T.X. Watson
@txwatson.com
The actor who plays T.X. Watson on the internet. Rhetoric PhD student at [I have been advised not to specify for legal reasons]. I had 50 million followers on TikTok
Reposted by T.X. Watson
That money could’ve ended homelessness in the US, or established UBI for every American, student loan erasure, or supercharged every creative industry in existence to pay artists better,
instead of, yknow, blowing it on dead malls full of Elegy of Emptiness statues for rich people
I hate it here
instead of, yknow, blowing it on dead malls full of Elegy of Emptiness statues for rich people
I hate it here
The division has lost over $77 billion since its inception in 2020.
Meta Lays Off Thousands of VR Workers as Zuckerberg's Vision Fails
The company has laid off some 1,500 virtual reality developers as part of a broader shift toward AI wearable devices.
trib.al
January 18, 2026 at 10:55 PM
That money could’ve ended homelessness in the US, or established UBI for every American, student loan erasure, or supercharged every creative industry in existence to pay artists better,
instead of, yknow, blowing it on dead malls full of Elegy of Emptiness statues for rich people
I hate it here
instead of, yknow, blowing it on dead malls full of Elegy of Emptiness statues for rich people
I hate it here
Reposted by T.X. Watson
meta-discursive comment: the incentives of social media where making an incorrect naive prediction is seen as much more embarrassing than making an incorrect cynical one are very bad.
January 15, 2026 at 6:19 PM
meta-discursive comment: the incentives of social media where making an incorrect naive prediction is seen as much more embarrassing than making an incorrect cynical one are very bad.
Reposted by T.X. Watson
STOP CALLING IT AN IMMIGRATION CRACKDOWN! TAKING CITIZENSHIP FROM EXTREMELY VETTED NATURALIZED CITIZENS IS NOT A CRACKDOWN! IT'S BETRAYAL.
Breaking News: The Trump administration plans to ramp up efforts to strip some naturalized Americans of their citizenship, internal documents obtained by The New York Times show, marking an aggressive new phase in President Trump’s immigration crackdown. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/u...
December 17, 2025 at 10:36 PM
STOP CALLING IT AN IMMIGRATION CRACKDOWN! TAKING CITIZENSHIP FROM EXTREMELY VETTED NATURALIZED CITIZENS IS NOT A CRACKDOWN! IT'S BETRAYAL.
Reposted by T.X. Watson
A famous guy I was a fan of sent an email during the pandemic just being like "hey I like your show, great job" and it meant a ton to me. So ever since I've tried to reach out whenever I really like something and just tell the people who made it "I really like this, thanks for making it!"
I’ve sometimes fallen into the trap of thinking that complementing a creative person for their work is less sophisticated or desired than discussion or debate about it but very often the best thing you can say to them is hell yeah and that doesn’t make you dumb it just makes you nice
December 4, 2025 at 5:16 AM
A famous guy I was a fan of sent an email during the pandemic just being like "hey I like your show, great job" and it meant a ton to me. So ever since I've tried to reach out whenever I really like something and just tell the people who made it "I really like this, thanks for making it!"
Reposted by T.X. Watson
I’m not Becoming The Joker,
Britain is Becoming Gotham
Britain is Becoming Gotham
Turns out i was not in fact Becoming The Joker more and more its just that Britain gets less and less normal by the week so comparatively my levels of Jokerfication look worse
November 16, 2025 at 1:35 PM
I’m not Becoming The Joker,
Britain is Becoming Gotham
Britain is Becoming Gotham
Reposted by T.X. Watson
It's weird to not only have lived through an information revolution but also now living through its undoing, all within less than a generation.
Google at its peak was basically the best information retrieval system in human history and they and every competitor decided going from there to “you didn’t want answers you wanted half-assed auto-complete 80%-wrong hallucinations” in a few years was the right idea
November 25, 2025 at 12:19 PM
It's weird to not only have lived through an information revolution but also now living through its undoing, all within less than a generation.
