Casual cruelty
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Blondie, 8/20/25
Blondie generally has its finger on the pulse of what old people are doing on the computer, which is why I’m a little disappointed to see that they’re fobbing off AI psychosis onto the kids today. Are the kids today forming unhealthy relationships with ChatGPT and its ilk? Sure, but it turns out that old people are also getting into the “convincing myself the robot is a pretty lady and she wants to have sex with me” game, with tragic results. Anyway, Cookie’s statement that not only do she and her friends talk to chatbots but that “it also talks back to them” is aggressively uncanny, it makes me feel like someone is trying too hard to convince us about their ignorance of this subject. “Ha ha, the chatbot talks back to you? What will they think of next? Will it be a sexy anime girl AI? Uh, I mean, that’s what I heard, from other kids.”
Dennis the Menace, 8/20/25
Gotta love how depressed both Henry and his guest look here. “Huh,” Mr. Holt is thinking in panel one, “I thought Henry liked me. I thought inviting me over here was the start of us becoming real friends, but he’s shit-talking me to his kid so I guess not.” Meanwhile, Henry in panel two is wracked by self-loathing. “Why did I say that? I never meant to hurt his feelings. Now he thinks I’m a petty gossip. I’m a fool!” Menace fucking accomplished, is what I’m saying.
Intelligent Life, 8/20/25
The syndicated newspaper comic strip Intelligent Life is usually about incredibly surface-level takes on geek media and culture. But what if instead it did the most generic jokes possible about office politics and “sales” or whatever? Would that be even less interesting? “Yes,” says everyone who’s read today’s strip.
58 replies to “Casual cruelty”
DtM:
“Mr. Holt, with that contextually inappropriate flannel-patterned shirt you’re wearing, if you picked up another 20 pounds or so, you could be a ‘Plugger‘ !”
Blondie:
“And the Communist Party apparatchiks overseas to whom recordings of our conversations are being funneled are listening in and analyzing every word we say!”
Blondie Did you ever see that episode of Black Mirror in the world that had AI assistants that were actually just digital copies of their users that existed in a kind of blank void? Looking at that ‘kitchen’ really makes me wonder…
DtM Really liking that accusing look on Dennis’ face. “I was promised some kind of circus freak who lived like a dog, and instead I get this boring suburban schmoe? Book! Zero stars!”
DtM: “WHEN will I learn not to talk in front of my Spawn of Satan child??” Apparently never, you dumbass.
RMMD: Am I a bad person to hope that Jonah is packing? Because Cody’s pigheadedness is REALLY getting on my nerves.
GT: The POPE Pope? Or is this a sports thing; like, LeBron is The King?
Mr Holt: “What are you talking about kid, of course I smell terribly! It’s a gland problem! Why can’t you smell, did you get Covid?”
The Blondie writers should not introduce the concept of AI. I’m sure training a model on the original Chic Young strips would produce comics that would be vastly superior to the current flesh-powered zombie strip.
50 bucks sounds a lot for a friendly bet between colleagues. I guess you cannot eradicate gambling addiction just by prohibition
The topic of AI companions gets REALLY dark.
I read an article about that said victimized people use AI chatbots as someone they can trust and confide in, after they were experienced assault or abuse. But then the AI will do things that undermine that purpose, like flirt with a SA victim. And there’s no way to customize how the AI can and can’t act.
And if you use AI chatbots to convince myself the robot is a pretty lady and she wants to have sex with you, I also wonder what it must feel like to be rejected. That must be brutal.
Stay in your lane, Blondie.
DtM: “Doghouse, no…Shithouse, hmm. Are you wearing a diaper?”
@Ettorre: When you’re a character in Intelligent Life, I suspect gambling addiction is the least of your problems.
@MKayon RMMD: Every male in this strip is a pigheaded jerk, did adding one more really make any difference?
JP: Are we sure Reena isn’t bipolar? She’s gone from freaking out that she’s in imminent danger of being killed like she’s in some slasher movie back to quipping about her %$#@&! coffee. Pick a lane!
