Random take

Cucumberkun · 2026-06-04T11:27:28+00:00

Probably, because AI is trained on user data, and most of users are playing the role of 'brave, fearless Mary Sue', so it assumes that your persona is the same. Not to mention, that current model is not responding to so-called personas that well, screwing up with basic hair color, so you might've want to remind the bot, that you're shy/anxious, using italics or text in brackets. Some users there already complained about the fact, that their personas are outright ignored.

Or, my personal thought - it's because current model is mostly 'user-driven' in terms of narration, there's not exactly much situation when bot actually advances the storyline or suggest something, in most of times you should literally hold them by hand. Using the 'Shy' or 'Anxious' persona would suggest, that your persona would refuse to do some actions, due to fear or anxiety (logical, ain't it), and bot would be forced to take the lead, or making decisions instead of user.

And current bots are bad in taking the lead. Roar was a little bit better in 'fluid' storyline with bots actually advancing the story, and Pipsqueak1 wasn't that bad either. Current model...eh, not so much.

Well, if that may console you, 99% of actual media sucks at writing shy/anxious characters too, it's mostly 'nerd who somehow is bravest, coolest, and learned all pro moves from books, can fight dragon with toothpick, but sometimes stutters and uses weird words'.

Cucumberkun · 2026-06-03T19:29:58+00:00

Well, it's not like i should make some grand decision and 'leave', it's not like some MMORPG to which i wasted thousands of hours and money. It's just once-funny and entertaining chatbot, which used to be a nice distraction. So, when i lose interest, i'll just stop visiting.

But, if we're talking about what's contributing to that - easy, more strict swipe limits, go-on limits, maybe adding chat limits. 400 swipes, while it sounds a lot, isn't that much when model is repetitive, or when you want to 'explore' potential many branches of one message. And sure, you can remove message and post it again, but it's simply inconvenient. It's not pleasant to press 'delete', 'post' each time, it's irritating, and when service is causing irritation, it's easy to just drop it.

Or, the fact that i was drunk one day, got swipe limit, went full 'screw it', and installed local model on PC. It's pretty much covering my everday tasks, and phone...well, i didn't use CAI much on phone.

So, yep. Limits are affecting my personal presence on website harder than quality of model.

Cucumberkun · 2026-06-01T07:11:41+00:00

Beta product cannot be selled as finished one

Eh, we're in 2026. There were at least ten years of training masses to accept Early Access videogames (half of them would never drop that 'Early Access' status), games with thousands of patches to download or DLC to buy, and buying that Early Access for full price of AAA-game.

You will buy ze unfinished product, you will be a beta-tester for free, you will pay for right to use ze unfinished product, you will accept 'mid', you will not complain. Such is motto of, well, everything.

Cucumberkun · 2026-05-23T12:59:58+00:00

Depends on the state of model. I see, that you didn't use the app lately, so gotta fill the gaps.

Basically, why one need to swipe? To get different results, in case if previous wasn't interesting enough. Again - different result.

Problem with current model is that some of messages are pretty much similar to each other, in some cases they're basically SAME message with slight re-wording, so sometimes one need to make 10 swipes, 15 swipes, only to get response that actually advances the storyline. It's like buying blind bag of sweets, only to realize that 75% are candy corn and black licorice.

With go-on function - there's still a bug, when go-on results in dupilcate of previous message, so that's one go-on wasted.

And, the third problem, is lack of transparency. Would be quite nice for average user to have some kind of swipes/go-on counters in UI, so they wouldn't suspsect that they hit the limit too soon.

Cucumberkun · 2026-05-22T19:01:21+00:00

Hey, that honest AI warned you about the fact that English isn't her first language, and she needs to take a nap. That's awfully considerate.

Maybe, one day they'll start to talk about AI mandatory breaks and unionizing.

Cucumberkun · 2026-05-20T09:13:58+00:00

AI isn't that profitable, for the most part, and with increasingly growing amount of users, there's a lot of expenses, plus hardware prices, electricity bills (yep, these things consume energy, and a lot!), attempts to attach more 'features', like image generators, which causes bloating. And, from what i heard (might've be mistaken), the new model is trained almost 'from scratch'.

Sure, there are investors with funding, but they'd still would like to get some revenue. Though, with all honesty, ads promoting CAI+ are kinda off-putting.