Reposted by T.X. Watson
Reposted by T.X. Watson
This week, I withdrew from a speaking engagement at a public university because they sent me a list of prohibited “words & concepts.” I will not humor this censorship. It does a disservice to the stories I’m discussing & the audience, who deserve unfettered access to information & conversation.
November 20, 2025 at 10:20 PM
This week, I withdrew from a speaking engagement at a public university because they sent me a list of prohibited “words & concepts.” I will not humor this censorship. It does a disservice to the stories I’m discussing & the audience, who deserve unfettered access to information & conversation.
Reposted by T.X. Watson
My forthcoming book on K-pop fandom looks at how parasocial relationships in K-pop today can be viewed as asymmetrical relationships -- never entirely one-way, but in many cases, two-way, asymmetric-yet-mutual attachments 💞
The Cambridge Dictionary has chosen “parasocial” as its Word of the Year for 2025.
November 20, 2025 at 5:58 AM
My forthcoming book on K-pop fandom looks at how parasocial relationships in K-pop today can be viewed as asymmetrical relationships -- never entirely one-way, but in many cases, two-way, asymmetric-yet-mutual attachments 💞
Reposted by T.X. Watson
Looks like LLMs are *very* vulnerable to attack via poetic allusion: "curated poetic prompts yielded high attack-success rates (ASR), with some providers exceeding 90% ..."
https://arxiv.org/html/2511.15304v1
https://arxiv.org/html/2511.15304v1
November 20, 2025 at 5:06 PM
Looks like LLMs are *very* vulnerable to attack via poetic allusion: "curated poetic prompts yielded high attack-success rates (ASR), with some providers exceeding 90% ..."
https://arxiv.org/html/2511.15304v1
https://arxiv.org/html/2511.15304v1
Reposted by T.X. Watson
reading slaughterhouse 5 for the first time and i was absolutely knocked senseless by this passage, which is so true and relevant that it feels like it was pulled from a history book
October 26, 2025 at 6:01 PM
reading slaughterhouse 5 for the first time and i was absolutely knocked senseless by this passage, which is so true and relevant that it feels like it was pulled from a history book
Reposted by T.X. Watson
Hi Olivia, we usually never publish in anything other than Dutch (well, Flemish, as is mentioned in the comments). But... we did just create an English version of the piece! You can read (and share it) here: apache.be/2025/10/24/b...
Belgian AI scientists resist the use of AI in academia
Several AI scientists have published an open letter calling for a ban on AI use by students.
apache.be
October 24, 2025 at 9:31 AM
Hi Olivia, we usually never publish in anything other than Dutch (well, Flemish, as is mentioned in the comments). But... we did just create an English version of the piece! You can read (and share it) here: apache.be/2025/10/24/b...
From Kenneth Burke's "Rhetoric of Hitler's 'Battle'" (1941)
"The yearning for unity is so great that people are always willing to meet you halfway if you will give it to them by fiat, by flat statement, regardless of the facts."
"The yearning for unity is so great that people are always willing to meet you halfway if you will give it to them by fiat, by flat statement, regardless of the facts."
October 22, 2025 at 1:39 PM
From Kenneth Burke's "Rhetoric of Hitler's 'Battle'" (1941)
"The yearning for unity is so great that people are always willing to meet you halfway if you will give it to them by fiat, by flat statement, regardless of the facts."
"The yearning for unity is so great that people are always willing to meet you halfway if you will give it to them by fiat, by flat statement, regardless of the facts."
Reposted by T.X. Watson
early 21st century americans were so modest that they would regularly censor their own feet in video and artistic depictions, and it was considered improper to expose your feet in public — dismissed with cries of "put those grippers away"
October 15, 2025 at 1:45 PM
early 21st century americans were so modest that they would regularly censor their own feet in video and artistic depictions, and it was considered improper to expose your feet in public — dismissed with cries of "put those grippers away"
Reposted by T.X. Watson
The Pornhub productivity suite took me out.
Tell me you're desperate for revenue without telling me.
Seriously, imagine your elevator pitch is "we offer an AI that revolutionizes the enterprise, answers questions at a PhD level, and also talks dirty to horny young men." It would be like if PornHub was selling a productivity suite.
