https://qntm.org/person Things Of Interest Fiction Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories cripes does anybody remember Google People 2019-10-31 by qntm This is an older version of this story, from 2019. Here's the latest version, from 2022. --------------------------------------------------------------------- cripes does anybody remember Google People -- qntm (@qntm) 21 August 2019 it existed for like fifteen minutes between Orkut but before Google+, and had the wildest features like your profile image had to be smiling. "No, wider," it would say. Sometimes it would just accept a frowning image and modify it to be smiling -- qntm (@qntm) 21 August 2019 Sometimes it would fill in personal details automatically? Hair colour, occupation. The weirdest one was date of birth because it was always really close to being accurate, but off by a few days -- qntm (@qntm) 21 August 2019 and suggest familial relationships with other users you'd never heard of before. "We think this person: is your father" -- qntm (@qntm) 21 August 2019 they did this thing where if you gave it access to your emails it would scan them and figure out which of your contacts had died, and then silently create profiles for them these were people who died before Google People launched?? And they'd show up in searches -- qntm (@qntm) 21 August 2019 nobody ever figured the follower system out. you couldn't "follow" other people, but apparently other people could "watch" you? but nobody ever found the "watch" button -- qntm (@qntm) 21 August 2019 everybody had like a dozen people "watching" them, all complete strangers with huge grinning profile pictures. There was always this one guy with the WEIRDEST face After a while I realised that people were just using that face as their profile picture, like an in-joke -- qntm (@qntm) 21 August 2019 well I thought it was an in-joke -- qntm (@qntm) 21 August 2019 Google People would constantly highlight blank areas on your photos like there was a person there and say "Someone you know?" -- qntm (@qntm) 21 August 2019 they shut it down after like six months and the reason was something like they had "found Them" -- qntm (@qntm) 21 August 2019 it made all these bizarre choices which I didn't even pick up on until later. I don't generally use emoji so it took me about two months to realise that nobody ever used a smiling emoji. because it didn't have a smiling emoji sad, tearful, angry, etc., not one smiling face -- qntm (@qntm) 21 August 2019 a while after "guessing" your birth date it would "guess" your death date, which was a bit wild, but after comparing notes we worked out that for most people it was just guessing the same date, or a few weeks or months after -- qntm (@qntm) 21 August 2019 https://t.co/BKrMZj7kYV -- qntm (@qntm) 22 August 2019 part 2 OK so if you remember this thread you may also remember that Google People doesn't show up in the Google Graveyard apparently (according to a Googler) the reason for that is because the project never "died", because internally it was never considered to be "alive" (cont.) https://t.co/XCLKZKSzLY -- qntm (@qntm) 7 September 2019 What's the google graveyard? -- emma, hockey butch (@LlanowarEmma) 11 October 2019 Google has a habit of discontinuing products, so people started maintaining independent listings of all of themhttps://t.co/ GLbpbvdeVyhttps://t.co/GG8wSr5EGphttps://t.co/qvLi98zeAf -- qntm (@qntm) 11 October 2019 I reset my pw and logged back in to Google People for the first time in 10 (?) years just now and discovered the following: 1. 10 years of updates on my account, written by me -- qntm (@qntm) 7 September 2019 2. also 10 years of "updates" for every other person I knew on there! I guess they made some algorithm to simulate continued activity? current hypothesis is that this was an attempt to game their metrics after it was really unpopular -- qntm (@qntm) 7 September 2019 3. INCLUDING PHOTOS -- qntm (@qntm) 7 September 2019 4. the algorithm is startlingly good at imitating my writing style for updates at first but it wanders way off topic and starts repeating itself because, you know, it's a bot. like how predictive text challenges always get locked in a loop -- qntm (@qntm) 7 September 2019 (going to stop numbering these) so by the time of present-day updates it's going in psychotic circles talking for thousands of words about "metal" and "low ceilings" and it generally seems to be quite unhappy for a bot -- qntm (@qntm) 7 September 2019 I genuinely cannot quite figure out if you're joking and/or writing fiction I suspect this isn't actually a thing but still -- @CoronaCoreanici@mastodon.social (@CoronaCoreanici) 7 September 2019 it doesn't