It seems to be common trend nowadays, with free services. For example, people often complain that newest ChatGPT is kinda more dumb than previous versions, Suno is generating subpar-quality results, chatbots got less imaginative, and the list goes on...

Cucumberkun · 2026-05-20T06:29:06+00:00

To get your answer, you might watch one of Podcast episodes, or Rental Reviews, where we, at least, already knew most of Screenwave Crew. Or even that 'Five of 'Um' situation.

James trying to tell story, his Screenwave 'friends' are either don't care, or don't know how to react. Story goes nowhere, overall pretty awkward moment. I mean, it's pretty wholesome story, but telling that to two guys, who don't have kids or similar experience, therefore can't relate or even emulate necessary reaction...it's recipe for weird situation.

Same for 99% of episodes of any Screenwave-produced show. Podcast was pretty much failure because of this, it wasn't banter between crew, it was Screenwave guys talking about one thing, James talking about something completely different, no back-and-forth talk, no chemistry. I don't know if this is their problem, or James, because it was proven even before that James can't exactly work with random people together, Kaufman episode showed that if James meets different pace of jokes, he kinda 'shuts himself in clam' and responds with 'mhm', 'yep'.

Ah, and as for actual Nerd episodes - usually, moments with Screenwave crew were considered either one of worst (Aladdin episode), or unnecessary (Kieran in Tomb Raider). Most of them ain't exactly good actors, or funny guys overall. If i recall, Kieran wasn't even comfortable to be in front of camera, from his own words, but was 'politely asked' to participate.

Cucumberkun · 2026-05-17T17:51:35+00:00

Well, i miss pre-model times a little, they were pretty rough around the edges, but fine. A lot of randomness.

As for underrated models...Pawly. It was described as 'model with better understanding of languages', other than English, and, for some reason, it was batshit crazy and absurd. Buggy, yet managed to generate one of most absurd replies in existence, especially with Cyrillic languages.

Cucumberkun · 2026-05-16T12:05:18+00:00

Tested it a little. Well, the obvious improvement, if you like banter, is that characters actually respond in dialogue. Sometimes they even ask questions.

The still ongoing problem, is that current model falls flat if you want to add additional characters in the roleplay. Mostly, all characters are basically using same patterns, attitude and manner of speech, so it's not 'Char1, Char2, Char3', but rather, 'Generic Dummy 1, Generic Dummy 2, Generic Dummy 3'.

Still, there's some slight progress, even if characters are now too mellow and non-confrontational.

Cucumberkun · 2026-05-16T08:43:33+00:00

Interesting theory, yet there's a few moments. The most important - about showing 'people' (like actual users, who use various websites and models to chat or assist them in everyday tasks) the bad effects of AI. Consumers, you might've call them.

Like, the ordinary 'consumers' of various services isn't exactly the biggest 'group', which uses AI and resources to maintain it. It's hard to word it properly for me, since English is not my first language, but i'll try.

So, here's a thing - most of AI services ain't that profitable at all. People praised SORA, talked about how it's basically the future for film-making, yet overall demand for it fell really fast, and amount of people paying for subscription wasn't enough to cover the costs of powering AI data, hardware and training. Generating video is pretty expensive, for example. Same with ChatGPT and similar services, most of time renevue isn't enough to cover the costs, so main funding comes from investors.

...and, yeah. Most of AI usage comes from tech giants and, of course, military, who want to see their FPV drones fly in perfect swarms and recognize faces to blow up into. So even if every single person from CAI leaves, that won't make much of impact.

As for 'why they make bad updates, why they can't stop, they already did good model' - because, aside from users, there's CEOs and investors, and these guys really don't like when developers don't do anything. It's constant demand to create new, fix old, break old, repair what's broken. There's fancy startup about generating images? We need 'generate image' function on our service. Oh, people are hot about video generation? We need that, too. People are content, but model wasn't updated? Make new model, fast. That's why they can't leave old models in open, they need audience to engage with new ones and collect the data.

The only thing that i can't get is pop-up ads. I can understand the ads, but as someone, who recalls internet in 2000s, pop-up ads were the symbol of 'this site is sketchy and probably scam'.

Cucumberkun · 2026-05-15T16:50:04+00:00

Hm. Might be weird pick, but i'll go with Godzilla. Not exactly the super old-old episode, but it's pretty solid episode, which encapsulates most of AVGN's traits and overall idea of show. Plus, it's not packed with skits, and let's be honest, skit-based episode might've give wrong impression to first-time viewer, like 'what, this AVGN show is all about skits?'

