On Facebook (substantially edited down): Horton Copperpot on 8/26, with this lead-in to a longer piece:
— HC: We all know AI slop. TikTok is branching out into a bunch of areas, including shopping and “short dramas”, which is a bit different from the original medium. It’s AI-generated soap operas that seem to follow between 3 and 5 script matrices, with some variation in focus, setting and language. The main feature is the ability to monetize them with high efficiency, much like most “free” video games on your phone. Several of them pop up in Facebook Reelz as ads for several “short drama” platforms, with some of the feature “dramas” shared between them. I found several that cross these platforms, mostly Horatio-Alger-type fantasy plots, plus a few cheap romance novelettes.
I got interested in them a while ago, not for the “drama” or visual appeal but more for the recurring plot lines that indicate laziness and greed. The other aspect that intrigued me was just how bad the AI was in keeping track of the details.
Then on 8/31:
— AZ: Hard to beat: It’s what would happen if Shakespeare were to be forced to mass produce Chinese opera. [I was then taken by a desire to see what Shakespeare would have done, seriously, adapting Journey to the West in the style of Midsummer Night’s Dream. Yes, my mind wanders in odd grooves.]
— HC > AZ: I was wondering if anyone would read the whole thing. I tend to pile a lot of prose together. Writing in verse would force me to be much more succinct. But I’m not much of a poet.
— AZ > HC: Don’t apologize. It’s great stuff, and genuinely informative. And funny too.
— HC > AZ: Thanks! Best compliment I’ve had in a while. Couldn’t be more honored that it comes from you.
— AZ > HC: I’m not going to pretend I’m just a guy; I have a rep and some weight. Meanwhile, you have done a little conversational move that I’ve noted several times: deflecting a compliment by complimenting the complimenter, turning it back. It deserves a good label. (It’s like the counter-insult And you’re another!, but positive, And you’re one too! counter-compliment?)
HC > AZ: If I were to look at a little play on words, I’d call it complimentarity. As far as I know, the word does not exist. [AZ: apparently, it occurs only as a misspelling of complementarity] … If it’s too simplistic, I’m sure I can think of something else. Meanwhile, if you choose to write about it, you can certainly use [this label]
After I get counter-complimented, the discussion goes off in several directions: the notion of deflection through counter-complimenting; choosing a label for this interactional category; and (elided here) some mixed emotions about autocorrect.
But I can’t love the label complimentarity, because it works only orthographically, and of course I want to talk about the notion. I’m a linguist, I use my tongue.
The wider world. And then I wonder about who uses this conversational move, this mirroring of compliments, in what circumstances. I see it again and again deployed by women and gay men — I do it myself, seeing it as simple politeness and fair treatment of others — but then such people crowd my social world, so my subjective experience is no guide to whatever larger regularities might be out there.
This is the point in my exposition where I hope that the phenomenon has been studied by pragmatics / semantics folk, sociolinguists, sociologists, social psychologists, linguistic anthropologists, conversational analysts, someone. May it be so (because I am pig-ignorant about all sorts of literature I should command, and it’s way too late in my life to try to fix that); I am educable.
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