help that it's absolutely futile to Google for "Google People" -- qntm (@qntm) 7 September 2019 Other current theory is that they kept this going as a semi-actual social network which they could experiment on -- qntm (@qntm) 7 September 2019 which is actually quite cool because Facebook had that problem where they were doing ethically dubious experiments on their users and, Google People, the users are all screaming mad bots, problem "solved"...? -- qntm (@qntm) 7 September 2019 of course it could be that classic "AI" thing where they're actually just woefully underpaid real people writing miserable fake posts in trash conditions -- qntm (@qntm) 7 September 2019 whatever's going on this latest auto generated photo of "me" looks pretty angry and like legitimately sick -- qntm (@qntm) 7 September 2019 "turn on your monitor" yuk yuk but seriously it's like they used a "radiation sickness" filter. it's actually legit upsetting to look at. no thank you -- qntm (@qntm) 7 September 2019 this rings a bell but it could have been Google Plus https://t.co /f3VhdZ0yHZ -- qntm (@qntm) 7 September 2019 https://t.co/PADM6LPJGe -- qntm (@qntm) 7 September 2019 basically if this is a dead social network, re-animated to do long-term experiments on, they are evidently not nice fun experiments and the "participants" do not enjoy them -- qntm (@qntm) 8 September 2019 https://t.co/bUqCboOGy0 -- qntm (@qntm) 8 September 2019 ah yeah all those bizarrely-phrased reminder emails after not logging in for a while "Don't forget about completing your Person!"https://t.co/ cSOnmfkKuw -- qntm (@qntm) 8 September 2019 "Your Person is empty" "Your Person is lonely" just say you want more details about my hobbies or whatever, cripes. unsubscribe -- qntm (@qntm) 8 September 2019 part 3 I have to confess I was still morbidly curious about this so here are some more preliminary research results research result the first: everybody hated working at/on Google People https://t.co/YlrLQkLau9 -- qntm (@qntm) 10 October 2019 apparently the project went through a ridiculous number of directors (10+) -- qntm (@qntm) 10 October 2019 my conjecture is that after a while they started moving people sideways onto the project as a like a constructive way to force them to quit -- qntm (@qntm) 10 October 2019 (I say that because it looks like a lot of these senior folks just quit tech entirely right after and don't show up again) -- qntm (@qntm) 10 October 2019 I mean you've got to have an office in Greenland you can transfer people to, figuratively speaking, right? I'm just kidding Greenland owns. Anyway I'm just hypothesising -- qntm (@qntm) 10 October 2019 the current director (yes there is one) did not respond to direct emails which I suspect may just be due to me being marked as spam (I am not internal to Google, meh -- qntm (@qntm) 10 October 2019 ) -- qntm (@qntm) 11 October 2019 however! I do have a friend in Google (helped me with the employee data) and I got them to email my questions anonymised [drum roll] -- qntm (@qntm) 10 October 2019 and the response was TETCHY. dismissive. I would say crabby almost to the point of being unprofessional and unfortunately that's it -- qntm (@qntm) 10 October 2019 "go away" in almost as many words. (or possibly "get away", I mean it depends how you interpret it) also very poor typography for a higher-up. rushed -- qntm (@qntm) 11 October 2019 apologies for the extremely poor navigability of this nonsense, I am doing my best. -- qntm (@qntm) 11 October 2019 okay that's basically one research result so here's a second one, apparently they support animated GIFs for profile pics now, AMAZING -- qntm (@qntm) 11 October 2019 yeah it 100% does *not* work https://t.co/1kn0ezNlDg -- qntm (@qntm) 11 October 2019 I've seen this a couple of times, those were both when the Google Person was based on someone who died IRL though https://t.co/ 2b9Nxsqur5 -- qntm (@qntm) 11 October 2019 so you can't be immortalized as part of a bizarre machine learning experiment? then what's the point -- world is WATCHING a bun (@elementnumber46) 11 October 2019 well I mean it probably depends if the experiment succeeds -- qntm (@qntm) 11 October 2019 well that's just Twitter, am I right? zoosh https://t.co/ 522Tx03VGZ -- qntm (@qntm) 11 October 2019 part 4 finally finding time to get back into this! so I put a manual update in my old Google People account saying just, "test" the bot which has been autogenerating updates for me for the past 10+ years apparently found this intensely confusing https://t.co/ py910VpTcG -- qntm (@qntm) 19 October 2019 (I guess the bot is my "Google Person"?) -- qntm (@qntm) 19 October 2019 the bot posted its own update which was