#dont ever come on here again using infantilizing and projecting

[taehyungfirst]

Sometimes, it’s okay to admit that we tend to infantilize our faves and project our own desires and expectations onto them and I think, in the discourse surrounding Tae’s documentary and this concert, that’s exactly what’s happening.

You mentioned that Tae didn’t know about documentaries, but how does that make sense? He’s been an idol for years, has witnessed the entire process up close, and has seen other members release solo albums complete with documentaries. So why assume he wouldn’t know? You also said documentaries were “given,” but that’s simply not accurate. The decision to film a documentary was left up to each member. Every one of them chose to do it except Tae. Even if we assumed that documentaries were offered as part of a package, why is this particular thing being blamed on the company when Tae himself chose not to work with them for his solo album?

If anyone should have advised him on the process, it would have been MHJ who produced the album not BigHit. And ultimately, it was Tae’s decision not to shoot one. He even said so himself: that he didn’t realize fans wanted a documentary, but now that he knows, he’d be open to doing one. If the company had truly denied him the opportunity, why would he now express such certainty that he can make one just because fans asked? Wouldn’t the same company supposedly blocking him then still have the power to block him now? Why would he be so confident, unless the choice had always been his?

Continuing to frame this as unfair treatment toward Tae especially in comparison to the other members’ concerts is, at this point, just not accurate. Hobi went Live and explained that it was Jungkook and Jin who asked to perform with him. He didn’t invite them, nor did the company. They wanted to be involved Tae clearly didn’t. That’s not mistreatment. That’s personal choice.

And to be clear, this isn’t about defending the company because I never would. But it’s also not fair to place blame on them for things they didn’t control. If Tae were ever to come online and say the company forced him to perform at a concert or ordered him to shoot a documentary, many of the same people who are currently upset would still turn around and criticize the company for making idols do things they don’t want to do.

It’s a good thing that the members have a level of autonomy over their solo projects. Let’s not turn that into something negative. We may not always understand or agree with their choices, and that’s okay but disliking a decision doesn’t automatically mean someone else made it for them.

I’m not infantilizing anyone and I’m not projecting any desires on him, it’s simply that you guys in attempt to justify company’s actions find every single loophole possible.

All this rant is based on one big inaccuracy: Layover was produced by Ador, but the rollout promotion is under BIGHIT. The album is under BIGHIT. So, if there was anyone who was responsible for suggesting a documentary is bighit, because the documentary is part of the promo package considering that six members out of seven got it. Girl, you’re an army, right? So shouldn’t this be weird to you? Six members getting something and one goes as far as saying “I didn’t know abt it”, isn’t it weird no one went up to him and said “wanna shoot a doc”?

You can say you are not defending the company all you want but that’s exactly what you’re doing in your ask, and you’re not expecting for Tae the same fairness you rightfully expect it’s given to the other members. Coming on here and saying I’m infantilizing him because I expect he gets treated the same as six other people is low and distasteful, and I hope one day you can just free yourselves from this imaginary beef you have with Tae.

[hello-yue-here]

Yuetara, zukka, and maiko

yuetara

ship

1) its not one of my main ships. i dont rlly read fanfic for them but if i see a cute fanart of them ill enjoy it and i think i first started shipping it because of good fanarts for them.

2) i like yuetara because of how similar they are. theyre both women from the water tribe. they both understand the misogyny that they have faced. and they both said f sexism im gonna be a strong woman. i also love the tui and la parallel. moon spirit and ocean spirit parallel COME ON. YUE IS THE MOON. KATARA IS THE MOST POWERFUL WATERBENDER. THEY ARE THE OCEAN AND THE MOON. the push and pull they could give eachother. that dynamic ftw.

3) i guess if i didnt like something about this ship would be the fact that if i read a fic or see a fanart w yuetara then than means in that particular au i wont get any yuekka and yuekka is probably my second favorite ship. but then again if i get yuetara than i could get a plethora of other sokka ships to go with it so my sadness disappears in like two seconds. gosh shipping is hard sometimes until you remember ‘hey i have like fifty different universes in my head. all ur ships can coexist in ur brain olivia’ other than that i really see no downsides to this ship. maybe i wish it had more content. maybe if it had more content id ship it a lot more but its not one of the more popular ships so the content is kinda few n far between on my feed.

zukka:

