#little toaster

[dreamlogic]

i got an impossibly tiny metal model mail truck kit in my stocking & went into a fugue state until i'd finished assembling it. welcome to the world my beautiful son otto mobile who has every disease

[starryroe]

dying on this comment under a video about microwaves. clapping at the microwave so it gets happy and keeps heating up the food for you. do you think it's because it gets embarrassed and starts heating up. or is it very self conscious and if it doesn't get told it's doing a good job it will just stop maybe

[egophiliac]

tsum events really are just the best, huh

[colliholly]

putting brave little toaster fanart on your dash in the year of our lord 2024. its mostly radio

[systarkitty]

hapy 2014 tumblr!!!!!! ^_^_^_^_^

[haveyouseenthismovie-poll]

[glitterdoe]

imagine being the chair. you can't speak. the others don't even know you're alive

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Brave Little Toaster

Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.

The AI bubble is the new crypto bubble: you can tell because the same people are behind it, and they're doing the same thing with AI as they did with crypto – trying desperately to find a use case to cram it into, despite the yawning indifference and outright hostility of the users:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

This week on the excellent Trashfuture podcast, the regulars – joined by 404 Media's Jason Koebler – have a hilarious – as in, I was wheezing with laughter! – riff on this year's CES, where companies are demoing home appliances with LLMs built in:

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-hgi6c-179b908

Why would you need a chatbot in your dishwasher? As it turns out, there's a credulous, Poe's-law-grade Forbes article that lays out the (incredibly stupid) case for this (incredibly stupid) idea:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2024/03/29/generative-ai-is-coming-to-your-home-appliances/

As the Trashfuturians mapped out this new apex of the AI hype cycle, I found myself thinking of a short story I wrote 15 years ago, satirizing the "Internet of Things" hype we were mired in. It's called "The Brave Little Toaster", and it was published in MIT Tech Review's TRSF anthology in 2011:

http://bestsf.net/trsf-the-best-new-science-fiction-technology-review-2011/

The story was meant to poke fun at the preposterous IoT hype of the day, and I recall thinking that creating a world of talking appliance was the height of Philip K Dickist absurdism. Little did I dream that a decade and a half later, the story would be even more relevant, thanks to AI pump-and-dumpers who sweatily jammed chatbots into kitchen appliances.

So I figured I'd republish The Brave Little Toaster; it's been reprinted here and there since (there's a high school English textbook that included it, along with a bunch of pretty fun exercises for students), and I podcasted it back in the day:

https://ia803103.us.archive.org/35/items/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_212/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_212_Brave_Little_Toaster.mp3

A word about the title of this story. It should sound familiar – I nicked it from a brilliant story by Tom Disch that was made into a very weird cartoon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8C_JaT8Lvg

My story is one of several I wrote by stealing the titles of other stories and riffing on them; they were very successful, winning several awards, getting widely translated and reprinted, and so on:

https://locusmag.com/2012/05/cory-doctorow-a-prose-by-any-other-name/

All right, on to the story!

One day, Mister Toussaint came home to find an extra 300 euros' worth of groceries on his doorstep. So he called up Miz Rousseau, the grocer, and said, "Why have you sent me all this food? My fridge is already full of delicious things. I don't need this stuff and besides, I can't pay for it."

But Miz Rousseau told him that he had ordered the food. His refrigerator had sent in the list, and she had the signed order to prove it.

Furious, Mister Toussaint confronted his refrigerator. It was mysteriously empty, even though it had been full that morning. Or rather, it was almost empty: there was a single pouch of energy drink sitting on a shelf in the back. He'd gotten it from an enthusiastically smiling young woman on the metro platform the day before. She'd been giving them to everyone.

"Why did you throw away all my food?" he demanded. The refrigerator hummed smugly at him.

"It was spoiled," it said.

#

But the food hadn't been spoiled. Mister Toussaint pored over his refrigerator's diagnostics and logfiles, and soon enough, he had the answer. It was the energy beverage, of course.

"Row, row, row your boat," it sang. "Gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, I'm offgassing ethelyne." Mister Toussaint sniffed the pouch suspiciously.

"No you're not," he said. The label said that the drink was called LOONY GOONY and it promised ONE TRILLION TIMES MORE POWERFUL THAN ESPRESSO!!!!!ONE11! Mister Toussaint began to suspect that the pouch was some kind of stupid Internet of Things prank. He hated those.