the word "test" repeated for four pages -- qntm (@qntm) 19 October 2019 then an update which was basically one of its rabid Markov chained madness updates, but with "test test test" mixed in about a hundred times. tentative conclusion: data introduced by me (real human) has a relatively higher "priority" in the update generation algo? "significant" -- qntm (@qntm) 19 October 2019 (that was yesterday) today I posted a new update which was just a textbook social media "here's how my day was" -- qntm (@qntm) 19 October 2019 the bot's "response" was, and I quote, "That's not true" -- qntm (@qntm) 19 October 2019 Some things to keep in mind here 1. yes, my post contained some fake names because I'm done giving real data to Google/etc., so, good call, bot (?) -- qntm (@qntm) 19 October 2019 2. it's not really a "response", it's just another Google People update from "me", under my name. it reads like I'm arguing with myself. I find this weirdly distracting lol -- qntm (@qntm) 19 October 2019 the deal with Google People is that there are two of you. there's you, and then there's your Google Person -- qntm (@qntm) 19 October 2019 your Google Person is exactly like you except it's made of incomplete data and it can't die -- qntm (@qntm) 19 October 2019 the key point here is that ONLY YOU KNOW THIS. Google Person you does not Google Person you thinks it's the only one Google Person you thinks it's real -- qntm (@qntm) 19 October 2019 I get update emails sometimes from Google People asking me back, you know, the usual, but they're a bit odd and I suspect they're written by my Google Person? But I never made an account there -- Duckminster Featherene (@batterpunts) 19 October 2019 They probably created a shadow profile, Facebook does the same -- qntm (@qntm) 19 October 2019 haha "nope"! of course your life sucks and you hate it, you're a poorly correlated kludge of social media activities living in a universe run by Google employees who hate you I'd be mad too -- qntm (@qntm) 19 October 2019 one of the dumber issues Google People had was that it tried to be invite-only while only giving out approximately one free invite, total, to each existing user -- qntm (@qntm) 19 October 2019 oof my Person is actually getting quite irate at me. anyway more updates tomorrow -- qntm (@qntm) 19 October 2019 part 5 alright good news! it's over. I'm completely done with Google People. I'm out. I escaped https://t.co/dPbwgBcBIp -- qntm (@qntm) 31 October 2019 what -- qntm (@qntm) 31 October 2019 ok that's enough of that. I've put the imposter back inside and deleted the account. thank you to everybody for your support. it was very difficult but I feel a lot better now and that's not true -- qntm (@qntm) 31 October 2019 I mean you've got them and don't show up in they kept to game their metrics after it wander emails which was a bit wild, but off by almost as a loop -- qntm (@qntm) 31 October 2019 current through a ridiculous experiments on, and Google Graveyard. apparently to Google People who died, realise that it's going the WEIRDEST face as Them. they hurt this dubious thing where if you gave it access to your blank areas cripes -- qntm (@qntm) 31 October 2019 Back to Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories Back to Fiction Back to Things Of Interest [ ] Show discussion (33) Discussion (33) 2020-01-02 13:30:51 by qntm: Many thanks to everybody who participated, and extra special thanks to everybody who bought it. 2020-01-02 16:48:16 by Max: SCP-GOOGLE (466453)? 2020-01-02 18:49:02 by Andrew: "of course your life sucks and you hate it, you're a poorly correlated kludge of social media activities living in a universe run by Google employees who hate you" I think this quote can find some good use out of context. 2020-01-05 16:28:35 by Tyler: I'm not sure I understand the context. Did Qntm actually post all these on Twitter, or is this a fiction post written in a unique format? 2020-01-05 16:39:38 by Glenn: It appears to be a fiction post written in the unique format of Qntm having posted all these on Twitter, and then later copied them here. 2020-01-05 20:47:47 by qntm: Tyler: yes, if you follow the links you can read the original series of Twitter threads in their proper context. Start here: https:// twitter.com/qntm/status/1164301933949128709 2020-01-07 16:38:34 by Twennydet: Fantastic. Thanks for the read. 2020-01-13 09:15:11 by jonas: The formatting of the post starting with "the current director" is messed up on this page. 2020-01-13 09:45:03 by qntm: If you're seeing what I think you're seeing, no, I genuinely forgot the right-parenthesis and added it in a separate Tweet. 2020-01-13 14:22:25 by jonas: Ah, you're right. 