catball

Meowdy Pawdner

  • she /they

pictures of my rats: @rats
yiddish folktale bot (currently offline): @Yiddish-Folktales

Seattle area
trans 🏳️‍⚧️ somewhere between (30 - 35)


Personal website
catball.dev/
Mastodon (not sure if I'll use this)
digipres.club/@cat
Pillowfort (not sure if I'll use this)
www.pillowfort.social/catball
Monthly Newsletter (email me to join)
newsletter AT computer DOT garden
Monthly Nudesletter (18+ only, email me to join)
nudesletter AT computer DOT garden
Rat Pics (placeholder, will update)
rats.computer.garden/
Website League main profile
transgender.city/@cat
Website League nudes profile
transgender.city/@hotcat
Website League rat pics
transgender.city/@rats

shel
@shel

So I was setting up siri on my new phone and i heard "Voice 5" which is the "nonbinary voice" and I was like oh it sounds like a trans person. It actually sounds queer. This voice is actually kinda comforting and familiar sounding I'll choose this one. And like, if I'm gonna hear a mysterious voice in my home when I'm home alone it feels more safe and comfy having it sound like someone who is queer and not like, a cis male home invader coming from my phone.

And all of that is true. but also. It's so weirdly uncanny how much "voice 5" sounds like someone I would know IRL and like, it makes the voice feel very uncanny and like I'm talking to a real person to the point of it feeling a bit unsettling like I really do not expect robots to talk like a faggy little trans twink who responds to "hey siri" with an interested ""Hmmmm??" like a friend who wants to hear how a date went. And the chipper "you're welcome~" if I thank them for setting a timer sounds too real like I've just bossed around a real person. It makes me want to be extra polite to them!


catball
@catball

on one hand I kind of love the representation, and appreciate the work some linguists went through to study queer voices and ensure the vocaloid produced something authentic sounding

on the other hand, I kind of loathe the increased humanization of tech interfaces and how it leads to greater trust of the machine service (including less of people challenging false presuppositions it may give them) and the normalizing force of a megacorp codifying an identity in a widely-used service

I have mixed feelings! but I can appreciate a gayer siri overall :eggbug-uwu:


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in reply to @shel's post:

A funny/unsettling(?) dynamic of this now is that with the new iOS update adding the 'conversational interface' where Siri by default listens to further commands after a first one, anthropomorphising Siri by saying "thank you" is now also a functional gesture - it's how you make it stop listening.

in reply to @catball's post:

yes i don't know if it's better for the user, assuming you have to use it, for the robot to sound like a person you'd like or for it to only ever sound exactly like ted cruz in a reflection of the types of decision-making that drive its design of the thing you're really interfacing with

lol, that would definitely make me feel more cautious of it

Although it's less the case with specifically apple siri than other human-like interfaces, I'm leery of tech companies making the primary or only route to their service through something that appears human, especially when there's other ways of doing so (e.g. chatbots for information retrieval)

yes i agree with you that it's deeply insidious. i don't know how much cause goes in which directions but i also don't ever use these things, or like using voice interfaces at all (which makes it easier for me personally). but when a chatbot chides me for being rude to it or otherwise tries to make me treat it like a person, hooOOO boy