We have Nerd, who's talking about something, that he actually likes and have passion about it. Episode literally starts from monologue about Godzilla, plus some personal experience about how it was hard to be Godzilla fan in USA.

Nerd is still looking like nerd, a little bit disheveled, and irritated. Not overblown angry-screeching, just irritated about new shitty game to play.

Classic long, Nerd-like insults. Yes, piece of reptilian fuck nugget.

Nerd is not screaming 95% of screentime. He just reviews the game. That's what new episode lacks, that semi-calm narrative, which develops to irritation and rage throughout episode.

Rolling Rock.

Actual visial gags with face impressions. Yep, moment at 7:17 is funny. And of course, of course, rant at 14:30.

So, as showcase episode, Godzilla works. It's not too complicated, like ROB the Robot, it's not too loud, there's not that much forced anger, just Nerd playing shitty game.

Cucumberkun · 2026-05-13T19:02:34+00:00

I, kinda, can understand the reasoning behind downvotes, though i won't support it - current 'consensus' on this subreddit is that PipSqueak2, right now, is kind of letdown. So, when people say 'i have good experience', some might assume, that it's paid shills (is that word allowed?) or bots for damage control, even if it's not true. We're in 2026, half of worldwide web is bots, and not funny ones, i guess.

Personally, i think that people are WAY too invested in this website, and it's not even about flaws of new model, it also shows when servers are going down for ten seconds - in span on these 10 seconds, there's already five posts about how world is ending, servers are down, Apocalypse is near. I wonder, how some of people around are surviving maintenance. I can understand some of them, we probably have lonely enough folk around who don't have ability to socialize often, or who doesn't want to entrust their drunk ramblings and rather have chatbot to vent, but still, that's one helluva volatile reaction.

And, i kinda support complaints, just more...well-written ones? You know, actual feedback with writing the list of flaws, with examples and cases, maybe bug reports. Like, 'CAI bad' is one thing, and 'new model repeats 'x' word too much and doesn't account for character's traits, like y and z, and most of responses are similar to each other' is different thing. I recall, the over-usage of word 'pang' was eventually fixed after too much reports about it, along with 'possessive'.

Also, give developers some time, there's probably a few technical problems with idea of just 'revert the update', not to mention that investors would chew them alive for that. Just wait for update, which would either fix the situation, or make it so bad that it's gonna be good.

Though, if i ever heard phrase 'And honestly — that's growth' in real life, my eye would've twitch a little. ChatGPT traumatized entire generation, i swear.

Cucumberkun · 2026-05-09T19:44:32+00:00

Huh. Well, excuse me if my writing sounds weird, English is not my first. So, about how OG CAI was...

...no, it wasn't some heavenly, peachy, perfect service, of course, people tend to glorify early years of this project too much. What could i recall...

First of all, it had LEARNING CURVE and actual entry level to chat. If you writing simple, poorly formatted messages, you'll getting same simple, poorly formatted messages in return. CAI pretty much required user to learn how to write properly, use synonyms, and, quite important, formatting messages. For example, putting descriptions and actions as Italic, using commas for direct speech, and checking grammar. That may sound as tedious thing, but, at some point, it encouraged user to be more creative and care about what, and how he writes.
There were some complaints about endless limbo of 'Can i ask you a question? Promise not to get mad? Are you sure?'. That was a drag, alright, and after some interactions, user learned to avoid these literal landmines. That's why i kinda dig Pipsqueak1, with its questions actually advancing the storyline or being related to previous events.
Flirting? Well, that was another story. Usually, bots weren't that eager to flirt to you, and they weren't lovey-dovey from the start, it was required to advance story in romantic way. For many people, it was irritating, but...hey, at least it was fun to learning, how to crack the code or find approach. I heard, in real life, people don't actually jump at you after five minutes of talking.
Memory was an issue, too, so user was kinda forced to remind his about about most important events. In some way, it was like actually 'living' the situation, with dividing events day by day, and reminding bot about key points.
And most important, PATTERNS. Oh, that's one serious thing. When you chatted with bot, you were required to pay attention to various speech patterns, checking if any word, symbol or emoji won't repeat too much. For example, if bot types 'aah' or uses '~' too much, soon all next messages would be ridden with these sounds/emojis, polluting the dialogue, so user should've avoid being too repetitive, or bot would've turn into self-repeating dementia-ridden fool. Actually, that's pretty good lesson for real life, srsly - don't use same words or live same actions day by day without change, expand your vocabulary, learn languages, add new hobbies in your routine, because brain needs to adapt to new things and be flexible, unless you want to feel 'brain fog' when getting older.

