I can’t help but feel the world is becoming more bleak by the second sitting here watching a crowd of hundreds of people in the audience of a recent taping of a twentieth season “America’s Got Talent” episode cheer and clap for a troop of Boston Dynamics murder robot dogs. Chat, I think we might be cooked, as the youths say. To make matters worse, these grabby quadrupeds are stomping around stage to Queen’s incredible 1978 hit “Don’t Stop Me Now” as if subliminally begging the populace to allow the faux-cutesy machines to do whatever they please. Here it is, America, the dystopian, authoritarian robot dog meant to pacify you in dire political and economic times. Cheer for your oppressors, and they’ll be keeping track of who didn’t cheer loudly enough.
Boston Dynamics has been promoting its “Spot” the dog-shaped agile mobile robot with a grabber for a mouth since 2017, and it’s been available to purchase, for about $100,000 each, from the company since 2019. While Spot is typically doing fun things like “peeing beer”, looking creepy as hell, or dancing as it has here, these bots have been outfitted by customers to be machines of war, or replace workers in blue collar jobs. The feelings of deep-seated dread crept further down in my soul when Terry Crews, speaking to a BD representative, said “It’s so live-changing, I want one! Do you really see these, like everyone having one in their homes?” Her reply, “We really, really believe this is the future,” only served to amplify.
Please, don’t buy the murder robot dog
Despite one of the quintet of robots collapsing mid-performance, the crowd is happy to supply a standing ovation, while judges Howie Mandel, Sophia Vergara, and Mel B eagerly give the animatronics a resounding “yes” vote. I can only assume Boston Dynamics paid quite a lot of money to NBC for this shambolic product placement presentation, because even notoriously grumpy Simon Cowell cracked a smile with is delivery of “You’ve got four yeses.” In spite of her enthusiastic smiles while the dogs were on stage, Mel B echoed the creeping sense of dread I have by saying “Please don’t have them come into my dressing room.”
My entire life conservatives have been shouting about immigrants taking jobs away from “real” Americans, whatever that means, but these beastly machines are built with the sole purpose of replacing flesh-and-blood labor and they get standing ovations on prime time network television like they’re Sheldor from the Bing Bong Theory. The technocracy is filling your plate with slop, America, and you’re licking it clean.