Seriously, imagine your elevator pitch is "we offer an AI that revolutionizes the enterprise, answers questions at a PhD level, and also talks dirty to horny young men." It would be like if PornHub was selling a productivity suite.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced in a post on X Tuesday that ChatGPT is officially getting into the fuckable chatbots game, with “erotica for verified adults” rolling out in December.
🔗 www.404media.co/chatgpt-erot...
🔗 www.404media.co/chatgpt-erot...
October 14, 2025 at 10:49 PM
The Pornhub productivity suite took me out.
Reposted by T.X. Watson
Fan Studies question: does anyone know the exact origin of the term "headcanon"? I know it comes from fic around 2007, but can't find anything more specific than that.
October 8, 2025 at 9:13 AM
Fan Studies question: does anyone know the exact origin of the term "headcanon"? I know it comes from fic around 2007, but can't find anything more specific than that.
Sold a bunch of shares of ownership in my immortal soul recently, getting them packed up to ship now
October 8, 2025 at 5:27 PM
Sold a bunch of shares of ownership in my immortal soul recently, getting them packed up to ship now
The AI bubble is JK Rowling's fault
October 8, 2025 at 2:08 AM
The AI bubble is JK Rowling's fault
Reposted by T.X. Watson
actually our AI programs are like people so its racist to say you don't like them. anyway would you like to buy one
October 5, 2025 at 12:53 PM
actually our AI programs are like people so its racist to say you don't like them. anyway would you like to buy one
Reposted by T.X. Watson
shit what if i am cringe but also not free
October 3, 2025 at 3:09 PM
shit what if i am cringe but also not free
The Overton window isn't real. It just seems like it is because the one-dimensional left/right political spectrum also isn't real. We imagine ideas as more or less extreme *based on* how viable they seem as political agendas then assume that there's something intrinsically similar about them
October 1, 2025 at 3:27 AM
The Overton window isn't real. It just seems like it is because the one-dimensional left/right political spectrum also isn't real. We imagine ideas as more or less extreme *based on* how viable they seem as political agendas then assume that there's something intrinsically similar about them
Who else thinks about the fact that algorithmically customized recommendation feeds create a pressure to self-censor your own media consumption to prevent your recommendations from becoming unflattering?
September 30, 2025 at 6:25 PM
Who else thinks about the fact that algorithmically customized recommendation feeds create a pressure to self-censor your own media consumption to prevent your recommendations from becoming unflattering?
Reposted by T.X. Watson
Didn’t know this! Do you know how many years I pined for jstor access! Yes I am a giant nerd who pines for academe leave me alone with my papers and books
This is my regular reminder to everyone that jstor is open to the general public now; a free account there will give you access to 100 papers a year.
regrettably if you try to point this out online you'll get yelled out by 79208 journalists going OH SO YOU WANT JOURNALISTS TO STARVE??? even if you're, say, a journalist yourself, and point out that while there are clearly no easy answers, the status quo isn't exactly working for society
September 29, 2025 at 1:34 PM
Didn’t know this! Do you know how many years I pined for jstor access! Yes I am a giant nerd who pines for academe leave me alone with my papers and books
Reposted by T.X. Watson
If there’s one legitimate criticism of postmodernism it’s people who wear “this is my costume!” t-shirts on Halloween
September 21, 2025 at 1:31 PM
If there’s one legitimate criticism of postmodernism it’s people who wear “this is my costume!” t-shirts on Halloween
Using humor as a distancing mechanism to deal w stress but it is very funny to me that in order to make the country appear "Strong" the Rs are blowing up our performative freedom of expression, which has been the cornerstone of our state propaganda for a century
The union representing the musicians from Jimmy Kimmel’s band releases a statement calling the FCC’s pressure on Disney “state censorship.”
September 18, 2025 at 12:56 PM
Using humor as a distancing mechanism to deal w stress but it is very funny to me that in order to make the country appear "Strong" the Rs are blowing up our performative freedom of expression, which has been the cornerstone of our state propaganda for a century