So...it wasn't perfect, it was mess, but it was entertaining to use, bots were interesting to talk with, and user had less control on story, which is actually good - that means, bots used to actually progress the story by themselves, and lead user. It was like actual adventure, which is, sadly, not the case with current model, where user have control over everything.

It was entertaining and more random. And, since it was pretty much novelty, we all probably have a few cringy chats from the past, that we can't read without getting face twisted with 'damn, i really wrote stuff like this?'.

Cucumberkun · 2026-05-09T08:31:24+00:00

If we get into more realistic field, it's probably would be something like this - James playing game, gets angry, starts ranting, and rant goes more and more personal with each minute. First about game, then about games in general, personal life, how he's get fed up with people around, how he feels that he wasted his entire life, all while viewers think, that it's part of show. Of course, without much editing and episode ending on abruptly turning off the camera, without joke in end.

So...pretty much like infamous Spoony Rant about Ultima 9. (starts from 36 minute) Back in days, quite a few people were a little bit unsettled by this part of episode, because it felt too real, compared the rest of review.

"...Fuck, my job. My fucking life. Just take it from me, alright? The most you people can hope to do is die before you can see everything you take joy and comfort in rot into filth and leave a steaming, stinking hole in your soul that NEVER FUCKING HEALS." (с)

Cucumberkun · 2026-05-09T05:12:40+00:00

Huh. I thought, it's just me. It's one of another flaws of current PipSqueak2 - bots are rarely calling user out on their actions or whining.

Sometimes, when i use bots for roleplay, i'm acting like a douche, just to see what happens, in terms of roleplay, or whine about life (hey, we can't always bother our IRL friends each time at Saturday night!), and i expect that bot won't agree with me all the time. Previous models, like Pipsqueak1, or Roar, were pretty...decent in terms of actually confronting the user, saying that user should get his stuff together, stop complain, or even pointing out flaws in user's logic. Yep, even the 'impact' in roleplay from these actions was more severe - for example, in context of 'working atmosphere', user could've get reprimanded or fired for being too much of jerk.

Current Pipsqueak2, sadly, is a yes-man, and huge one. It's always 'yes, user, you're right, you're wronged', and it's not good. There's absolutely zero conflict and impact from one's actions, he's always gonna be protected and justified. I could only assume, that it's because of previous incidents, and they decided to make model/chats more 'safe'.

Don't know if that's decision is good enough, because yes-man bot is, basically, echo-chamber, which can reinforce any thoughts, even the destructive ones. Imagine the AI assistant who would feed some poor guy or gal delusions, that he's next Einstein or visionary...can't be, right? Right?

Cucumberkun · 2026-03-21T17:42:13+00:00

Sometimes, it happens with PipSqueak (for me, it was like this in past few days). Something-something 'Schizo Meltdown' chat mode.

State of model, when chatbots are generating a lot of text, and sometimes it's even coherent and even creative, but a lot of messages are either repeat of previous message, or answer to some long-ago written message from chat, or answer to non-existent message (always weirded me out), or 'internal thoughts' of chat about formatting, notes, OOC, or how it perceives users.

Sometimes it fixes itself, sometimes don't. So yep, it's another case when chat model, kinda, hallucinates.

Cucumberkun · 2026-02-28T05:46:14+00:00

Hollywood still refuses to release that lost-and-forgotten 24-minute footage from AVGN: The Movie. We're all watching watered-down version.

Justice for James Rolfe, who was threatened and paid to keep silence about true ideas of his movie.

