Unlock the Secrets of Ethical Hacking!
Ready to dive into the world of offensive security? This course gives you the Black Hat hacker’s perspective, teaching you attack techniques to defend against malicious activity. Learn to hack Android and Windows systems, create undetectable malware and ransomware, and even master spoofing techniques. Start your first hack in just one hour!
Enroll now and gain industry-standard knowledge: Enroll Now!
To the surprise of not a single soul, the backlash that Friend CEO Avi Schiffmann gleefully begged for on his million-dollar subway AI ad campaign has started to wear on him.
In a stunning display of what happens when someone gets stupid prizes after playing stupid games, the 22-year-old Schiffmann lamented that he is “tired of talking to New Yorkers.”
Yes, you read that correctly. The man who dressed an algorithm up as a condescending and anxious imaginary friend in an Apple-meets-Tamagotchi suit is exhausted by interacting in-person with people of the city his ad has been visually assaulting.
Local New York media outlet Gothamist asked Schiffmann to meet up at New York City’s West 4th Street station. Seven train lines converge there, and it houses a concentrated 53 of the more than 11,000 AI ads that Friend has deployed across the transit system.
He showed up, but Gothamist‘s team had been hoping the CEO would join them to interview passersby on the product and the campaign. No dice: he repeatedly declined and requested that they not announce who he was to people in the area. In other words, it sounds like he was suddenly awfully scared to engage with actual New Yorkers about the amazingly unpopular campaign.
“I like [Friend] so much that I don’t need to keep yapping about it, and I just don’t want to keep convincing everyone here,” he said. “It’s just such an ordeal, I just don’t want to do it.”
Schiffmann assured the outlet that he’s been having conversations with New Yorkers that have been “great” and “very entertaining,” but was unable to recall any specifics from all these alleged interactions. (He has been making various trollish remarks on X-formerly-Twitter, so maybe that’s what he’s characterizing as “conversations.”)
The clearest illustration from the debacle: while Schiffmann was still at West 4th, a Queens resident showed up and started defacing the ad with a Sharpie. “They’re destroying the world for the dumbest invention I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said, per Gothamist.
Schiffmann hid around the corner, according to Gothamist, his face buried in his phone, and refused to make eye contact.
More on Friend: AI “Friend” Startup Overwhelmed With Hatred
Unlock the Secrets of Ethical Hacking!
Ready to dive into the world of offensive security? This course gives you the Black Hat hacker’s perspective, teaching you attack techniques to defend against malicious activity. Learn to hack Android and Windows systems, create undetectable malware and ransomware, and even master spoofing techniques. Start your first hack in just one hour!
Enroll now and gain industry-standard knowledge: Enroll Now!
0 Comments