You need to know about glurge

Hi! Josh here – Emily is away this week for a family commitment and so we're running a series of guest posts. We've been writing a bit about AI recently, especially with the horrible news that users of Grok / X / other AIs have been rampantly generating and uploading "nudified" images of real people (and children). A follow-up on that work is coming soon, but first we wanted you to know about another AI trend you may not have heard of yet: glurge.

It's not horrific in the way that nudify apps and such are, but you still definitely need to know about it, especially since you might be consuming glurge without even knowing it.

Here's Emily:

I'm pleased to share a guest post by a friend of mine. We went to journalism school together 20 years ago, and it's great to be able to share her writing here. She's talking about glurge,, something I'd not heard of before. It's something we all need to know about. Thank you Erica Challis. And thank you to everyone who supports Emily Writes Weekly so I can share different views and hire local writers.

Glurge and knowing your own mind

glurge / ɡlɜːdʒ / noun
stories, often sent by email, that are supposed to be true and uplifting, but which are often fabricated and sentimental.
Collins Dictionary

My friends. Those heartwarming stories swarming your social media lately are not there to restore your faith in humanity.

You know the ones: tough gang members running into burning buildings to save puppies, nice young men randomly handing flowers to old ladies outside a supermarket to see them smile, homeless drug addicts who kick the habit with the help of an equally homeless kitten. 

I'm a writer. It's my business to know how to manipulate readers' emotions and to spot when others are manipulating mine.

Sure, some posts might be true, but even if they are, ask yourself: Who is creating these detailed, perfectly-lit images of the event? Who is crafting these fluently-written stories so finely calculated to bring a tear to your eye? 

These heartwarming posts are the other side of the coin to the fakeposts that exist to stimulate your fear and outrage. They are clickbait. 

What's the purpose? Not to bring us hope in a dark and confusing time. Every time someone shares or 'likes' these stories, someone we don't know adds to their data set of people who are unwary online and susceptible to AI clickbait.

A list of people who are vulnerable, credulous, and respond impulsively to emotional appeals is valuable data. That data is sold to people who'll use it to target us for their purposes.

They're not doing it to make the world a better place. Your empathy - the thing that could actually make the world a better place - is milked for profit.

That poster and their page gain the appearance of legitimacy when their glurge post goes viral, thanks to the likes, shares, and supportive comments from you, the friends you share it with, and a whole army of bots.

See, now they’re a real person with real followers - tens of thousands of them hungry for more wholesome content. Followers who trust that this kind stranger will tell them the truth about the world.

And these fakeposts go massively viral, thanks to AI’s ability to create startling, sensational images and tear-jerkingly wholesome stories within a matter of minutes. 

Once you engage with them, your social media algorithms respond by giving you more glurge.

There’s no storyteller behind it, just a farmer with his obedient bots churning out product. 

So who’s replying to your comments? Well, a Stanford University study noted that whoever was behind these pages would respond to some followers, and not from the kindness of their hearts:

“We observed that Facebook users would often comment on the pictures in ways suggesting they did not recognise the images were fake - congratulating, for example, an AI-generated child for an AI-generated painting. Scam accounts occasionally engaged with credulous commenters on the posts, both in Pages and Groups, at times seeking personal information about them or offering to sell them products that do not exist.” 

Pages with a large following can be monetised to bring in tens of thousands of dollars in ad revenue for a really viral post. Or the page can be sold to scammers who’ll use its list of followers and the detailed behavioural profiles attached to it: all your friends, your preferences, your beliefs, your interests, what pushes your buttons.

Because it’s not always your money they want – it’s your mind. They’re gaining your trust in order to spread their own agenda, politics and misinformation.

So aren’t we allowed the crumb of hope these wholesome fakeposts give us, with their AI-generated videos of rabbits bouncing on a trampoline? Is there really no goodness in the world? 

Sure, there is, but your heart will be better warmed by finding it alive and kicking in the world, rather than accepting the pre-digested gruel of social-media anecdotes.

I’ve just finished reading a book that made me pause just to absorb the pleasure of following another human’s imagination. To sit with our existence in a world that is active, confused, joyful, profound; that teases us with contradictions and incomplete meanings.

Sometimes, you’ll meet people who seem to approach everyone with an assumption of their goodness. It’s striking how often it does make people show up as their best selves. “Engage” is the keyword. They’re not going online for easily absorbed morsels of goodness. But it takes a rare kind of serene confidence to face raw, live people with optimism.

A person who knows their own mind.

If there’s one thing that social media glurge saps from us, it’s the ability to know our own mind.

There’s a phenomenon known as social proof. If millions of people, including celebrities and your friends, like a thing, who are you to question their judgement? Oh, and look! Click through here to see their favourite product at the low, low price of…

The low, low price of losing any ability to discern what’s real.

This is at the root of my loathing for these feel-good fakeposts. I dislike them just as much as the ones designed to generate fear and outrage, which want us to lock our doors and reach for our weapons. They are all manipulations. I object to our minds and eyes being colonised by these images.

Ursula Le Guin said the revolution begins in yourself, or it is nowhere. “You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”

I’m hardly a revolutionary. But I believe that looking away from lies is the flip side of bearing witness to truth.

Both can be revolutionary acts.

Erica Challis is a Wellington writer, editor and musician. She founded and wrote for the Tolkien fan site TheOneRing.net. Her short stories appear in 4th Floor, Turbine, Takahe, North&South, SpecFic NZ’s anthology Aftermath and the online zines Lemon&Lime and Wild Peach. She has a Masters in Creative Writing from the IIML.

Josh again. I just wanted to remind folks that your paid support for Emily Writes Weekly enables guest pieces like that one. Paid subscriptions mean Emily is able to pay writers (at above mainstream market rates!) If you want to support New Zealand writers and the other work that Emily and the EWW community does, please consider making a paid subscription or koha/donation to Emily Writes Weekly today.

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