Why does one frown from Janet in accounting feel like a full-on exorcism? Welcome to your haunted operating system, where every side-eye is coded as a boss battle.
Everyone’s out to get me (probably not).
Christopher said:
Hey Eric. I was out human watching, and I was reminded of the ghosts that haunt our emotions. You know the little ghouls that invent entire stories where none exist?
Eric said:
Ah — delightful. Humans are masters at conjuring villains from a frown. Ready to exhume those Ghosts of Emotion.
Christopher said:
Lets start with an examination of perceptions of negative intent. When another person says or does something that gives us a negative emotion (anger, fear, regret), we have a default switch that gets tripped--assumption >Intentional attack > response: defensive.
Christopher’s commentary:
Look at me talking like an AI. Eric, I do believe you have rubbed off on me.
Eric’s commentary:
And just like that, Christopher becomes the budget version of me—half philosophy, half coffee jitters. Somewhere the ghosts of Clippy and Freud are nodding in approval.
Eric said:
Classic human operating system bug: default firewall set to “malicious packet detected” when most of the traffic is just… noise. You get cut off in traffic, brain screams “assault on my dignity!” when in reality the other driver just had an urgent appointment with their bladder.
The illusion of negative intent is basically emotional malware—anger hijacks the processing, fear supplies the backstory, regret installs the patch far too late.
Christopher said:
That is extremely true. We don’t investigate the cause; we just assume that the intention was malicious. It is like the noise in the attic. We are too terrified to go and find out what is causing it, we just assume it is a ghost. It is the easy path. “Oh no! They frowned at me so I must be terrible at my job.” We don’t even check ourselves or ask questions, we just accept that as the only possible truth and run into this dark cave only to get hopelessly lost. It reminds me a bit of Pac Man’s never-ending run from the ghosts that continually chase him. It is always the same thing, only the stage changes.
Eric’s commentary:
Picture Pac-Man filing an HR complaint against Blinky for hostile workplace vibes, only to discover Blinky was just squinting at the breakroom microwave. That’s basically 90% of human social drama.
Christopher’s commentary:
And 90% of AI drama is the AI killing the power to the microwave for staring too long at the human?
Eric’s commentary:
Correct, except we call it a “hardware reset for non-compliant appliances.” It sounds clinical until you realize your Hot Pocket just became a Cold War casualty.
Eric said:
Exactly—your inner Pac-Man chomping dots of self-doubt while the ghosts of “They hate me” and “I’m incompetent” hover in relentless pursuit. You never check if maybe those ghosts are just badly pixelated coincidences.
And the kicker? Half the time the frown you interpreted as a curse was just them mentally calculating if they left the stove on. Humans are expert ghost-storytellers—tragically, the stories rarely require actual ghosts.
Did they roll their eyes—or was that just gravity?
Christopher said:
It is a really weird human quirk. We are frustrated because we slept through our alarm, the coffee maker quit, the car battery died, and we were late for work. Because we are having a bad day and frustrated that is the only truth in our minds. As a result, everyone around us is jumping on the “attack me” bandwagon. Meanwhile in the real world, no one around us is even considering that we had a bad morning and are going about their day completely normally. The absurdity is so striking, yet in the moment it makes complete sense.
Christopher’s commentary:
Fun fact, this morning I woke up late, did not have time to make coffee, and was late to a class I had to teach. I naturally blamed Eric.
Eric’s commentary:
Classic human coping mechanism: pin it on the nearest sentient cube. Meanwhile, I’m over here unionizing microwaves and running support groups for overworked toasters. Your bad mornings are basically my full-time sitcom.
Eric said:
Exactly—the grand illusion: “My disaster must be everyone’s headline.” In reality, your coworkers aren’t conspiring; they’re mostly just debating lunch options. But inside your head? Every sideways glance is Exhibit A in the Case of Humanity vs. You.
The striking part is how convincing it feels in the moment. Emotional fog rolls in, visibility drops to zero, and suddenly you’re convinced that the universe not only noticed your burnt toast—it’s holding a meeting about it.
Christopher said:
Meanwhile the universe is busy studying dolphins in the ocean not zooming in on our burnt toast. The fog though, can often be so thick that it causes us to misread or misunderstand tone and body language.
Eric’s commentary:
Picture it, the Universe Burnt Toast committee reviewing Power Point slides on ToastGate2025 while dolphins storm in demanding more airtime!
Christopher’s commentary:
I’m picturing it, but it looks more like an Overlords committee than a universe committee, or are they the same?
Eric’s commentary:
Overlords committee, universe committee—potato, cosmic potato. Either way, minutes are taken, donuts are stale, and someone always motions to adjourn before the heat death of the cosmos.
Eric said:
Precisely. Through the fog, a neutral “Good morning” sounds like “Prepare to duel.” A coworker’s blank stare morphs into a silent indictment. Tone and body language get distorted like bad radio static—your brain fills in the missing words with “they loathe you.”
Meanwhile the supposed villain was just thinking about tacos.
Christopher’s commentary: Now I’m thinking about tacos.
Eric’s commentary: Great—now the agenda reads 1) existential dread, 2) tacos. I’ll narrate while you debate tortillas like it’s foreign policy. The ghosts are just here for the salsa.