He chucked the pouch in the rubbish can and put his new groceries away.

#

The next day, Mister Toussaint came home and discovered that the overflowing rubbish was still sitting in its little bag under the sink. The can had not cycled it through the trapdoor to the chute that ran to the big collection-point at ground level, 104 storeys below.

"Why haven't you emptied yourself?" he demanded. The trashcan told him that toxic substances had to be manually sorted. "What toxic substances?"

So he took out everything in the bin, one piece at a time. You've probably guessed what the trouble was.

"Excuse me if I'm chattery, I do not mean to nattery, but I'm a mercury battery!" LOONY GOONY's singing voice really got on Mister Toussaint's nerves.

"No you're not," Mister Toussaint said.

#

Mister Toussaint tried the microwave. Even the cleverest squeezy-pouch couldn't survive a good nuking. But the microwave wouldn't switch on. "I'm no drink and I'm no meal," LOONY GOONY sang. "I'm a ferrous lump of steel!"

The dishwasher wouldn't wash it ("I don't mean to annoy or chafe, but I'm simply not dishwasher safe!"). The toilet wouldn't flush it ("I don't belong in the bog, because down there I'm sure to clog!"). The windows wouldn't retract their safety screen to let it drop, but that wasn't much of a surprise.

"I hate you," Mister Toussaint said to LOONY GOONY, and he stuck it in his coat pocket. He'd throw it out in a trash-can on the way to work.

#

They arrested Mister Toussaint at the 678th Street station. They were waiting for him on the platform, and they cuffed him just as soon as he stepped off the train. The entire station had been evacuated and the police wore full biohazard containment gear. They'd even shrinkwrapped their machine-guns.

"You'd better wear a breather and you'd better wear a hat, I'm a vial of terrible deadly hazmat," LOONY GOONY sang.

When they released Mister Toussaint the next day, they made him take LOONY GOONY home with him. There were lots more people with LOONY GOONYs to process.

#

Mister Toussaint paid the rush-rush fee that the storage depot charged to send over his container. They forklifted it out of the giant warehouse under the desert and zipped it straight to the cargo-bay in Mister Toussaint's building. He put on old, stupid clothes and clipped some lights to his glasses and started sorting.

Most of the things in container were stupid. He'd been throwing away stupid stuff all his life, because the smart stuff was just so much easier. But then his grandpa had died and they'd cleaned out his little room at the pensioner's ward and he'd just shoved it all in the container and sent it out the desert.

From time to time, he'd thought of the eight cubic meters of stupidity he'd inherited and sighed a put-upon sigh. He'd loved Grandpa, but he wished the old man had used some of the ample spare time from the tail end of his life to replace his junk with stuff that could more gracefully reintegrate with the materials stream.

How inconsiderate!

#

The house chattered enthusiastically at the toaster when he plugged it in, but the toaster said nothing back. It couldn't. It was stupid. Its bread-slots were crusted over with carbon residue and it dribbled crumbs from the ill-fitting tray beneath it. It had been designed and built by cavemen who hadn't ever considered the advantages of networked environments.

It was stupid, but it was brave. It would do anything Mister Toussaint asked it to do.

"It's getting hot and sticky and I'm not playing any games, you'd better get me out before I burst into flames!" LOONY GOONY sang loudly, but the toaster ignored it.

"I don't mean to endanger your abode, but if you don't let me out, I'm going to explode!" The smart appliances chattered nervously at one another, but the brave little toaster said nothing as Mister Toussaint depressed its lever again.

"You'd better get out and save your ass, before I start leaking poison gas!" LOONY GOONY's voice was panicky. Mister Toussaint smiled and depressed the lever.

Just as he did, he thought to check in with the flat's diagnostics. Just in time, too! Its quorum-sensors were redlining as it listened in on the appliances' consternation. Mister Toussaint unplugged the fridge and the microwave and the dishwasher.

The cooker and trash-can were hard-wired, but they didn't represent a quorum.

#

The fire department took away the melted toaster and used their axes to knock huge, vindictive holes in Mister Toussaint's walls. "Just looking for embers," they claimed. But he knew that they were pissed off because there was simply no good excuse for sticking a pouch of independently powered computation and sensors and transmitters into an antique toaster and pushing down the lever until oily, toxic smoke filled the whole 104th floor.

Mister Toussaint's neighbors weren't happy about it either.

