Although Coffee with Kish was not started with the goal of persuading, per se, I entered into it hoping to connect with people who just found Mormonism interesting without the drama of arguments for and against it. It looked like it was attracting some attention of that kind, although the comments section taught me just how hard it is to overcome the tendency to attract critical and apologetic discourses.
Then there was Jared Rosengren, a kid who seemed to "get it." Jared claimed to be a recently returned missionary who was "deconstructing his faith." He followed CWK faithfully and commented on most if not all of the videos. Given the nature of YouTube interactions, I took Jared at face value. Here is a nice kid who wants to discuss Mormonism without the noise of pro and con, I thought. Soon Jared was offering to help me with my graphics and asking how to get onto this board. I was not of a mind to take advantage of Jared's offer, as I was finding it tough to keep up with the channel, but I did follow through on helping him get signed up here.
It was his difficulty getting onto DM that started to cause suspicion. I gave him an email address to get the right information to the mods, but things went nowhere. Zilch. And in the process a worrisome repetitiveness cropped up in the communications. The thought of A.I. did cross my mind, but I also thought it might be possible Jared was doing a cut and paste for communications where he thought his message may not have cut through the background noise the first time.
In the midst of the process, I found Jared on Facebook. (So, yes, I was just suspicious enough to check into who this person might be.) Dude looked exactly like the chipper, optimistic return missionary type the interactions suggested. Account has 346 friends. Some of whom are family with the same last name and obviously real accounts with personal posts about their lives and struggles. A brother who is having trouble holding down a job and moving around a lot, for example.
Oddly, the friend request sat without a response for weeks. Then, just the other day, I get a Facebook message from Jared, who has accepted my friend request. "Cool," I thought. Everything was settled. Jared was signed up to DM and we were also Facebook friends. It seemed like a decent resolution to the requests of a chipper, decent young person who was interested in checking us out here. His first message to me read as follows:
Note that the friend request from my personal Facebook account under my in real life name.Jared Rosengren wrote:Hello Kish! I’m glad you could find me on Facebook! I’m enjoying your posts! I’m guessing you’ve taken a break from YouTube because of all the politics.
I answered with some pleasantries, and then a day later I get this message in reply:
Boom! I was in stitches. Aw, man! I am totally dealing with some A.I. bot. Jared's Facebook account really threw me off. Took me in. I do notice that the last time he posted on Facebook was June 27, 2024 with pictures of his temple wedding. Maybe the account was hijacked to create A.I. bot Jared? A.I. bot Jared was loosed onto the world of online Mormon geekdom to do what exactly? Collect personal information on people in that discussion?Jared Rosengren wrote:Hello Kish! I’m glad you were able to find me on Facebook! I’ve enjoyed your posts! I’m guessing with all the politics going on it will be a bit before we see another episode of Coffee with Kish.
I am not exactly sure what is going on, but I would love to know. I will admit that I am not sure this has anything directly to do with Mopologetics, except in terms of intelligence gathering. Who exactly is doing the gathering and for what purpose remains uncertain to me. But, wow, did I ever learn about how unreal and futuristic the cyber landscape has become. What all is going on beneath the surface?
As a final note, I unfriended "Jared Rosengren" after leaving a laugh emoji on his second message. This morning I got a friend request from "Jared Rosengren."