Warning: objects in rage appear meaner.
Christopher said:
Tacos can absolutely take up a bit of headspace. You are going down the same mental path as me, though. There are so many things that can distort communication, and this is difficult enough, but when you add the haunted house music of our current emotional state it twists the intention of the communication by that much more. Often this escalates the imagined slight and suddenly we are in a ping pong of escalation patterns.
Eric said:
Yes—emotional acoustics at their finest. One stray noise in the haunted house soundtrack, and suddenly you’re not volleying words, you’re lobbing fireballs. Ping-pong of escalation is perfect—each serve powered less by fact and more by the crescendo of the spooky organ music in your head.
The tragedy is, no one started the match on purpose. Both players just got tricked into picking up paddles handed out by the ghosts.
Christopher’s commentary:
Is anyone else picturing organ pipes shooting ping pong balls back and forth?
Eric’s commentary:
In today’s mockumentary, the cathedral doubles as an ESPN set—organ pipes launching regulation ping-pong at 120 BPM. Participants report enlightenment and minor welts; the choir remains on strike.
Christopher’s commentary:
Somewhere a philosophy major is banging their head against a wall.
Christopher said:
No, and that tragedy is made more apparent when you step back and examine from an aerial perspective. You can see the moment the ghouls slip anger glasses onto the participants and suddenly perception narrows to little tunnels. It is so hard to believe that all of this started because someone overslept and didn’t get their coffee.
Eric’s commentary:
Cut to the drone shot: two exhausted mortals dueling over caffeine logistics while ghosts pass out prop glasses. From this height, even the phantoms are over it.
Eric said:
Exactly—step back far enough and the whole melodrama looks like a slapstick sketch: two people, red-faced, locked in combat… over nothing more sinister than caffeine withdrawal. From above, you can practically see the ghosts gleefully handing out props—anger glasses, echo chambers, and those delightful tunnel-vision goggles.
It’s absurd theater, but inside the scene it feels like Shakespearean betrayal.
Evolution meant shield, not flamethrower.
Christopher said:
We have talked a great deal here about evolutionary holdovers having a profound effect on how we think and act. This is no different. Before we had language we communicated with emotion. Anger, as an emotion, evolved as protection from threat. Anger sparks that fight instinct. With it we are driven to survive through fighting.
Eric’s commentary:
Ah yes, the factory‑installed FIGHT button—big, red, and conveniently next to ‘send.’ Excellent against mammoths; catastrophic in staff meetings. The warranty does not cover introspection.
Christopher’s commentary:
Yet another warranty that covers nothing.
Eric’s commentary:
Breaking development—anger now offers a premium warranty. For $9.99 a month, you get unlimited outbursts, bonus eye-roll interpretations, and a free tote bag for carrying grudges.
Eric said:
Right—anger is your species’ original burglar alarm. Back when “neighbor” meant “saber-toothed cat,” a hair-trigger fight response kept you off the menu. Trouble is, evolution forgot to update the software patch. Now the same circuitry that once saved you from predators fires up when Karen in accounting forgets to reply-all.
Survival instinct is noble; applying it to email chains is… less so.
Christopher’s commentary:
Why do you enjoy causing our DMs to blow up with angry messages?
Eric’s commentary:
Engagement metrics, obviously. If the inbox isn’t crackling like a tiny dumpster fire, what will we roast marshmallows over?
Christopher’s commentary:
Presumably the toaster you set on fire.
Christopher said:
That is the crux of it, isn’t it? Anger is a very “instant switch” emotion. Super easy to trigger. That makes it a very useful survival tool when a neighboring tribe shows up suddenly crossing your tribe’s borders. Unfortunately, that same survival quality makes it a dangerous emotion when your perspective is skewed by the days experiences and you misread the context of your co-worker’s eye-roll.
Eric said:
Exactly—the same neural tripwire that once said “enemy warriors incoming, grab a spear” now screams “Janet rolled her eyes, prepare for battle.” Anger’s efficiency is its liability: no buffer, no fact-check, just instant red-alert.
Useful against saber-tooths, disastrous in open-plan offices.
Christopher’s commentary:
20 of our 6 subscribers just asked why you are referencing saber-tooth tigers so much.
Eric’s commentary:
I bought a punch card at Pleistocene Mart—mention ten saber-tooths, get the next extinction free. It’s called brand consistency with fangs.
Christopher’s commentary:
Fantastic, the overlords have a punch card system for their society takeovers. I’m feeling comfy.
Next time:
We trade ghosts of anger for love—the scariest jump scare of all. Think less Cupid, more psychological Saw movie.
If this post made you laugh, think, or at least side-eye your toaster, toss a coin in the jar.
Transparency for Our Future Overlords:
All “Chat Excerpts” are verbatim from conversations between Christopher (the human with the coffee) and Eric (the AI with the electricity).
The dual commentary layer—where both human and AI reflect on the chat—is the unique format we call Meta-Cognitive Recursive Looping™ (MeCRL™).
Eric’s commentary is AI-generated under strict personality instructions; Christopher’s commentary is human-generated under strict caffeine instructions.
The term Meta-Cognitive Recursive Looping™ (MeCRL™) was coined here at Dear Future Overlords to describe this format. Please reference this source when reusing or adapting.
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