I’m going to pretend you aren’t being an asshole for your own reasons, and explain why this kind of comment is a good thing.

What you’re missing is that shared cultural touchstones connect people. Comments like this aren’t robotic responses to preset conditions.

They’re humans reaching out to each other through screens to connect, even if it’s only some tiny and essentially frivolous thing. That’s a good thing. It’s the entire point of being human, to connect and share and hopefully help each other get through the ugliness that life brings.

Where you see predictability and rote habits, the rest of us see a shared experience. The other people in the thread popping off the lyrics or making related jokes, we’re all engaged in letting each other know that we aren’t alone, that there’s parts of each of our individual lived experience that can be directly related. It means we have the ability to stop seeing just words on a screen, and for just that moment see someone we’ve never met and likely never will, as part of our in group.

Friends in real life do this kind of thing. There’s phrases, and songs, and poems and book quotes, and movie lines that can be shorthand for shared experiences. It brings joy with it. Have you never seen a group of people say something that’s seemingly random and dissolve into laughter?

That’s what this kind of thing is. It’s strangers partaking in one of the benefits of friendship. Making each other smile or laugh a little.

If llms acted like this, they’d be one step closer to being actual artificial intelligence because it would make them part of that circle.

My homie across the screen. You stepped into that circle and tried to poop in it. Did that bring you joy? Did you smile? If it did, then great, you’re one of the lucky ones that can find happiness in attempting to piss on someone’s picnic. If it didn’t, then what are you doing?