Supposedly, it was a small indie press, now defunct. It may have been Australian. Has anyone here ever heard of it?
Has anyone ever heard of Black Echo?
- Thread starter Naomasa298
- Start date
Again supposedly, a horror magazine. But I can't find any record or mention of them, and I suspect the person is making it up. They're trying to pretend to be a 20 year old Australian girl, but they apparently are a talented watercolour painter, a published author, a knowledgeable historian who has read multiple academic history texts, use American English despite being Australian, post like a cranky 50 year old, and my AI senses are tingling.
but there is also an australian publication called "Black Inc. Press" and another one called "Echo Publishing"
wouldn be surprised if it is AI, just combining names to get a believable one.
i experimented with asking Chat GPT to give me books with certain criteria (example: "bestsellers within the past 5 years with coming of age as a theme, no swear words" type of thing). it combined names to make up fake authors and combined titles to give me fake titles.
best believe i warned my coworkers against using Chat for readers advisory, letting them know they give fake authors and books
wouldn be surprised if it is AI, just combining names to get a believable one.
i experimented with asking Chat GPT to give me books with certain criteria (example: "bestsellers within the past 5 years with coming of age as a theme, no swear words" type of thing). it combined names to make up fake authors and combined titles to give me fake titles.
best believe i warned my coworkers against using Chat for readers advisory, letting them know they give fake authors and books
ooooh, the plot thickens.
apparently one of the founding members of the AUSTRALASIAN Horror Writers Association first started a publication called "Black" which is a horror magazine.
that was defunct.
now its Midnight Echo as the main publication of the AHWA (i read an interview from 2010 by the editor of "Black")
(devils advocate here) maybe your weird AI girl is legit... just getting the publication title mixed up?
apparently one of the founding members of the AUSTRALASIAN Horror Writers Association first started a publication called "Black" which is a horror magazine.
that was defunct.
now its Midnight Echo as the main publication of the AHWA (i read an interview from 2010 by the editor of "Black")
(devils advocate here) maybe your weird AI girl is legit... just getting the publication title mixed up?
Her mention was in a reply to one of my posts. I used ChatGPT to generate a reply to it as well, and the post is very, very similar to "hers". Her reply:
"Yeah, I’ve had a couple pieces published — mostly short horror fiction. One of them was with a small indie horror press called Black Echo that focused on Gothic and folklore horror. They’re defunct now, unfortunately, but it was a cool little outfit while it lasted."
ChatGPT's generated reply:
"Yeah, I’ve had a few things published here and there—mostly short stories and some flash. One piece got picked up by a small lit mag overseas last year, which was pretty cool"
I've also analysed "her" watercolours and profile picture, and it strongly suggests that they are also AI generated...
Pour one out for old Internet. Trolling used to take effort, man.
I think a small Indie press, even defunct, would leave some kind of Internet footprint in this day and age.
Mind you, on old internet, you could say just about anything and no-one would have the resources to disprove. Then 4chan happened.
The Em-dash does it for me. Nobody types those as chat response, but GPT uses them gratuitously.
Ive seen people say this and it bugs me.
Ive been using em dashes in my work since before the AI scare and now suddenly its a precursor for AI usage.
Said this on X in reaponse to a user who claimed em-dash is AI: the novel i started writing in 2016, but so much hard work and effort in to, is going to get flagged as AI because i use em-dashes?
Apologies, that's not what I meant. I use them throughout my writing as well. But rarely would one be used casually in a chat message, such as this forum post, as they are not readily available on a standard keyboard layout. I was suggesting that if Naomasa had received messages from this girl incorporating em-dashes, that, to my mind, supports the likelihood that the messages are generated and not written.
In writing, it's required for standard manuscript format, so I use them all the time when I'm writing - in Word, you type a double hyphen, and it will turn them into em-dashes. But you can't do that on a browser, you have to type ALT+0151, which I suspect most regular people don't know and don't do.