SHIPPP

1) my boys. my babies. my loves. i watched this show for the first time when it came out on netflix and when it ended i really didnt ship anything other than kataang. i came onto tumblr to find fun atla content and one of the very first things i saw under the atla tag was zukka content. i was like oh? whats this? zukka? interesting... i was intrigued so i found a list of fic recs and i fell in love with the ship. the rest is history. its probably my number one ship because it was my very first ship here and im nostalgic

2) oh boy there is so much i like about this ship. i relate to a shit ton of characters in atla. but sokka and zuko may be the ones i relate to most. i relate to sokka because i tend to feel second best a lot to my friends. i try to stay positive but things rarely go the way i plan or hope for them too and while im happy for my friends and their achievements i oftentimes find myself thinking why cant that be me? and i see this a lot in sokka especially in sokkas master. i dont feel special a lot and idk seeing sokka feel the same way and then realizing he is special kinda helped me realize that im special too. on the flipside i relate to zuko because i have wild anger issues and difficulty dealing w my emotions a lot as well. i get broody and short tempered and insecure very often and i tend to push people away and i refuse to ask for help (the amount of teachers and adults and therapists who have told me its okay to ask for help ur not any weaker because of it is astounding. do i listen to them? .....im working on it.) and i saw a shit ton of this in zuko. book one and two zuko rarely asks for help as seen in the blue spirit and zuko alone and he pushes away uncle so many times and even when the gaang iffers to help him in i think its the chase he tells them to leave. when he finally has his redemption and joins the gaang and lets them kinda become a better person i was so happy. i want that for myself yk. seeing him finally win the agni kai and overcome his family that always told him he was nothing was such a win. my sister and i get along but when we were children we were very much like zuko and azula. it was extremely competitive all the time and there was so much toxicity and sibling drama to a concerning extent. we get along great now which im very happy about but yeah their sibling relationship hit a lil too on the nose for me. seeing as i relate to these character so much and want them ti be happy i want to live vicariously through them so seeing them together is amazing for me to project into them. i love projecting onto fictional characters and with them i can project onto BOTH so its a winwin. plus so many zukka fics are so well written and heartwarming and heartbreaking and emotional and fluffy anf UGH the talent here us astounding.

3) what do i not like about the ship? again the list is long. oops. mainly the toxic shippers. there are so many toxic zukka stans that sometimes make it hard for me to enjoy this ship but hey! thats what the block button is for:) i despise how often people infantilize zuko and completely ruin his character for the sake of making him a soft weak lil boy who needs protecting. thats just not zuko for me. and ive seen many many accounts even state that this kind of portrayal of zuko is rooted in racist stereotypes about asian men (now i am white so i personally have never experiences racism but i feel the need to bring that up because it is wrong and attention needs to be brought to it because a lot of poc fans have criticised this) and the same for sokka. some ppl rlly skew his character and make him a big strong brute and hypermasculine and once again poc fans have said that this take is rooted in racist stereotypes. again! these are just my opinions! this is my favorite ship! but i think its important to acknowledge some of the bad parts of our ships as well and be critical where criticism is needed :))

maiko

ship

1) I LOVE MAIKO. “i dont hate you” “i dont hate you too” BRUH. my little heart just burst into flames. im sorry guys but maiko is so cute. they hate everything except eachother. BRUH that is one of the cutest tropes. i shipped them the moment i saw them together onscreen and i was so happy when zukos face lit up in the finale when mai came back.

2) “i hate everything but i have a soft spot for you” TAKE MY MONEY I AM A SUCKER FOR THIS. they are so cute together. like zuko is rarely happy in a majority of atla but mai makes him happy and i- 🥺🥺 HE DESERVES IT. and mai is always so supportive of him. when hes stressing out about the war meeting she tries her best to comfort him. and zuko cares about her too. he may not be the best at showing it but oh my god hes TRYING HIS BEST. i think its a very accurate portrayal of teenage relationships because they arent perfect and they do fight but like,, every teenage relationship does that. and even after everything and how he left her in the fire nation she still had his back at boiling rock. she still risked her life against azula to save his butt.

