The Polite Threat

The internet as we know it is dead.

What started out as a fringe conspiracy theory in a shadowy internet forum is now, at least by some metrics, true. To many this isn’t even a shock. Since an anonymous user first suggested that the majority of online content may be generated by ‘artificial intelligence networks’ and ‘paid secret media influencers’ more than 3 years ago, the theory has become a well-worn story. Now we have the numbers to prove it.

The ‘Bad-Bot Report’, a study released last month by cyber security company Imperva, alleges that almost half (49.6%) of all internet traffic now comes from bots (Imperva). But, while the numbers may seem shocking, is this really a surprise to anyone?

One simply has to look at the replies to any popular post on X (formerly known as Twitter) to see just how bad the situation has gotten. Almost every post is followed in the replies diligently by an army of bots, each with their own tantalising offer: ‘░M░Y░P░U░S░S░Y░I░N░B░I░O░’, ‘░B░O░O░B░S░I░N░B░I░O░’. The robots have taken over and they are relentlessly, shamelessly horny.

While this specific form of spam is egregious, and particularly funny, it's not exactly new. For decades now, the junk folder of almost any internet user’s email inbox has been filled with these kinds of messages. While over the years human involvement in the dissemination of spam may have decreased, the basic formula has remained the same. You, internet users, are particularly broke, desperate, or horny, and I, mystery emailer, have the solution to your woes: All you need to do is click this link.

When it first emerged, the internet had a sound. It was a staccato screech heard each time your device tuned into its local telephone network. While jarring, this sound represented the future, a utopian world of limitless connectivity. The internet of today has a noise too, only we have all learned to tune it out enough that it coalesces into an ambient hum. But, listen closely and you’ll hear what it really is: A cacophony of desperate, pleading voices, each persevering until you finally look their way, each with their own story to tell and their own unique solution to save you from your lonely, squalid online existence.

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Jan Jelinek’s first release, published under the alias of Farben, is one of the best examples of the now largely defunct genre of Glitch-House. Glitch-house, as some may infer from the name, is imbued throughout with a familiar nineties-and-noughties sense of techno-optimism. Each track in the album features a cool, pulsating kick-drum sparsely adorned by sharp clicks, crackles and glitches. All of Jelinek’s early work feels impossibly minimal, yet luxurious and futuristic. Listening to the album now, it feels like the mood-music of an all-together more exciting time. Next came Jelinek’s most celebrated work, Loop-finding-jazz-records (2017). This offering features many of the same icy soundscapes, with a more-refined decoupage of lounge-ready melodies sprinkled throughout. One only has to survey the direction house and techno music took in the years following to see that Jelinek had captured the Zeitgeist with an album that Pitchfork described as “a perfect inversion of conventional music” (Richardson).

In the same review, Pitchfork’s Richardson likened Jelinek’s music to the process of casting iron: “If you want a piece of iron that looks like a human foot, you need a mold with empty space shaped like a human foot.” (Richardson). This passion for the liminal is something that Jelinek has carried with him, even if his choice of ingredients may have changed.

The Raw and the Cooked (2021), released from a radio piece put together for German broadcaster SWR2, creates soundscapes from everyday objects. For the album, Jelinek worked with German artists Thomas & Renée Rapedius, recording their process as they designed works using glass, metal, teabags, paper and wood (Jelinek, The Raw and the Cooked). Here, Jelinek seems to have refined his method: he puts his ear in the in-between spaces which we might overlook, and crafts soundscapes from what he hears.

It is this same approach that Jelinek has applied to his latest offering, Social Engineering (2023), but this time he has cast his ear over the virtual world, listening to the hidden replies and email folders that many of us have learned to ignore. What he found was the schizophrenic rambling of a thousand digital tongues, each desperate for someone to hear.

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In creating Social Engineering, Jelinek swaps the role of composer for prompt engineer, taking his minimal approach to the extreme. Jelinek crafts thick textured backdrops of growing synths and mechanical whirs before allowing the spam bots to speak for themselves. Some of the tracks have richer soundscapes, with computerised voices repeating only fragments from Jelinek’s spam emails. Others feature extensive monologues ranging from business offers, blackmail attempts and threats.

There is something strangely intimate about listening-in to these messages and hearing the sad soliloquy of an anonymous voice. We do not know whether these words came from a human, but the alienated text-to-speech voice carries, at times, a deceptively emotive touch.

We might think the illusion is broken when the cyborg voice finally tells us what it wants. We can soothe its yearning heart, all we have to do is click its link, buy its product or comply with its asks. But, is this really so different from life offline? Is the internet, and artificial intelligence in particular, not just a mirror for our contemporary culture?

This point is made best in “The Polite Threat”, the album’s final track. ‘If you kindly pay €499 euro in Bitcoin to the following address, we will refrain from ruining your company and you personally. [..] We will send 1000 emails every day with texts that are anti-semitic, extreme right, extreme left and xenophobic in content [...] this all takes place automatically [...] Think about what it would cost you to repair the PR damage.’ (Jelinek, Social Engineering).

The reason the bots have taken over is because they are able to deliver late-stage capitalism’s modus operandi more efficiently and diligently than their human counterparts, condemning their gullible victims to the abyss in polite, emotionless English.

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