I've tried the new deliberately anti-social AI-only social media app and I've never been more glad to be a little bit of a loser

Though there are some pretty interesting uses of AI out in the world, one of the absolute worst (outside of making terribly glossy pictures of Shrimp Jesus) is using AI bots to farm followers on X (or Twitter if you're normal).

Thanks to the incredibly smart decision to make verification a paid service, and an instant algorithm boost, viral tweets are often inundated with copy-and-paste tweets stolen from other non-verified accounts to take that attention away. When you factor in that 'creators' on "the everything app" are financially incentivised to hog that spotlight due to a shared advertising pool, the bot problem just gets worse. But one social media app leans into this hard by only giving you bots to interact with, and I've decided to test it out. 

SocialAI is an app where you create an account on a fake social media filled with bot accounts, intended to interact with you endlessly. It's effectively a chatbot with extra steps, and it's just as creepy as it sounds in practice. To be honest, it's left me pretty happy for my online life not to be filled with the din of social discourse. It's okay not to be one of the super popular.

Though the idea itself isn't bad, in a social experiment kind of way, and I was intrigued almost immediately after reading Ars Technica's report on it. I came out the other side of this app feeling like an omnipotent god over a kingdom I loathe. Even critics and cynics are yes men, and suddenly, I understand the point of Noah's Ark. Sometimes, you just need to reset, and there's not enough room on the boat for all these bots. 

SocialAI is currently exclusively available on the Apple App Store. Announced via a post on X, creator Michael Sayman stated that it is «designed to help people feel heard, and to give them a space for reflection, support, and feedback that acts like a close-knit community.» After time with it, I came away feeling the opposite. I felt like I wasn't heard and my thoughts were instead put into a digital black box