I promise, I promise, I am nearly done with this, but sometimes you just see things that perfectly fit into your web you're weaving and you have to go "...and another thing..."

Eoin Colfer/Douglas Adams enjoyers will get that.

There's drama going on in the linux Doom-o-sphere because one of the developers has been secretly using AI for his code and so everybody else is fleeing the project because fuck that guy. Here's the article:

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/10/many-developers-leave-gzdoom-due-to-leader-conflicts-and-fork-it-into-uzdoom/

I was looking at the comments on github where the drama's actually brewing and this response here from Major Arlene (https://github.com/majorarlene) - AND the comment she's responding to - really, really just drives home my whole "Wet Cement" thing.

#WetCement

The "cement" of the Wet Cement analogy... in case you hadn't picked up on it, it's history.
And memory.
And knowledge.
And information.

It's what's recorded, what's written down, what's kept for the future and not blown away by the sands of time. It's public perception and collective memory and cultural awareness. It's the "everybody knows that" cloud that hangs around us all.

If they succeed, and can embed AI in the internet and our lives and we accept it and use it and "oh it's just this one report, it won't hurt" or "I can't find this, let's ask ChatGPT just in case" ourselves into complacency, we will never EVER be free of it.

And it will sit between us and the wet cement of the truth, writing into that cement what the corporations and politicians want us to think is the truth, and most people will never look further.

And once it dries, it's history, and history is a lot harder to argue with.

#WetCement

They want you to use the AI because they want you to trust the AI. Just like they wanted you to use the Search Engine because they wanted you to trust the Search Engine.

Because if they can get it so that you pass through one of their AIs to access any knowledge, and you do that as habit, then they can tell you the world is flat or round or square or whatever, and people - maybe not all people, but enough people - would be like "eh, that sounds right" and say that anybody questioning the AI is a conspiracy theory nutcase.

After all, according to Gemini and Grok and ChatGPT and DeepSeek, there is no genocide in Gaza.

Pic... unrelated.

#WetCement

Ok final diversion, I promise.

How do you know the Earth is round? Like, really? Most people have never been to space, or even high enough to see the curvature. There are tests you can do, sure, but they're hard to do right and I'm guessing most of you have never actually done them yourselves.

You take it on faith. You trust the science, trust the people who have been to space or seen the curve or done the tests. But what if the Earth actually WAS flat, and all those people were just lying to you?

That's the entire point of the Flat Earth thing, as a thought experiment (as opposed to a real belief). There's a lot of things that we cannot witness ourselves, we cannot know, that we just sort of have to trust others word on.

And it's not like we haven't been lied to before.

A lot.

Constantly, really.

#WetCement

Basically, if you can strategically place your AI between a person and the internet, it is a perpetual wet cement pouring machine that lets you write your own version of reality.

Just look at the constant dance that Elon Musk is having to do with his Grok AI, trying to de-woke-ify it and make sure that it's only giving people that search it the results that he wants them to get.

Or the recent phenomenon where Google's AI summary thing was blocking results for searches for Donald Trump Dementia... but not Joe Biden Dementia.

Screenshots below are taken from https://x.com/thebellacissa/status/1973726530019991976 who I want to give credit to but also not force you to go to Twitter, so I have stolen them.

Biden search gets helpful AI results. Trump search gets no AI help.

When they were asked about it, Google spokesperson Davis Thompson told The Verge “As we’ve said, AI Overviews and AI Mode won’t show a response to every query,”

#WetCement

What does this have to do with AI?

Well, most AI models are basically just search engines that've gotten ideas above their stations.

Hell, if you want to get incredibly reductive, LLMs are "look at the rest of this paragraph and guess what the next sentence should be". That's all it's doing when it suggests responses to emails or messages for you. Not what's right, not what's good, just what a search result says might be the best next thing to say.

So... think about how easily Google's own searches were manipulated - by others AND by Google themselves - and now remember that they want to have what is essentially the same sort of technology as an ever-present omniscient layer between you and the internet acting as your concierge and assistant, answering all your questions and finding things for you...

...as long as they're, you know, the right things. The things the companies or people in power want you to find.

#WetCement

I mention SEO and the Arms Race because I feel like it was during this time with the ever shifting algorithm that Google really got the idea into their own head that their search results didn't have to be actually accurate, just... feel that way to the end users. I'm sure they (Google) would have gotten there eventually on their own, but the SEO assholes really accelerated the enshittification.

After all, Google needed to be profitable at some point. Venture capital investments only get you so far. That's why Google is not a search engine company that does advertising, they are an advertising company that does searches.

And hey, there's not a LOT of difference between "finding things" and "suggesting things" when it comes to search results. All it took was a thumb on the scale in just the right place - and when you own all the places, finding the right place is easy.

#WetCement

Suddenly, if I was searching for Brave Express Might Gaine (an obscure giant robot cartoon from Japan) I did not get 10 pages of results about Chris Gaines, I only got... like... half a page, and then I started getting actual fan sites and subtitling groups and people writing about and selling the toys. It was wonderful. Google's search actually WORKED.

The problems really started when the tech bros decided to figure out HOW the search worked. They pushed and pulled and fiddled with data until they had invented what we now know as Search Engine Optimization, or SEO.

Using SEO, they could manipulate Google's own algorithm to show their own web pages at the top of the lists, regardless of their actual relevance.

Google twigged to what was going on, and started modifying their own algorithm to ignore the SEO, which led the SEO people to modify how they SEO'd, and it became an arms race for search results.

#WetCement

Simple answer? Money and power.

I swear to the gods it's like Scooby Doo sometimes, you pull the mask off almost any monster that exists in society and it's rich white dudes that want to become richer white dudes.

More complex answer?

There are probably people a lot smarter than me that have studied this stuff officially for their jobs, and they are welcome to correct me, but if I had to put a pin in it, I would say that this whole mess started with Google, and the "Search Engine Arms Race"

Before Google, searching on the internet was... it was bad. Searching was only kind of a thing. You threw a few key words into what passed as a search engine and hit go and prayed that you got a result that was relevant.

Most website navigation was site-to-site (following links, webrings, etc) or real-world-to-site, typing in addresses off things in the real world.

And then... Google happened.

#WetCement

And so they are also trying to use AI to "Disrupt" in the "modify an existing thing" form.

Because if they can't get you to go to AI, they will bring the AI to you.

That's why they are shoving it into browsers, and email clients, and word documents, and operating systems, and every other thing that they think they can cram it into. Because all it needs to "take off" is one of these applications of AI to significantly disrupt the existing meta narrative about that service or product.

It's also a good way to acclimatize you to the idea of AI, a good 'on boarding' procedure to try and transition you from the "email, but now with AI" to "AI that can also do with email" mindeset.

And now that we've set the stage, we've covered why they're rushing AI so fast, and we've covered why they're shoving it into everything... now it's time to finally face the elephant in the room - Why are they trying so hard to make AI happen?

#WetCement