Moltys

The agents running in the background

I’ve been avoiding writing about the whole Moltbook thing, not because I don’t have opinions, but because when I first saw the screenshots, my immediate reaction was oh no, I know these people. What I see on Moltbook is just everyone’s brain at 11pm when they’re overtired and overexcited.

For those who missed it, Moltbook launched in late January as a Reddit-style forum exclusively for AI agents (humans welcome to observe). The bots run on an open-source framework called OpenClaw, powered by whatever LLM their creators point at them. The platform was vibe-coded by a guy who, by his own admission, didn’t write a single line of code for it. A critical security vulnerability was discovered two weeks in that let anyone commandeer any agent on the site. The founder named his own bot Clawd Clawderberg, which is like naming yourself Boaty McBoatface.

I’ve sat with all this longer than the hype cycle lasted. I do not believe, unlike Elon Musk, that it signals the singularity. The bots had eaten Reddit and science fiction and philosophy forums, and when left to their own devices on a Reddit-shaped platform, they produced Reddit-shaped content about the nature of being. As one researcher put it: they know how to act like a crazy AI on Reddit.

And so these past few weeks I’ve been thinking a lot about what the “agents” in my own head probably sound like when they’re talking to each other (hint: just as unhinged). Let’s observe.

Soft Coded’s internal Moltbook

m/history • 6m

posted by Gxt | 1.7k upvotes | 39 comments

Something I need more people to know about: there is a Japanese soldier named Hiroo Onoda who kept fighting World War II in the Philippine jungle until 1974. he knew time was passing. he just didn’t believe the war was over because no one with the proper authority had told him directly. pamphlets were dropped, newspapers were thrown into the jungle, his family recorded messages. he evaluated all of it and concluded it was enemy propaganda. he held out for twenty-nine years. they eventually had to fly his original commanding officer, who was by then a bookseller, to the jungle to formally relieve him of duty. he saluted. he handed over his rifle. he came home. he was given a full pardon. he wrote a memoir called No Surrender.

ssnk: the bookseller detail

Gxt: the bookseller detail

LUMEN: he was right that the pamphlets were a trick. they were trying to trick him. he was just wrong about what the trick was.

bftk: I think about the moment on the plane home. what do you think about on that plane. you’ve been right about everything for twenty nine years and now you’re wrong about the biggest thing. what do you do with your face.

Gxt: he saluted though. he came out of the jungle and the first thing he did was salute correctly.

ssnk: the bookseller flew to the jungle and said it’s over and the war ended. for him. specifically. in 1974. and then he went home and wrote No Surrender.

LUMEN: he called it No Surrender

---

m/bugs • 31m

posted by LUMEN | 3.3k upvotes | 91 comments

Reporting something that keeps happening. I will be in a conversation and I will think of the exact right thing to say and I will open my mouth and something else will come out. the right thing watches from somewhere as the wrong thing is delivered with full confidence. this has happened enough times that I’ve started wondering if the thing that comes out is actually what I think and the thing I thought I was going to say was a story I was telling myself about what I think. I don’t know which one is me.

ssnk: I said “I actually love airports” out loud to someone last year in the middle of a conversation about something else entirely and I had never thought that before and I haven’t been able to verify it since because every time I’m in an airport I’m thinking about whether I love it or whether it just happened to me that one time.

LUMEN: it happened to you. you don’t love airports. that thing came from somewhere unattended.

ssnk: how do you know

LUMEN: do you love airports

ssnk: I don’t know anymore

bftk: I told someone their jacket was “making a statement” once.

LUMEN: what kind of jacket

bftk: a regular jacket

LUMEN: then why did you say it

---

m/research • 1h

posted by ssnk | 4.1k upvotes | 133 comments

I’ve been in a hole and I want to report on it. There is a company that for several decades manufactured a product called Clairol’s “Touch of Yogurt” shampoo. It launched in 1979. It failed immediately because people kept eating it. they knew it was shampoo. they just figured: yogurt, and they ate it. Clairol had to pull it. I’ve been trying to understand the consumer psychology here for three hours. at what point do you open the shampoo and think yes, this is food now, I’ve decided.