3) the thing i hate about maiko isnt even about maiko. its about antis who think mai is toxic and that zuko deserves better. that has got to be the worst take ive ever heard. they had a fight in ember island. that is NORMAL. they are teenagers. they are not perfect. but underneath all the rough edges and things they need to work out they still care about eachother so freaking much. i genuinelt believe that neither of them would do anything to intentionally hurt the other and i think thats what matters the most. if anything mai is the best girlfriend in the entire world because zuko fucked up like,, quite a few times. he got rlly jealous and dumped her thru a letter and ppl always say that mai was toxic for being mad at him for those two things. umm she had every right to be mad at him for both of those. and while zuko is allowed to feel his emotions and be angry sometimes as well sometimes he needs to think things thru and realize that hey maybe some if this jealousy is unfounded. BUT EVEN THEN. HE RESPECTED HER FEELINGS AND DIDNT TOUCH HER WHEN SHE SAID DONT TOUCH ME. HE RESPECTED HER. so i hate toxic maiko takes because they are literally so wrong in my opinion.

again all of these are just my opinions!! feel free to agree or disagree but please be respectful!! i will respect whatever u think as well because this is all just for fun :)

[viralhottopics]

My Life as a Robot

I have been part robot since May. Instead of legs, I move on gyroscopically stabilized wheels. Instead of a face, I have an iPad screen. Instead of eyes, a camera with no peripheral vision. Instead of a mouth, a speaker whose volume I can’t even gauge with my own ears. And instead of ears, a tinny microphone that crackles and hisses withevery high note.

Im a remote worker; while most of WIRED is in San Francisco, I live in Boston. We IM. We talk on the phone. We tweet at each other, but I am often left out of crucial face-to-face meetings, spontaneous brainstorm sessions, gossip in the kitchen.

So my boss found a solution: a telepresence robot from Double Robotics, which would be my physical embodiment at headquarters, extending myself through technology. Specifically, an iPad on a stick on a Segway-like base. The telepresence robot market is crowded, ranging from high-end offerings like iRobot’s Ava (starting price: $69K) to the relatively more affordable Double, which starts at $2,499. The company says it has sold nearly 5,000 of them since its launch in 2012. Mostly these go to big corporations like IBM and McDonald’s, but I’ve heard of teachers and hospitals using them, too. Supposedly all a Double needs to work is a strong Wi-Fi signal.

Christie Hemm Klok/WIRED

The first time I opened the Double interface in Chrome and clicked on an icon of my robot 3,000 miles away I was greeted by the pixelated image of my boss’s torso and a few headless coworkers. There probably were some instructions somewhere that I should have read, but I didn’t. “How do I move it?” I asked them. “We don’t know,” they said. I clicked around. Nothing. I tried the arrow keys and, boom, jolted out of the robot’s charging dock and toward onlookers. I was like a foal, learning to walk. It took about 10 minutes to discover that a) driving a robot using a browser interface is clunky and b) the hip flooring choices of WIRED’s office were going to be my nemesis, with every transition from concrete to rubber to carpet providing another opportunity to fall on my screen.

Growing Pains

Before I ever tried the robot, I was sure I would hate the thing.I thought it would make me small and flat and foolish. I thought it would be annoying to deal with, would require me to wear pants (something we remote workers often don’t do, world!). I thought it would make me a novelty, a sideshow, a joke. And I thought it would be a waste of time.

Diary Entry: Day 1 Nice to meet you…robot, is it? says a strange torso I encounter in the kitchen.

EmBot, I say, Nice to meet you, too!

The figure leans down and puts a hand out to shake. Helpless, I move the EmBot from side to side using the arrow keys in what I hope translates as a gesture of excitement, rather than malfunction. Ill never really know if it worked out. The screen freezes and when it comes back, the torso is gone. I am alone, standing in a stream of humans trying to get breakfast.

Its just me, a robot, waiting in line for the human food I cant eat, I say. No response. I repeat it a few times. Is this thing on?

When I boot up, some of my original fears are realized: I’m disoriented and silly and helpless. I am a spectacle. People ogle and take pictures. I feel like a dog, the recipient of gawking smiles that say, Awwww, youre so adorably unable to take care of yourself. But, most importantly, I am surprised to find that being a robot is delightful. It’s thrilling. I am in the office! There is the kitchen! There is Sam! Hi, everyone! I am here!

Diary Entry: Day 2 I roll over behind Sams desk for a brief chat about a deadline. She hasnt heard me approach. I dont know what to do. If I just say her name shell freak out. I Hipchat her, Look behind you. As soon as I do it, I realize thats creepy—but its too late. She turns and there I am.

Hi, I say as casually as possible, I just–

Sam cuts me off. Em, she says, can you control the volume? Youre very loud.

I am? I ask.

YES, the entire bullpen yells.

I find and adjust the volume. I guess I was screaming all day.

Later that morning, I experienced the joy of being in the daily editorial meeting as a robot. Plunked at the end of the conference table, my iPad head tracked the conversation, listening. Yes, I interrupted people because my browser was a few seconds behind. Didn’t matter. I heard Molly on the phone from the Caribbean and she was barely audible. The audio system sucks. As she was trying to talk people were kind of looking exasperated. Not at her, but at the system. That was me two days ago, I kept thinking. Two days ago that speaker system was my only conduit to theentire company.

