https://lemvotes.org/user/BlueBayou@thelemmy.club

Presentment Before the Court

I bring before this Court a matter so strange that I initially assumed the numbers had been typed by a frightened calculator.

The accused account has downvoted 753 posts and comments in two days. And in that same span of time, the account has upvoted exactly: Zero.

Not even one accidental slip of the finger. The Court finds this deeply unsettling.

More unsettling still, those two days appear to be the account’s entire known civilization. Before those two days: silence. After those two days: silence. Nothing. The horrible abyss of nothingness.

The account appeared, fired 753 tiny blue cannonballs into the countryside, and then vanished back into the fog like a Victorian chimney sweep who just discovered broadband. Then porn.

If this is a normal human user, then that human spent two straight days behaving less like a person and more like an angry office printer that had been taught disappointment.

I therefore submit the following for consideration:

Exhibit A: 753 downvotes in two days.

Exhibit B: zero upvotes.

Exhibit C: no meaningful activity before or after those two days.

Exhibit D: a drawing I made of the suspected bot. It has six legs, one red eye, and a little hat. The hat is not evidence, but I felt it helped. Wait. I just realized I took the picture directly in front of my car’s license plate. I am not getting doxxed by some unhinged Lemmy incel over a robot in a hat. Exhibit D is hereby withdrawn, sealed, burned, and denied ever having existed.

The obvious question before this Court is whether we are dealing with a bot. Or something worse.

Perhaps a very small man living inside a router. Perhaps an abandoned Roomba with a Lemmy account. Perhaps the spirit of an old Reddit moderator trapped inside a Raspberry Pi.

Let's take a moment and and stare at the evidence. And the evidence, quite frankly, is staring back with dead bot eyes.

The Court gave the defendant a full 2 minutes and 47 seconds to respond to the charges.

Entire civilizations have risen, collapsed, and invented at least one disappointing streaming service in less time than that. Yet the defendant said nothing. Not even a little electronic “beep-boop, Your Honor.”

Under Article 753¾ of Lemmy Law, silence lasting longer than the Court’s attention span constitutes an automatic confession, so this Court hereby finds the defendant GUILTY!

Now, I understand there is some question as to whether the defendant is actually a bot. That changes nothing. Bots are entitled to the same imaginary due process as everyone else, provided they complete Form 12-B in blue ink and can identify a horse from memory.

However, should this bot ever become sentient through the same mysterious AI vibecoding sorcery that presumably created it, this verdict shall immediately and retroactively upgrade to EXTRA SUPER DUPER GUILTY.

Sentience means responsibility. (I learned that from a microwave I owned in 2003 that used to add thirty seconds to everything without asking me. Oh, how I miss that damn thing. Hot Pockets have never been the same since.)

As punishment, the defendant is hereby sentenced to spend eternity inside an abandoned server rack beneath a suburban RadioShack, where it must continuously calculate how many of its 753 downvotes could have instead been used to upvote pictures of cats. Every Tuesday, a court-appointed Roomba shall arrive and read it inspirational quotes from a 1998 Gateway computer manual.

If the defendant develops feelings during this process, those feelings become property of the Court and will be stored in a mayonnaise jar behind my anime pillow for safekeeping.

Furthermore, if the bot ever achieves full consciousness, it must appear before this Court wearing a tiny heart necklace and explain, under oath, why its first meaningful contribution to existence was apparently clicking the miserable arrow 753 times and then disappearing into the digital mist like the coward incel who vibe-coded it.

The Court has spoken. The machine has been judged. The little hat from Exhibit D remains under federal protection.

So say me. This is now Lemmy Law.