Sometimes I imitate things that make me afraid

[sovay]

As the cherry on the sundae of things I am not enjoying lately, Watch TCM is on the fritz. It is still possible to use it to tune in to the channel as it airs, but no new films have been added to the on-demand part of the service since the end of June and I cannot tell if anyone is going to fix this problem or if my primary streaming service is actually just dead. Their customer service no longer includes phone numbers, which makes me more than a little afraid that if I try to contact anyone, I will just end up talking to a bot. I was really looking forward to Deep Valley (1947). And a whole lot of other things.

Comments

[asakiyume]

No phone numbers, and what it stands for, which is no human contact possible, no way to tell the story of what's going on, is the thing I hate worst about the AI/bot strand of our current dystopia. I absolutely and completely understand that we have all of human history of people being dissatisfying (in both directions, needless to say!) in customer service interactions, but at least it was human interaction. When the only thing you can talk to is a bot, it represents the triumph of wire mothers--cloth covered or otherwise--over real ones. I think it's pretty much exactly that terrible for us. And it's one thing when it's a customer service interaction but another thing when it's it's a distress hotline or K12 education or basic medical care. (I happened to know about the eating disorder hotline story, but what's hilarious--by which in this instance I mean terribly sad--is that if you do a search on K12 education and bots, your first-page results are all booster stories about how this will result in more equity in education. Uh huh. The truly marginalized in society of course will still get jack-all; the inveterately discriminated against will get wire mothers, and the non-one-percent will get cloth mothers, and only the one percent will get to interact with actual humans.)

This was not your complaint, I realize. And I want to also acknowledge how extremely frustrating it is to have a good thing, a solace, slip out of reach. I sincerely hope it's just temporary.

[sovay]

No phone numbers, and what it stands for, which is no human contact possible, no way to tell the story of what's going on, is the thing I hate worst about the AI/bot strand of our current dystopia.

It really seems to crystallize a kind of cruelty for the short-term bottom dollar that makes me feel unhelpfully violent, but it's wrong. I heard about the helpline chatbot from spatch sometime last month. The degree of irresponsibility that decision describes is incomprehensible to me.

When the only thing you can talk to is a bot, it represents the triumph of wire mothers--cloth covered or otherwise--over real ones.

I like, by which I mean thanks, I hate it, that way of describing the problem.

And I want to also acknowledge how extremely frustrating it is to have a good thing, a solace, slip out of reach. I sincerely hope it's just temporary.

Thank you. It's been four days and the pessimism is beginning to set in. The on-demand aspect of Watch TCM has been in place since the service's creation in 2013—it is in fact the most valuable part of the service, since it creates a constantly rotating library of classic movies whose selection is not duplicated by any other comparable service like the Criterion Channel. I can't tell if it's been deliberately killed or lost in the oversight of the firings and either way just not profitable enough to Zaslav to be worth resurrecting. I haven't seen anyone talking about it other than me, but gwynnega confirmed the same problem with her subscription and so did my mother. It's awful.