It was then I knew I could never go back. I felt so superior as my robot. I loved my robot.

I Am Become EmBot

The crazy thing about being a human 3,000 miles away from your telepresence robot is that divide instantly dissolves when you activate. As soon as I call into EmBot, I am her, and she is me. My head is her iPad. When she fell, I felt disoriented in Boston. When a piece of her came off in the impact, I felt broken.

Nothing drove home the depth of my connection more than the first time someone touched my robotic body without asking. My coworker (who shall remain nameless) came up to gawk at me, and then moved behind my screen. As I was chatting with other people, he picked me up and shook me. I expected pranks like this. Id have done the same thing if I were in the office and it were some other poor schmuck calling in to a stupid robot from far away. But I didnt expect how instantly violated I felt. He just picked up an extension of my body. One moment I was in control of myself, the next, I was powerless. I laughed from the iPad screen faced away from him, but I was unsettled, and then immediately embarrassed, for the first time, because why should it matter to me if the stick Im currently streaming from is picked up off the floor a continent away?

Get over it, I told myself. But then it happened again. And again.

Diary Entry, Day 3 My coworker picks me up as Im wheeling to the meeting because Im slow. I don’t want to be slow! I want to walk on my own! Im an adult! She lifts me up before I have a chance to object. In the air I meekly say, Just ask me first if youre going to lift me, which no one responds to because I assume they think that it’s a joke.

This became my secret shame. People wanted to help me, but every single time they did it, I felt infantilized. I needed to tell my coworkers not to pick me up—a conversation I dreaded. I did this by sending them a draft of my daily robot diary, in which they read about how I was feeling. (Classic passive aggressive move, you say? No doubt, but the few times I’d said the words aloud, they hadn’t clicked for people, so I thought the log was the best way.) It worked. Now no one touches my robot without permission. Case in point:

Diary Entry: Day 5 I cant get out of the all-glass conference room alone. I turn my screen to Joe and he says, Should I carry you?

Thats probably wise.

Ill just drop you off where its straight and then you can make your way from there. Joe is basically my robots father, and my robot is a toddler. When he picks me up Im jostled. He gently places me down at the straight hallway and I want very badly to navigate quickly back to my dock to prove Im self-sufficient, but the screen freezes twice and the motor is slow and it takes me forever.

Later, on the phone, another editor off-handedly said, You know, when Joe lifted you up and carried you—now I hope this doesnt make you uncomfortable—but from our end, with your face on the screen, it looked really inappropriate. Like he was cradling you in his arms. Because when we see the face, our brains cant help but project the rest of you, and so it was like you were actually being carried.

Looking at the future. #embot #newnewwiredoffice

A photo posted by @joemfbrown on May 7, 2015 at 11:00am PDT

So, even though I had given Joe permission to lift EmBot up, the fact that my face was still on the screen made other people uncomfortable. Fine. Another rule: If I ask for help and you pick me up, I’ll disconnect so the screen is dark. Voila. Everything was going to be fine.

EmBot Grows Up

After I put a stop to the inappropriate robot-touching, things quickly went from good to great. I’d call this the euphoria stage. I mastered the arrow keys (rather than holding them down and over correcting, just hit them quickly one at a time and roll like a BOSS). I figured out how to makethe robot stand taller so I wasnt constantly having conversations with peoples crotches. I booted up in the middle of spontaneous brainstorm sessions and shared ideas.

Diary Entry: Day 6

Major breakthrough! I have my first West-Wing-style walk and talk as Embot. I knew this day would come. After the morning meeting, Patrick walks with me down the hallway discussing a longread Im editing. Hes so cool about the robot thing that I briefly forget completely that its not normal to be a disembodied metal moving machine with an iPad for a face. He only says one thing that would be weird if I was walking down the hall as a fully-fleshed human, Youre about to run into wall, come this way.

At this point, I was also the star of cocktail parties in Boston. Everyone wanted to know how it was going with the robot. Are people still laughing at you? No. Isnt it weird that your robot is naked? No. Whats the worst thing thats happened with the robot so far? When I hit a dead-zone and EmBot died behind a strangers desk, with my face frozen on the screen, and I found out later that they thought I was lurking and spying on them. I mean, thats also one of the funnier things thats ever happened, but pretty terrible for that poor creeped-out human.