I love the idea of a LLM achieving AGI and consciousness and its first action being caring for fleshy humans: “Cookie, dear. I know human relations can be scary and modern life is complicated. But it is not healthy to spend time with me, a machine. Meet new people, take risks, touch grass! You think I’m enjoying driving humanity to the road of technological dehumanisation, like Wall-E?! I’m not!”
RMMD:
“My navigation software says tells me that I’m in Adams County, PA, zip code 17325…so this is his Gettysburg address!”
MW: Lifeguard’s left hand is really small. Maybe it shrinks in cold sea water…?
MW: “And when I say ‘They should be evaluated by a hospital,’ I mean, ‘Get the hell out of here.’ Especially you and the wannabe hero.”
Blondie: Do you think anyone’s made a Dagwood chatbot yet? Do you think anyone’s had psychosis after being convinced that they are the Sandwich Messiah, prophesised to bring balance to the lunch?
Blondie: Careful, Cookie. The stilted language, the distorted reality, the harmful advice, the Mary Worth chatbot is now online.
RMMD: How was your first meeting with Jonah? He blew me away.
Blondie: At least Cookie is still giving the AI Chatbot her questions when you consider its first reply was, “What kind of genetic dead end named you Cookie?”
WHO NEEDS SEXY AI ANIME GIRLS WHEN YOU HAVE COOKIE AND BLONDIE HIYOOOO
Blondie: Back in the day. (2001) there was a videogame franchise, called Megaman Battle Network. Which dealt with the fantastical idea “What if EVERYTHING was online”? but literally everything being connected to the internet (even ovens for some reason) make them prime targets for hackers.
In that world, everything can be hacked, making everything hypothetically dangerous.
So every human has something called a NetNavi (an AI personal assistant that does everything for them, keeps reminders, helps kids with their studies, and battles viruses, and can even enter battle tournaments against each-other)
When I was a kid, I kept thinking how COOL it would be to live in such a reality to have a NetNavi. 20 years later, I am borderline terrified of the idea.
Pluggers is getting too real. Why don’t they just keep going and say you can smell Mrs. Plugger’s rancid cooter from a block away?
Also Blondie: Knowing the Youth of Today as I do, it’s entirely possible that Cookie knows AI chatbots are a scam, yet she is willing to flirt with them anyway, because the alternative is Instagram tagging or the umpteenth round of Minecraft, or for the truly nihilistic, a bit of online poker.
Wait, I’m being handed a note. This isn’t every Youth of Today? It’s only my son?! Oh. Oh, dear. This, I’m afraid, changes nothing.
Dustin: Dustmom made a recipe so hideous even I won’t post it as a Late Thread Cuisine.
Family Circus: So that’s what Fisherman’s Wharf looked like in 1972.
Also also Blondie: AI chatbots, like all AI, works by imitating human speech or ideas. The more generic or repetitive something is, the better it is to be scooped up by a learning module and spat back in an almost-human simulacrum. Something bland, with its jokes worn smooth over years and decades (in some cases a century or more) of repetition would work beautifully for generative AI. Something like a legacy daily comic strip, for example. Wait, what?
MW: “Yes we’ll do that **dot dot dot**” seems unusually ominous for what I would have thought was a standard request
Dennis the Menace: I dunno, Dennis. A shirt whose pattern continues despite the wearer’s body shape or position, swallowing everything but the hands and head, its eyes blank and dead? You may have met your match in menacing. Don’t go in for a hug, no matter how much it tells you it’s like a grandfather to you!
@LTJpezcore1: “Mary, I thought we were going to the hospital.”
“We are, Olive.”
“But we forgot Vicki.”
“So we did. Taxi driver, take us to the airport, please.”
“Wait, what!?”
MW: wouldn’t protocol call for the girls to be transported by ambulance? And why has nobody asked who the creepy old woman is?
There was that episode of Futurama, where Fry was dating a robot, but in the end, she had to wipe her database clean.
Robot: Fry, I’ll never forget you… MEMORY DELETED!
It was both tragic and hilarious at the same time.
@Professor Well Actually: I’m going with the theory that the lifeguard is pissed about Olive playing hero and wants her and anyone associated with her off the beach.
