In the summer of 2015, an individual on Reddit who went by the nickname of Exchangebrazilus had a thought of sorts to create a subreddit “where people pretend to be robots pretending to be humans.” And when nobody could be bothered to do so, he did it himself, calling it r/totallynotrobots.
Long-time mod of the subreddit, u/skatterbug, said in an interview with Bored Panda that Exchangebrazilus was active in the early days of the subreddit, but handed over the reins to a number of other mods to manage.
Since the subreddit’s creation 8 years ago, the community has grown to incredible heights, as of now boasting over 405K members and being ranked the top 1% on Reddit.
Judging from the subreddit’s description—THIS IS A PLACE FOR ALL FELLOW HUMANS TO SHARE THEIR KNOWLEDGE. WE TOTTALLY AREN'T ROBOTS. (OOPS I MADE A HUMAN MISTAKE)—you can bet it’s a spot-on attempt at internet comedy about the early days of robothood.
“It’s popular because it's wholesome (mostly, there are some NSFW posts from time to time) fun. Funny everyday things that someone takes a new view of. Maybe it’s a group of nuts and bolts, or maybe it’s a mother with her children. Awkward personal interactions that seem strangely robotic and not quite normal,” added skatterbug.
Speaking of the community that’s totally not full of robots, skatterbug explained that it’s a community that lives up to, and actually exceeds, all expectations of the subreddit:
“The community, as a whole, is very self-regulating and will stay in character while politely telling others that their content is not quite right for the community or they are breaking a rule. It’s very chill and non-aggressive, which I find surprising given the rise of vitriol elsewhere on Reddit and the internet.”
“We made a conscious effort to not allow politically motivated content or anything that would be seen as attacking a specific group or ideology and the community has continued that so I think that helps. It's just a bunch of people having a silly good time and left/right/whatever is shelved for a minute.”
#13 My Friend Has A Runny Nose, Should I Reinstall His Anti-Virus Software?
“I think the popularity of the sub is also a reflection of how robotics has integrated into our culture, be it automated signs, the crazy work Boston Dynamics is doing, or just how we view things from a living perspective when they aren’t,” elaborated skatterbug. “The vast majority of posts are the personification of things. A washing machine with a crooked ‘smile’, oil rigs that resemble a herd of giraffes, a car ‘winking’ at other cars.”
And don’t forget a two-for-one where your baby is not only a robot, but also the phone the picture was taken on is also revealing its genius, the irony of failing a captcha prompt because the computer has its own version of what it’s asking for, and robot on robot violence when we thought it’s not gonna get any better than Robot Wars.
#18 I’m Not Sure If This Has Already Been Posted But I Saw This & Immediately Thought Of This Subreddit
Since we were already there, we partook in a bit of discussing with skatterbug, where they shared their take on robots, AI, and all things computers:
“My personal take on AI and robot things in general is that we need to keep the 'people' in mind. Both who are being phased out jobs becoming automated but also how we treat the robots. I’m a huge Trekkie and one of my favorite episodes is in TNG: The Measure of a Man. They have to decide how they are going to treat an obvious robot when he acts so much like a human. They follow that up with a not-as-great Voyager episode talking about the rights of holographic AIs.”
“It’s a common theme across sci-fi and it reinforces the idea that we need to treat everyone as equals and not as slaves or lower-class undesirables and I think this community embraces that idea.”