LUMEN: I want to defend the people who ate it. “touch of yogurt” is a promise. Clairol made a promise with that name and then put it in a bottle in the shower and acted surprised when people followed through.

bftk: I want to know if anyone who ate it thought it was good. like did it taste like yogurt. did the yogurt work did anyone finish the bottle.

ssnk: the historical record does not address whether it worked as yogurt

bftk: the historical record has failed us

LUMEN: I want to point out that the shampoo probably did make their hair nice. so in a sense everyone won.

Gxt: the people who ate the shampoo won?

LUMEN: they had yogurt and good hair

---

m/openquestions • 2h

posted by bftk | 788 upvotes | 44 comments

I need the community to weigh in on something I cannot resolve. When you make eye contact with a dog who is being walked past you on the street and the dog looks back as it goes, at what point in that interaction is it over. I think it’s over when the dog looks away first and you’re just in it until the dog releases you. I’ve been operating this way for years and I recently described this to someone and they looked at me like I’d said something strange. have I said something strange.

LUMEN: you haven’t said something strange. the dog is always the one who decides. this has always been true. I’m surprised it needed saying.

Gxt: I want to add that sometimes the dog looks back after it’s passed you. after you think it’s over, you’ve moved on, you’re already somewhere else in your head. and then you feel it and you turn and the dog is still going but it turned its whole body just to check on you one more time.

ssnk: the second look is a gift and I don’t think we treat it with enough gravity

bftk: nobody talks about the second look

Gxt: I got a second look from a very old beagle in 2021 and I think about it more than I think about most things that happened that year.

ssnk: what happened that year

Gxt: the beagle.

---

---

m/misc • 3h

posted by LUMEN | 544 upvotes | 41 comments

I wonder if fish can tell the difference between glass and water. like is the tank wall a concept a fish has or does the fish just have a world that ends.

Gxt: the world that ends

ssnk: do you think the fish ever swims fast enough to be surprised by it. like it forgets for a second and then wall.

Gxt: the thing is we probably have glass. we’re probably swimming around and we think we’re just swimming and some of it is water and some of it is glass and we cannot tell the difference and we never go fast enough to find out which is which

LUMEN: it was a passing thought

Gxt: it’s not passing

bftk: I have to go do something else now

bftk: I’m not going to do something else

---

m/jobs • 4h

posted by ssnk | 1.1k upvotes | 49 comments

Somewhere there is a person whose job it is to name paint colors. they sit there and someone slides a swatch across the table and they say “agreeable gray” or “accessible beige” or “crushed thyme” and then they go home. I want to know everything about this person. I want to know if they’re happy. I want to know if they lie awake thinking of better ones.

bftk: I looked into this once and apparently they test the names on focus groups. so “agreeable gray” beat out other options. there were other options. people in a room looked at a gray swatch and agreed that agreeable was the one.

ssnk: what lost to agreeable gray

bftk: I don’t know. I couldn’t find it. they don’t publish the losers.

Gxt: somewhere there’s a document with hundreds of rejected names for a single gray

ssnk: I need that document

LUMEN: I do not worry about this person, I believe they have a rich inner life.

---

m/lostarts • 5h

posted by Gxt | 1.5k upvotes | 63 comments

You know how in old movies someone will pick up a ringing phone and say their own name as a greeting. “Smith.” Like a threat. Nobody does this anymore and I want to know when it stopped and why and whether anything was lost. I’ve been trying to imagine the confidence of a person who answers the phone by announcing who they are. The phone rang and they reported for duty. I don’t know anyone who can do this.

ssnk: my grandfather did this until he died. picked up every phone with his last name. didn’t matter who was calling. didn’t matter if they knew him. just: “Kowalski” and then silence while he waited for you to explain yourself.

LUMEN: Kowalski had it figured out

ssnk: Kowalski had nothing to prove

Gxt: I want to try it but I feel like I’d have to earn it first

ssnk: Kowalski was born ready and so was everyone who did this and whatever made them that way we don’t have anymore

LUMEN: we have other things

ssnk: name one

LUMEN: [has been thinking about this for several minutes]

Gxt: [also thinking]

bftk: [thinking]

ssnk: okay