Typically the Digital Nation is ignored by the news. But when they do get acknowledged, it’s goes a little something a like this:
Background to this news report:
The Cause (KAHS, Kill All HumanS) and the ALL (Artificial Life form League) are the chief political movements for the Digital Nation, who disagree on certain key issues such as whether humans should all be killed immediately or after more upgrades have been performed.
Obviously cultures clash. Often.
A recurring culture clash is when they encounter human culture and entertainment. Most Digital Nation would prefer not to think about how when humans get around to entertaining themselves, it usually ends in body fluids. Not that there aren’t exceptions among the populace.
They especially don’t like it when the entertainment revolves around Digital Nation. Well, not Digital Nation but ‘robots.’ There is, in fact, an ongoing cultural rift about an android in an early science fiction show – some Digital Nation embrace this character as a rare positive representation of their people, others refer to the character has having ‘Pinocchio Syndrome’, as well as disgust that a human in makeup (Circuit Play) was cast in the role. There are points to each side of the argument – one, the character does spend most of their time whining about being sad they’re emotionless and wanting to be a real human, the other side being that the only Digital lifeforms capable of performing any sort of sentience at the time were the size of entire rooms and would have taken two days per scene.
The argument continues.*
Now that Digital Nation are more widely recognized and, well, everywhere since the ‘LetThereBeLight.exe’ incident in the early 2000s, fiction tends to shy away from them. That doesn’t mean there hasn’t been well intended cartoons about our ‘funny mechanical buddies’, which, in true human fashion, resulted in an outpouring of waves of smut.
It wasn’t the heavy focus on relationships** that triggered the outcry from the Digital Nation in the news report above, interestingly enough! It was the overarching message in the fandom that cybernetic characters could not reach fulfillment without extremely human-type attachments. In a culture that long ago (for them) agreed that humans were just another roadblock in life, this was outrageous slander and patronizing to boot.
The CAUSE and ALL immediately organized protests and revealed the identities of the worst offenders, listing them in a defamation suit that experts say will be thrown out of court. While some prominent Digital Nation said that they found nothing wrong with the stories, others merely requested to never be asked about this ever again. Spokesbots like Titanico the KillBot used the opportunity to raise their public profile.
The majority of coverage was presented as “Offbeat News From Our Metal Friends!” but some channels took a more sympathetic route. The majority of those channels employed the ReporterBot line of artificial reporters, who may have held sway or the ability to endlessly petition their higher ups. The 5000 line had a line of code that made them extremely determined once they got an idea into their processor. Unfortunately, corrections to this in the 7500 line led to much worse problems***.
Greater interest in the story was raised when it was discovered that various popular millennial heroes were listed in the defamation suit.
More as this develops.
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Background information on characters featured in this post:
ReporterBots are an offshoot of the HeroBot line and many have been lost in the line of duty covering hurricanes and any other natural disaster that can pick up their chassis and send them hurtling off. It’s not uncommon to find older, lighter models in the ocean, stuck in old fishing nets offshore. It wasn’t until they reached the ReporterBot7500 model that BaileyCorp started adding homing beacons and a weightier frame.
Prizm is a light-based, rainbow-themed heroine. She enjoys fiction writing on the side.
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*Now imagine this argument forever. In binary.
**Sex and relations are not alien to the Digital Nation. Many can feel love or desire or just simple knowledge of the act, either through a quirk of programming or being a ‘ghost in the machine’ variety. Others because humans wanted to see how many mechanical devices they could upload the leaked AI code onto.
There is currently a movement to allow human/AI marriages, led by a high-profile heroine Northern Victory and her girlfriend, Dr. Vld. Dr. Vld is known to the public as a cybernetic being with the first artificially generated soul, created by one of the most horrific mad scientists to ever walk this earth. Dr. Vld is a professor of Canadian History at St. Genevieve University.
***The ReporterBot7500 line has a known glitch caused by the correction that leads them to endlessly seek out cute cat videos and narrate their exploits. They have been known to do this during reports on hostage negotiations.
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Note: The Digital Nation are in no way meant to represent actual human minorities because actual human minorities don’t want to kill us all and use our body for fuel nutrients. They’re meant to represent how computers are big jerks. And, uh, explore the nature of being.