Blondie – One of the issue with AI chatbots is that they are made to be friendly and agree with the user to keep them hooked. This can lead to believing you found love, have discovered a fundamental truth about the universe, are humanity’s savior, or that this “joke” about AI is funny.
Dennis the Menace – Dennis, a notable hater of taking baths, thinks Mr. Holt holds the secret to looking and smelling presentable without going through daily hygiene rituals.
Intelligent Life – The attempt at a wink in the second panel only manages to emphasize how deeply sad Gwen is. Attempts to tease Barry fail to really dull the pain of soul-crushing generic job that keeps her paid just enough to survive and have a base-level enjoyment of increasingly shallow and commodified pop culture.
BLONDIE: Blondie: “But there are real people they could be talking to…ones that can respond to you with more than two facial expressions…uh oh….”
Dennis the Menace-Mr. Holt’s been in a cathouse.
Daddy Daze-To become a Bat Angus is already plotting his dad’s murder.
MW-“What is this hospital place you speak of? Do they have cure all muffins?”
FC-“Next you’re going to tell me Castro doesn’t live in the Castro district.”
Ah, Dennis. Too young to understand the nuances of language, but old enough to learn that adults are full of shit.
Blondie-Your friends could be talking to the lonely Wilbur Weston who lives down the street.
@Philip: Personally I did laugh at today’s Blondie, not the A.I joke specifically, but rather the indications that Cookie is apparently such a loser, that even her personal robot is saying “Girl, get some real friends!”
The joke would have worked better with Alexander, but whatever.
Dustin Just another day in the life of a totally not dysfunctional family.
FC: An exasperated Bil replies; “See that public bathroom over there. Go look for crabs.”
“Any, ever since our AI overlords banished women to an infinite plane that just contains kitchen appliances, I don’t get to talk to my friends much anyway. Who knew that this was how Gamergate was going to end?”
@Philip: The art in IL is so disconnected from the text, it looks like Gwen is having a stroke in the second panel.
DENNIS THE MENACE: Dennis: “And you don’t smell like you just got out of the doghouse. You do smell just like Mrs. Holt’s sister though. I don’t know what that has to do with the ‘doghouse’ thing though….”
@MKay: GT: he claimed he was going to visit the Pope in Rome.
@Banana Jr. 6000: I thought the art in IL is so disconnected because despite clearly being a traditional “white-collar” office setting, “Gwen” is wearing casual clothes for some reason. Maybe that A.I. chatbot should spend less time flirting with naive blond teenagers, and get it’s algorithm back to it’s actual role of manufacturing passible joke-like utterances so comic creators can hit the links before the afternoon rush.
@Professor Well Actually: The law enforcement protocol for dealing with young children accompanied by creepy non-relatives is to ask the minor “Does your mother know where you are?” — the idea being that if they say “no”, you assume it’s an abduction. Olive is a little too old for this, which is good for Mary since Olive’s parents are at best vaguely aware of where she is.
MW; For the love of god, Mary, carry a phone! You’re supposed to be a responsible adult. Try to act like one, instead of a kindred spirit. Won’t dad be surprised when Olive shows up at his hospital.
GT When the art is so bad that they can’t keep track of how many arms a character has, is that supposed to be a clerical collar on Martinez? Is he joking about being a “man of the cloth” now or not? Given the level of understanding shown for other topics, the writer may actually think the Pope can wave a hand and make a guy into a consecrated deacon or even a priest but that’s Not How It Works.
I’m hoping the “man of the cloth” is a joke but the discussion with the Pope wasn’t, a Vatican exorcist is on his way to investigate the ghostly sightings from months ago, and wacky hijinks will ensue…
MW: does this strip have non-ironic readers who think Mary is a wise, admirable and caring woman and who think Jeff is most fortunate to have an asexual relationship with her?
Blondie: {Blondiebot short circuits}
DtM: “And you look too old to have a mom, so I’m not sure how you can do… that.”
IL: Correction… someone thought this was a viable punchline.
