Your Digital Twin Manifested in The Metaverse and Resurrecting The Dead

How twisted will the great inversion become in the age of AI, interacting in unreality?

But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams

-William Butler Yeats, (1899) Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven.

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The scamdemic lockdowns saw a huge adoption of virtual platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams take off across the corporate sphere, and for personal communication with friends and family, as people were imprisoned within their own homes.

Could climate lockdowns or renewed lockdowns for scamdemic 2.0 (whatever ‘scary’ virus is foisted on us by the propaganda organs) lead to the embracement of virtual reality and Zuckerberg’s metaverse?

In a recent podcast, Lex Fridman talks to Mark Zuckerberg in the metaverse using a virtual reality headset. The CGI-like digital representation of their ‘avatar-self’ is remarkably close to the real thing. Zuckerberg talks up the applications, and later segues into a ‘lovely’ little segment on how it could help people ‘speak’ to their (deceased) loved ones, helping with bereavement:

There’s probably some balance, where if someone has lost a loved one and is grieving, there may be ways, in which being able to interact, to relive certain memories, could be helpful…but then there’s probably an extent to which it could become unhealthy…I mean, I’m not an expert in that, so I think we’d have to study that and understand it in more detail. We have a fair amount of experience with how to handle death and identity, and people’s digital content, through social media already, unfortunately…People who use our services die every day, and their families often want to have access to their profiles, and we have whole protocols that we go through, and there are certain parts of it that, um, we try to memorialise, that the family can get access to it, the account just doesn’t go away immediately. But there are other things that are important, kinda private things, obviously we’re not going to give the family access to someone’s private messages, you know, for example. So yeah, I think there’s some best practices from the current digital world that will carry over…

As a reminder, one of the most viewed articles I’ve ever published here discussed the rumour - at the time - that Facebook / Meta was planning to “keep people alive” using their digital likeness on social media after “real death”. I hypothesised how this could be used to cover up (mRNA injection) genocide.

Now, dear readers, are we arriving at this reality distortion in real-time?

Will future generations become confused, or even normalise the concept of life and death no longer having any attachment or meaning, at the emotional level of bereavement, for moving on, of letting go. Why visit the gravestone of Grandma, when you can pop into the metaverse and have a good old chinwag “face to face”?

One reader of this stack made a highly prophetic comment which startled me, and could may well prove to be foresightful.

Perhaps username Bigs was onto something.

It is not a stretch of the imagination to consider how this could be weaponised against dissidents to emotionally terrorise and traumatise them, via video messages and even video calls from their dearly departed. That would be very rough, and I would not wish that level of callous, torturous inflicting on my worst enemy.

Zuckerberg goes on to say how great it would be to create a digital AI version of one’s self, especially someone with a large following on a podcast, so that their followers could ‘interact’ with ‘them’ - because after all, “there are only so many hours in the day”, Zuckerberg quips.

Would you like to interact with an AI version of Nicholas Creed? Sorry to disappoint, but there shall never ever be an AI interactive avatar of this non-transhuman writer in the meta-ether; certainly not with my consent.

Then we have the real concern of scammers using AI to impersonate people:

Link to article.

Imagine getting a phone call that your loved one is in distress. In that moment, your instinct would most likely be to do anything to help them get out of danger's way, including wiring money. 

Ruth, 73, got a phone call from a person she thought was her grandson. He told her he was in jail, with no wallet or cell phone, and needed cash fast. Like any other concerned grandparent would, Ruth and her husband (75) rushed to the bank to get the money. 

It was only after going to the second bank that the bank manager warned them that they had seen a similar case before that ended up being a scam -- and this one was likely a scam, too. 

I talked to a friend about this recently, on how we should prepare to protect ourselves from such an attack. He said he’d already discussed it with family and they had a “safe word”. I remarked that a safe word isn’t safe. Our devices are recording us all the time, and using encrypted apps like Telegram or Signal is no guarantee of mitigating against this - especially if your phone has already been targeted using Pegasus software.

The aforementioned article goes on to suggest tips:

Try asking the caller a personal question that only your loved one would know the answer to. This can be as simple as asking them the name of your pet, family member, or other personal fact. 

You can also check your loved one's location to see if it matches up with where they say they are. Today, it's common to share your location with friends and family, and in this scenario, it can come in extra handy.   

You can also try calling or texting your loved one from another phone to verify the caller's identity. If your loved one picks up or texts back and doesn't know what you're talking about, you've got your answer.

I *almost* wholeheartedly agree with these suggestions, except I would add, that if we find ourselves feeling like our family member seems a bit off during such a phone call / video call, we should be asking open-ended questions, nothing specific.

“Tell me something only we know about our childhood?”

“Ok, and what happened after that?”

Concept check, miniature detail, elaboration, nothing asked about things that you’ve already posted in the antisocial ether, nothing that is on a database like birth dates, names, empirically recorded data.

This is going to get surreally bizarre like nothing we could have ever fathomed a few years ago.

If you are still on antisocial media platforms, you may want to consider deactivating your account and deleting all your data, lest your digital twin be resurrected after you die, or used for malicious intent whilst you are alive.

Remember in the opening scene of the original Blade Runner film, the onus is on the suspected android to prove he is human, with the Voight-Kampff Test?

Yet here we are in 2023, clicking through endless ‘captcha’ tests, to prove that we, the humans, are not bots! The great inversion persists. We must persist in resisting.

I, for one, accept that death is a part of life. Nobody is supposed to be immortalised, whether through transhuman augmentation, biological, or bionic enhancement, nor via means of demonic digital resurrection.

I don’t need to “relive certain memories that might be helpful” in the damned metaverse. I have cherished memories in my mind, of all my beloved family members who have passed on. I often wonder what my Mother would make of all this tyranny and truth inversion - I believe that she would have seen through it. She was full of light and love. I believe that my brother and I share the same light, and always try to do what is right, even when that means going against the herd.

I terribly miss my Grandpa’s stoicism and his wisdom. I don’t have any videos of either of them. I have photographs, printed, that I can hold in my human hands. I have wonderful memories. I can visit the place where they are all buried, in one plot. I will never feel stupid when I sit quietly by their gravestone, alone, talking to them and telling them all about my life and what I am trying to accomplish. I tell them that I know they are watching over me. I take in the countryside of England’s lake district, hearing the birds chirping cheerfully, feeling the warmth of the sunshine on my cheek, and smelling the fresh flowers all around.

Cherish the real. Do not let them steal the real and sell back to you the fakery.

Know what is real. Know your heart. Listen to your inner voice. Realise that multiple generations of your ancestors live on through you, in you, and because of you. Let that be enough. Grieve. Remember. Experience love and loss. Where there is pain through bereavement, when you accept that pain, and let yourself experience it, and you peer behind the pain, you will find there is love. That is why it hurts.

This is how the circle of life is supposed to be. We don’t need a digital warping of life and death. We need humans to be human beings. Not avatars. Not digital twins.

Blessed Are Those Who Plant Trees Under Whose Shade They Will Never Sit.

-French theologian Hyacinthe Loyson, Paris {1866}.

This is my Father’s favourite song. He is still alive and I try to call him every week, no matter what. The hour is late, and family is the most important thing in this brave new world.

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Nicholas Creed is a Bangkok based dissident blogger. All content is free for all readers, nothing is locked in archive requiring a paid subscription. Any support is greatly appreciated.

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