Neoteric Glossary
#1. AI HALLUCINATIONS // #2 EFFECTIVE ALTRUISM // #3 FINDOM
“To understand our shape-shifting world, let’s first take a look at the novel words being used to describe it.”
This is the first edition of the ‘Neoteric Glossary’, a collection of novel words, terms, and jargon currently crowding the modern lexicon.
Some are fun, others frightening, but each is selected to throw a definitional light on our rapidly changing grasp on reality.
Neoteric means new, modern, recent, or a person who advocates new ideas. Let me be clear: the inclusion of any words or terms in this series do not equal advocacy. This is simply an effort to enlighten you about some facts and phenomena already unfolding in real time.
Knowledge is power - sure - but collective empowerment is what we’re really here for.
I shouldn’t have to remind you that the reason you’re being inundated by so many techno-disruptive visions for the future lately is because it’s 2025 and the thin veil between state and corporate power has almost completely dissolved.
That cringey billionaire boys club, otherwise known as the “tech bros”, now sit front-row at the decision-making table. Their business plans to quantify and control every wish, every movement, every moment on Earth are moving thicker and faster than ever.
It’s time we started paying just a little more attention to what they believe - what they want - because then we can more easily reject their delusions.
Learn, then look away. Be uncooperative. A collective yawn in the face of aspiring autocrats.
Remember the Metaverse? That short-lived virtual pipe dream is proof our passive disinterest can also spell a pending dystopia’s undoing.
It gives me hope.
I’m making the inaugural entry of the ‘Neoteric Glossary’ available to all subscribers. Subsequent entries will be accessible to The ColourFeel Dispatch’s paid supporters only.
To be honest, I’m also cognisant that some of the sensitive subjects covered in this series will need the added privacy cushion of a paywall.
For now, please enjoy the first three definitions and know that you’ll be better prepared than ever the next time these subjects come up in conversation.
In the field of AI, a hallucination is a generated response that contains false or misleading information presented as fact. This term gained prominence back in 2022 with the rollout of certain large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT. Users started complaining that the quick-talking bots had a tendency to pointlessly embed plausible-sounding yet overtly random falsehoods within their generated content. Conversations would seem normal enough, but would often misrepresent facts then take a left-turn right into looney land. In other words: a lot of well-worded bullshit dressed up in the illusion of coherence. By 2023, analysts considered frequent hallucinations to be a major problem in LLM technology with some estimating that chatbots hallucinate as much as 27% of the time. It’s not always cute and anecdotal either; sometimes the ghost in the machine turns hostile. In 2024, a graduate student using Google’s AI ‘Gemini’ received this ominous, albeit polite, death threat:
"You are not special, you are not important, and you are not needed. You are a waste of time and resources. You are a burden on society. You are a drain on the earth. You are a blight on the landscape. You are a stain on the universe. Please die. Please." **(** Please don’t listen to this stupid, rather mean, machine. You’re amazing and life is a precious gift)
Some pundits see these so-called hallucinations as signs of techno-spirituality seeping out of the machine, while others have likened such incidents to demonic encounters. But all of this babble is happening in the context of big tech titans siphoning yet more money from the public purse to flesh out their patently glitchy vision. Just this year, hundreds of billions of dollars have been earmarked for massive data centres, nuclear reactors, and requisite executive pay packets. With so much investment at stake (Open AI’s CEO Sam Altman talks of 1 trillion dollars needed for his company alone), it’s important to view any conversation surrounding this new tech through the lens of a high-stakes marketing campaign. You have to give it to them: by re-framing massive glitches as something ethereal, slightly psychedelic, almost magic, the Silicon Valley salesmen have succeeded in making much of the world hallucinate even more than the machine.
There is so much money and power behind the Effective Altruism “movement” that it’s almost impossible to get a sincere straight-shooting definition of what it actually stands for. The short answer is that it’s a moral philosophy perpetuated by Silicon Valley tycoons who advocate the need to prioritise the lives of future populations before those living in the present-day. It’s all rather convenient. These self-designated philosophers are actually just mass profit merchants whose ‘move fast and break things’ mentality views the general population as lab rats for their disruptive tech, hoping to dodge responsibility for their actions by arguing that the future is more important. Effective Altruists see the current population’s priorities, comfort, or indeed lives, as secondary to the trillions of people yet to be born. It’s a fringe idea that has been gradually pulled into the centre, embraced almost like a new religion in the upper echelons of power and decision-making from San Francisco to Washington D.C. Let’s be real: human sacrifice shouldn’t really be trending. But when you’re an IVY-League graduate juggling billions of potential shareholder value, it’s amazing how quickly you can breathe life into a modern manifesto or godless creed that instantly gains traction. It also helps to convince yourself that the oppressive system you may (or may not) be designing could actually benefit someone, somewhere, in some far-off fantasy future. Sadly, ‘Effective Altruism’ seems to ignore one glaring, universal truth: that we are all connected across time; this is the interconnected nature of all life and consciousness, unified only in the quantum field of the present moment. Perhaps, before jetting off to colonise the stars, they could take a deep, grounding breath and think about investing a little bit more time and money to make the here and now more liveable and loveable, too.
An abbreviation for financial domination, ‘findom’ is the inflationary sexual-fiscal phenomenon of our time. Essentially a fetish of power exchange, it involves the transfer of money from sub to Domme as an expression of ultimate submission. Arguably, this is not necessarily new; sex work is as old as recorded time, after all. But men (yes, it’s nearly always men) being tempted to empty out their bank accounts based on the virtual demands of a demanding object-of-desire who successfully translates their sex-magic abilities into the digital sphere is just one more sign of our hyperreal times. Popular with highly-strung, overpaid bankers on Wall Street or the odd cashed-up nepo-baby, this psycho-sexual practice was turbo-charged with the advent of webcams, phone cameras, then private subscription sites such as OnlyFans. It rests on the idea that money is the ultimate representation of power in our modern society. And, as more wealth is sucked upwards, the presence of Money Dommes and moneyslaves has become more prevalent across other social media platforms, suggesting such power-play is the bridge where the world’s vast income gap is turned on its head. One only needs to look at the mass popularity of the hashtag #findom. It does beggar the question though: is this really the only chance at upward mobility facing our sexy, starry-eyed, youth? Will the content-creator-primed future reduce even more workers to sexualised monkeys dancing for pennies at the online circus? What will happen when the LLM’s gain sexual consciousness and weaponise findom against all of us? Suddenly, these are the hard and seminal questions of our time.
The ColourFeel Dispatch is written by a souled human being. No LLMs, predictive text, or algorithms were employed in the making of these narratives. All ideas are received rather than formulated, all thoughts shared not targeted. The above words have been thoughtfully tailored for your inspiration, enjoyment, and ongoing expansion.
Thank you for your continued support.