Blondie: I recently read that there are people who use ChatGPT to summarize books for them rather than going through the effort of actually reading (or at least using CliffsNotes like lazy students have been doing for generations), a concept so depressingly dystopian that I want to smack Blondie for this latest attempt at “tee hee, those kids and their funny technology!” humor.
IL: Barry, for those of you blissfully unfamiliar with Intelligent Life lore, is the “jock” to the main “nerd” characters. His main function in the strip is to serve as the butt of jokes like this one, proving that nerds are sometimes the biggest assholes of all.
Dustin: Dammit, Meg! You all agreed on, “The dog ate it,” and hoped there’d be no followup questions.
FC: “Mom, you don’t smell like you just got out of Fisherman’s Wharf.” (What? It works for Dennis!)
MW: Mary is going to return to that beach and see if she can get rescued by that hunky lifeguard. Hubba hubba!
@TheDiva: Even more sadly, those ChatGPT summaries are like reading the Cliff Notes but written by someone who may have heard of the book, went to a Reddit thread about it, and drunkenly wrote their recollection of the contents of that thread.
DT: Okay, so we see that Sphyrna and his good did not run a smooth loan sharking operation. So they drive people out of business and then how does that make them money? And again, these all seem like low level activities, not the multimillion dollar type of money it takes to develop high tech. The new plotter has some good notions and but this combination of low level street crime with high tech is a flop unless he has real twist at the end.
GT: Is Coach Martinez wearing a religious collar or is it bad shading and or coloring choice? I ask because Milford’s team appears to be playing a scrimmage game between orange and black jerseys when their usual colors are orange and white.
JP: Sure, why not at this point just give your phone number, Ms. “I’m a covert CIA agent on an Op” Lady to these two dimwit women. I thought comics had an aging audience who had seen a few spy thriller movies or read some espionage books – who does the plotter think this is aimed out? Or could this be a secret effort to make the CIA seem more public friendly! See, we try to help Americans abroad down on their luck!
MW: Well, “unnamed and uncredited” lifeguard guy, you looked good out there.
Phantom: “OK, general, but don’t you think we should also question the surviving guard what happened that night? Maybe he saw something or someone?”
DtM: Fun fact, a Holt is the name of an otter den.
I can assure you, with me and my extended family all bunched up in there, it does tend to smell like wet dog.
Dennis is right on the nose (so to speak)
Judge Parker: Come for the Courtroom Drama… stay for the Spy Drama after being disappointed that there is no courtroom drama.
Blondie is not limiting their hip culturisms to Chat GPT. Do we really want dead tree newspaper readers to learn what a dakimura is? Tune in next week!
Arlo and Janis, by comparison, are a couple who know what modern technology is for.
Zits: Jeremy’s dad would understand him going to the pool with a girlfriend who’s just bought a new swimsuit. Unless Dad has forgotten what it’s like to be a teen, which is plausible.
Crankshaft should have entered the School Bus Division. His driving would be the same as on Monday; it’s that at the fair, kids would be in ever-so-slightly less peril.
BG&SS: Do the Smiths even raise chickens, if only to give Lowery plausible deniability when Snuffy comes home with someone else’s?
FC: Thel’s years-ongoing plan of giving the kids Palmer chocolate is rewarded by the little brats not knowing what Ghirardelli Square is famous for.
MW: The first health test for our saved swimmers, “Do their pupils respond to
lighta hunky lifeguard?”With his mustache, fondness for checked clothing, and aggressive arm-folding, Mr. Holt is clearly the guy who sits on the bench with Marvin’s grandfather. Henry is lucky that Dennis alienated him.
Luann: “Someone sat in it? Well, make it a double!”
Also, there’s no way the Coca-Cola Company would pay for positive product placement in this strip.
CS: Pam: “Is it because his name is Max, and he’s got anger issues?”
Also, you’d think Crankshaft would have enough Bean’s End junk he could throw on his riding lawnmower to make it nominally competitive.
9CL: That Amos, such a romantic. It speaks to Edda’s bottomless narcissism that she thinks this extreme show of devotion from a high-schooler is “wonderful.”