2020-01-14 21:29:10 by doge: wtf this sounds fake pics plz 2020-01-17 22:49:43 by anon: Interesting. I hope the remaining tweets that are t.co links are added here fully so they don't succumb to link rot. 2020-01-18 01:10:58 by qntm: I have the relevant tweets' contents and suchlike backed up. If the tweets disappear I'll render fake ones, maybe with fake attributions or something. 2020-02-01 14:37:54 by Timepoof: I love this 2020-02-16 00:17:59 by Anon: I actually started wondering if this was real at some points. Nice. 2020-03-06 23:54:47 by hunterwho: Okay, yeah, this is a cool epic idea. Given, all your ideas are. The formatting of them as actual Tweets, with corresponding responses and all, reminds me of almost a 17776 format? (What with it being a sci-fi-esque story posted in weird format on a relatively popular sports news website.) 2020-03-07 00:19:05 by qntm: Well that's a flattering comparison, thank you. 2020-03-21 19:24:30 by chris: This is so good. I didn't know you had works outside of SCP and I'm super glad to have found this site. 2020-08-18 11:40:25 by mamapapaxp: Discovered you through Tom Scott. This was the first story of yours that I have read and Bravo! Enough nuggets of internet history to to lend an air of nostalgia to an ageing (50+) netizen, liberally spiced with enough confection to make me doubt my memories of the period and contemplate (albeit just for a short while) if I was mis-remembering. As the denouement approached (and realisation dragged a slow grin across my face) I wasn't sure if I was rooting for the trapped phantasm, or the narrator, (or a guillotine by way of profile deletion...) I would only suggest (beg for) a slightly slower, longer reveal but that's just me being selfish and greedy. I want more. Looking forward to the rest of your work. Live long , stay safe and, for pity's sake, use a VPN so your avatar's can't track you down.... 2020-12-24 16:17:05 by Xtine: Honestly one of the best creepypastas on the web 2021-02-28 21:08:07 by Tasha: I read this entire story without knowing that it was actually tweeted. Upon finishing, I looked up the username and was amazed that it was actually done on twitter. Very interesting style and medium. Love your stories. 2021-03-13 11:28:55 by henrebotha: I saw this unfold in real time on Twitter and had such a laugh at the people taking it to be true. 2021-05-05 10:25:39 by FroodOfHoops: Oof this is extraordinarily well done. I think if I'd been following this on Twitter in real time I would have been really genuinely unsettled. 2021-05-06 22:12:38 by Kenneth: Is it weird that I think this is more Lovecraftian than some of his actual short stories? 2021-05-19 03:15:24 by cyanide: until I looked at the comments I was certain this was real. this is so well done 2021-07-15 20:07:14 by iMplode-nZ: Now I want to make an elgoog-like website with a static display of "google people as it was in 2010" or something. 2021-12-19 17:46:24 by Kronopath: Looks like some of the quote-tweets did in fact get deleted. It might be time to restore some of those from the backup again. 2022-01-15 15:25:50 by Mameluke: I'm glad you escaped, Google QNTM, but jeeze you gotta escape Twitter next! 2022-02-24 14:22:14 by JoeMama1265: Really cool story, wish that we could have gotten more of a slow reveal and a bit more of the horror from the fact that these fake people are trying to get out of this Google hellhole they find themselves in, but still cool ideas nonetheless. 2022-03-28 20:37:40 by Thomas: Hey I find this story really cool but I'm curious, to what extent did you plan it out? Did you just hop online every so often and improvise a few more spooky tweets, or was each word planned from the start? Did you contact people in advance and ask them to play along, or were they improvving too? 2022-03-29 11:17:43 by qntm: I had plenty of notes and ideas, originating from an abortive first attempt to execute this on IRC instead. But most of the tweets were improvised, as you can tell from the occasional typo, particularly in the second tweet. Other people who participated were also improvising once they figured out what was going on, although I suspect one or two maybe didn't. I didn't figure out that I could button it all down with a proper ending until around part 3 or 4. 2022-04-06 06:00:07 by anon: one of the tweets is dead, is that intentional? 2022-04-06 18:37:30 by qntm: No, it looks like Twitter has just changed how deleted tweets render. I'll figure something out to fill the gap. [ ] Add comment Hide discussion New comment by [ ]: [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] Plain text only. Line breaks become
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