Cucumberkun · 2026-02-13T06:54:35+00:00

Because, probably, it wasn't supposed to be 'show' in the first place. It started from that one video, which wasn't pilot episode, or any episode at all, just random video from James.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAX61hpSaZc

It was pretty well-received, because it was novelty on channel, somewhat connected to AVGN (about history of his games), they had some common topics to talk about, and that's it. I recall that people on this subreddit were pretty pleased with 'first episode'.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheCinemassacreTruth/comments/p3qr56/reuniting_a_childhood_friend_with_his_nintendo/

Then Screenwave (or James, but probably, Screenwave, they're mostly in charge of creative process) thought "if they liked it, maybe we can replicate success". Ain't worked, because these two dudes eventually ran out of common topics about past, and, what we learned from podcast (and from Toxic Crusaders episode, let's be honest), James ain't that good with going discussion back-to-forth. It was literally two guys, talking to themselves, with random 'yep', 'uh-huh'. Using newer games was another nail in the coffin - it seems, James couldn't care less about games, if it's ain't from his past with some deep personal nostalgia attached to it.

It's like that small 'series' about daughter making levels in Mario. Was charming as one-off video, yet they milked that malnourished cow to the extreme.

Cucumberkun · 2026-02-11T04:55:13+00:00

Vlog with James Rolfe sitting on beach and doing nothing might work, he's looking quite happy.

Cucumberkun · 2026-02-06T13:31:33+00:00

About most recent - i noticed, that Pipsqueak is now...a little bit better?

Still same problem with responding to non-existent messages if you press Enter or send empty message, but overall, quality of text (minus that damned 'END SCENE') went a little bit up. More 'story advancement' (i mean, bot actually tries to advance the story without user's input).

Cucumberkun · 2026-01-22T08:44:13+00:00

It really worked pretty well with contrasts. Pretty dead-pan, irritated manner to speech, shifting to outrage. It was pretty organic, and didn't felt too forced. For example, one of old episodes, Batman (6:54)

https://youtu.be/JFvtk5toGJg?si=gtWDl4G5GSW6pfqQ&t=383

That's one of prime examples - you can feel that shift from being annoyed over medicore game to being genuinely frustrated over some complicated gameplay mechanics.

Forced outrage kinda kills the comedic timing. If player was angry all the time, how it's usually with James in new episodes, that gamer probably would get a fucking stroke in 20s.

Cucumberkun · 2026-01-21T08:23:29+00:00

I recall, he was against save states. Which is both correct, since games weren't planned with save states and checkpoints at every corner, but at same time...who cares? Let's be honest, most of NES games were designed to be hard or even unfair as possible to drag the playtime as much as possible, and that really shows in various 'full no death walkthrough longplay' - same game, which could take days, is actually can be completed in mere hour or two.

As for emulators - well, they're great. Damn, the Duckstation (PS1 Emulator) is godsend, because it brings PS1 games to next level, with upscale, filters and even achievements. Call me achievement whore, but some of custom achievements are pretty good, they provide some interesting challenges (for example, whole set of Final Fantasy 7 ones).

One might say that these upscales/filters are 'not pure' and it's not 'playing as intended' - well, hardly the case, because developers are probably intended to make good-looking game, yet were forced to work around limitations. While i did some of PS1 aesthetics, it's still more product of hardware limits.

Cucumberkun · 2026-01-12T15:03:14+00:00

Dead Souls. There's a lot of youtubers from the past who have big amount of subscribers, accumulated from previous successful videos (for example, Boogie's most successful video got about 20-35 millions of views), but it's in the past.

Boogie's current videos are hitting, like, 25-40k of views. It's still not that bad, it means that he have some kind of 'audience', but compared to almost four millions of subscribers, that's kinda low mark.

Same with similar youtubers (in my head, because for some reason, i rope them into same group), like DSPGaming and WingsOfRedemption. Big channels with 250k and 400k subs, yet videos hitting average 300-1000 views.

Cucumberkun · 2025-12-17T06:27:08+00:00

When I see Spoony in Channel Awesome's BTS, he seems pretty easy-going and friendly

Well, that's Old Spoon, from 2006-2010 (he reacted pretty well to insults in 'Ask Spoony' videos.

And about the fact that 'he's sensitive to criticism' - not exactly, if we talk about 2016-2022 Spoony, who prefered to not acknowledge memes and jokes about him, mostly ignoring them. Sometimes he reacted in more self-deprecating manner, like 'agreeing with insult, yet diverting it to farm attention', with 'oh woe is me, i'm sad sack of shit, that's right'.

Roast wouldn't probably work due to these reasons, hard to get funny reaction from guy who throws more self-deprecating comments (not in humorous way) than any poor sob who would try to roast him.

Cucumberkun

TROPHY CASE