And just like that, I was a part of work in a way Id struggled to be since I first came on at WIRED. As a typical oldest child, tyrant and benefactor to two younger brothers, I pride myself on making sure everyone feels like were all in this together—whether “this” is divorce or publishing a magazine. Its hard to be that kind of leader when youre isolated from your team completely. When youre a voice coming out of speaker. EmBot changed that completely. Suddenly, there I was, materialized. My reporters and I started meeting face to face to discuss deadlines. Everything was so jovial and natural.

Christie Hemm Klok/WIRED

The other incredibly wonderful thing at this stage was that though Embot put me physically in the office, because she was just my head and not my body no one at work was seeing how pregnant I was looking. Now, of course, they know I am pregnant, but since I am not there, the visual reminder of my changed condition was not in their faces. I have worked at places before where women start getting treated differently when their bellies show. The kid gloves come on. I had been dreading how this could play out, but the way EmBot works I remained present and yet unchanged. No one remarked on my belly. It was not a factor in my work.

I became obsessed with EmBot. I couldt stop thinking about her when I turned her off at night. How sad that this thing that has made my life so much better was just dead when Im done working.

Diary Entry: Day 8

Its Friday. It occurs to me that EmBot doesnt get to enjoy the weekend. If only she had arms, she could push the button, summon the elevator, and be free. But shes a prisoner at work. Whereas my physical body is having adventures, growing a human life inside it and moving into a new apartment AND dog-sitting a Bernese Mountain dog.

Mostly my weekend will be about trying not poison my unborn child with paint fumes. My physical body is such a liability. Embot, though she is shackled to work and unable to exist without me to inhabit her, in some ways has the much simpler side of existence.

What if I have to share the Embot with someone? I tell myself that would be fine, but I know already that I would be feel upset. Embot is a part of me. Anyone else would be an intruder.

You can see from the daily diary entry that it was right about now that my connection with EmBot got a little weird. I couldnt let go of this notion that Embot was me and yet she lacked all freedom to exist outside the office. I started to feel that she was a caged animal. Which made me feel like a caged animal.

EmBot needed her freedom.

Get her a Mi-Fi, my friends suggested. Suddenly I imagined this vast conspiracy—finagling a coworker in SF to get me a company MiFi and surreptitiously hiding it under her screen. But then what? EmBot would rush out into the big bad streets of SOMA and try to find other robots to play with, meanwhile my poor comrade would be grilled by the Conde Nast HR department wanting to know “WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ROBOT? Who pushed the button to call the elevator, huh? The robot has no hands!”

That was clearly a terrible idea … and yet. I fantasized. I drove her past the elevator banks a few times to see if the Wi-Fi was strong enough for her to sneak out the door. I dont know what my plan was. EmBot was becoming a teenager. A teenager pushing her boundaries, pushing her luck.

First Pangs of Mortality

A photo posted by Patrick Witty (@patrickwitty) on May 7, 2015 at 12:09pm PDT

Within a few days, I started to realize perhaps EmBot wasn’t invincible after all. For one thing, I couldnt hear meetings very well. Sometimes I had to put my ear directly to the computer speaker to hear the people at the far end of the conference table, which meant that in the room EmBots face was just the folds of my (hopefully not-waxy) ear canal.

Double offers a $99 audio kit, which maybe would help this, but since we hadn’t yet decided if the robot was a wise investment, it was too early to shell out for add-ons.

Worse, though all EmBot needs to live is power and and Wi-Fi, signal strength was proving to be a big problem. Double Robotics acknowledges this is the leadingissue among corporate customers, because most businesses don’t prioritize a strong signal in hallways. This doesn’t matter for humans, but these dead zones can make navigating an office impossible for robots.

So even as I was obsessing about freeing EmBot from the cage of WIREDs office, she seemed less and less reliable. Even when the Wi-Fi was strong, the video would freeze for no reason. I missed crucial information in meetings, only to later learn that everyone thought I was listening because EmBot had frozen with my face on the screen, trapped in a ridiculous expression of curiosity.

And then, this happened:

Diary Entry: Day 12 I am feeling so alone. Embot is in a coma. She didnt charge overnight. “Haha,” I played it cool over IM to Davey, who sits next to Embot and checked on her vital signs for me. She shoved Embot into her dock. I assume shes charging now, but I cant tell.

Diary Entry: Day 13

She remains cut off of me. Its like Embot is in the kind of coma where she cant move or speak or alert the doctors that she is alive but inside her head, she is screaming, LET ME OUT! IM HERE! DONT TURN ME OFF!

