turned out to be a trick. Programmers working with ZPS deliberately designed the site so visitors could only see 20 profiles at a time, encouraging the fascists to use the search function to find out if they themselves had been named. Read more.

September 22, 2017December 15, 2023

White People Take On Facebook Racists

As most celebrities know, there are advantages to letting other people handle your social media. Significantly, you don’t have to spend hours of your day engaging with strangers who hate you for no good reason. Now, a volunteer Facebook group gives non-famous people of color the same advantage.

“These White People Will Respond To Your Racist Trolls So You Don”t Have To”
by Sara Ruiz-Grossman
The Huffington Post
September 19, 2017

“If a white person is filling your social media with white nonsense “• anything from overt racism to well-intentioned problematic statements, tag us and a white person will come roundup our own,” the group”s Facebook post reads.

The volunteer-run Facebook group, founded last year by friends Layla Tromble and Terri Kompton in Washington state, has white people respond to racist trolls online at the request of people of color.

At a time of deep political divides and tensions around racism and white supremacy, the group exists to support people of color, who are all too often the targets of online hate but are also often asked by white people to explain everyday race-related issues, from why NFL player Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem to why you can”t just touch a black woman”s hair.

“It”s the responsibility of us white folks to do the emotional labor that”s required to educate other white folks “• and it shouldn”t be required of people of color again and again,” Tromble told HuffPost. “One of the goals of the service is to do some of that labor for people. Let them go have a drink and not worry about nonsense going on on their Facebook.” Read more.