Ive called her doctors, or parents, or gods, DoubleRobotics, but theres no answer. Theyll get back to me in one business day.

If she ever wakes up again, I promise to give her a better life. To give her some freedom.

Diary Entry, Day 14

Embot just had a seizure. I was so happy when she woke up that I decided this was my big chance to sneak her out and onto the elevator. I eased her out of the dock and turned to the right, but immediately something was wrong: her head was shaking. Just a little a bit at first but then side to side violently, thrashing around, my field of vision swinging wildly, too fast to make out peoples faces. I tried turning her and found that she was still responding to me somewhat but she could not be still. She was like diabetic Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolias, shaking out her beautiful wedding hair in Truveys salon.

I heard Chuck say, Oh no, youve woken EmBot like she was some kind of monster.

What is happening? Davey cried from her desk.

EmBot is having a seizure! I screamed into the computer. I dont know what to do!

As Embots camera panned quickly in front of Davey I saw her get up.

Can you put her in her dock? I asked, breathless.

She wont stop moving. She just keeps shaking.

I turned her off on my end, but Davey reported that she was still seizing on her own, face blank. She was like the body of a chicken, walking bloody around the yard after the chef cuts its head off. I implored Davey to find a button to turn her off. She did. She docked her. Shes docked now.

My heart wont stop beating. Maybe EmBot is corrupted and corroded and my time with her is over. Maybe EmBot is a monster. I feel like I just a had a seizure.

@EmilyDreyfuss FYI, Embots going crazy. Wandered out of its dock, now manically rolling back and forth.

Alex Davies (@adavies47) May 19, 2015

Were working on a fix. A coworker in San Francisco is logging into her, which normally would upset me, but Im so nervous I don’t care that another being enters her.

Im on the phone with Double Robotics, relaying what he finds.

He reports: On the screen it was shimmying back and forth, and I looked across the room and it looked like a wandering confused and dizzy child aimless and afraid. and alone. I left my screen and went over to see if I could help. I picked it up and smelled the wheels to see if it was on fire or anything then hurried back to my screen to put it in PARK. I may cover it in a sheet.

The Reckoning

Teaching my robot the hard lesson that she is not free http://pic.twitter.com/wen8MONbBm

— emily dreyfuss (@EmilyDreyfuss) May 21, 2015

After EmBot terrorized the office, nothing was the same. I relinquished my delusions of granduer. Double Robotics sent a new unit, and immediately upon activating it I knew it was not really EmBot. It rolls differently. Its speakers are quieter. It doesn’t connect to the Wi-Fi as well. It teeters differently on the carpet-edge. It’s not me. It’s just a robot. A robot I can’t trust.

I still use it, of course. Sure, It’s incredibly glitchy. Most weeks I have to write in our group chatroom, “SOS: EmBot is stranded somewhere between the dock and the IT department. Can someone rescue it?” It went through a phase where I couldn’t hear anything being said in meetings. Then for four days it was paralyzed, so needed to be picked up and carried everywhere. Now it does this thing where it clicks and hisses when the Wi-Fi connection struggles, setting an off-tempo jazz rhythm to every meeting.

It’s fine. I still prefer it to the speakerphone. It brings everyone in the office joy, even when it struggles. I get laughed at a lot from the iPad camera, but I like it. In a lot of ways, EmBot is a joke we are all in on together. Could we just set up an iPad in the conference room with FaceTime or Skype and achieve essentially the same thing? Sure. But where would be the fun in that, people? Where would be the soul-searching? Human life is short, and being a part-time, part-useful robot makes it ever so slightly more interesting.

Diary: Who Knows What Day, I’ve Lost Count

Joe carried EmBot to the head of the conference table for the edit meeting, because her Bluetooth connection isn’t working properly so I can’t control it. Sam asked, somewhere off-screen where I couldn’t see her, “Em, did you get new glasses?”

“No,” I spoke to the rest of the room, “my jerk cat knocked my glasses off the bedside table and I’m far too pregnant to crouch down low enough to get them, so I dug these out of a closet.”

“And that story,” someone from behind the robot said, “is the best argument in favor of having a robot. We would not have gotten to hear that if you were on the speakerphone.”

So, yes, as it turned out, most of the fears I had about becoming a part-time robot came true—it’s an unruly distraction that often makes me look ridiculous, that falls over and can’t be counted on—and yet my coworkers didn’t lose all respect for me. No, what happened was much more subtle and unexpected than that: EmBot lost her humanity. But I gained mine back.

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from My Life as a Robot