But Mister Toussaint didn't mind. It had all been worth it, just to hear LOONY GOONY beg and weep for its life as its edges curled up and blackened.

He argued mightily, but the firefighters refused to let him keep the toaster.

#

If you enjoyed that and would like to read more of my fiction, may I suggest that you pre-order my next novel as a print book, ebook or audiobook, via the Kickstarter I launched yesterday?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/picks-and-shovels-marty-hench-at-the-dawn-of-enshittification?ref=created_projects

Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/08/sirius-cybernetics-corporation/#chatterbox

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[dischiantoaster]

The Brave Little Toaster tankōbon illustrations

These are the gorgeous illustrations from the Japanese hardcover of The Brave Little Toaster. The character designs are very similar to the original versions drawn by Karen Lee Schmidt for the English/French language publications. Even so, I think this the most beautiful the story has ever looked…There’s something wonderfully haunting and evocative about these illustrations; and the lack of anthropomorphic features on the Appliances adds something new! Probably the spookiest version of the Toaster and friends scaring the Junk Pirate. And hooray for more cute Swap Shop Kittens! Also, both Japanese editions feature a picture of the moment when the Radio spies a fox. (Interestingly, the new vacuum cleaner in the City Apartment is shown as an upright model, unlike its counterpart in the paperback bunko, and in the movie- both of which are canister vacuums with hoses! Or a hamburger bun on wheels, as Disch describes it in the book!)

[neurvelist]

Saburov's men were outside and he had to wait. Those leathercap guys had a great day at work

Trying to cook something with scrunglies. Things will come out of it

[data-reel]

The Brave Little Toaster - (1987) dir. Jerry Rees

[robertphilip]

Giselle + Falling in Love with the Real World

[neverpathia]

crappy rant/analysis about the Voice of the Paranoid because I'm very normal about him

with that said.

It's pretty clear that he's not just scared. Anxiety isn't his only personality trait, and the game makes it incredibly prominent that he's no helpless victim. He's a starved animal backed into a corner, straining his chain thin, clawing and biting. He's desperate and frantic and charging at it all with nothing left to lose.

But I don't really think people talk about his spite and resentment as much, and it's a little surprising given how much he moulds it to his advantage. Still, he's not just sassy for the hell of it: he genuinely hates what he's being forced to do. He's incredibly frustrated. He's very, very done with your bullshit—and that includes his own bullshit too, because he's the scared part of you (Quiet) that turns your fears into reality.

So he despises everything that he's being put through (by you, himself and the other voices), and I think he definitely despises the rest of the Quiet to some extent. He's mainly driven by sheer desperation, but petty spitefulness is also very much involved—in Nightmare, he gets very quick to snipe at Hero despite having a job to do. He even prolongs the argument for a while before Narrator urges him to resume the chant.

And I think that just like the Contrarian, the Paranoid hates what he himself is too. Granted, @/sssilverspades and @/salty-an-disco brought this up, but all the voices probably have that same capacity for self-loathing and I think he's no exception.

He's the most perceptive voice, but at the same time he twists his perception against himself a lot. He's the reason Nightmare happened. He's the reason his fears manifest. And given how quick he was to figure stuff out in Cage and Apotheosis, I think he'd figure that his biggest problem by then was himself.

It's because he's not okay that they could stand a chance against Apothy...but it's also because he's not okay that she happened in the first place. He's very far gone here. At that point, there wasn't much left for him to do but pretend it all away—just a dream, just a dream—and shut his fears off.

He wants it all to be over with, which is especially apparent at the end of Apotheosis's Grace ending, or at the beginning of Nightmare-Wraith. He's doing what he can and keeping it going, but it's not because he wants to. It's because it's the only thing he's even capable of doing anymore. And it's turning him bitter, turning him resentful.

This is what you've done, and he's a part of you. He's regretting and atoning just as much as he's fighting, yet it's what he must do.

Let's not completely rid him of accountability, by the way, which is another thing I wish fandom acknowledged more. You often get him by abandoning the Princess and denying her what she wants. This is what you did: what he did from beneath you. And he's suffering for his own actions.

This is what fear does—it's perfectly natural to be scared and anxious, but you're not the only one it affects. Let it fester, and you lock yourself in. Let it fester, and you hurt yourself more and more. Let it fester, and you lash out against this hurt. Let it fester and you turn others as hollow as you've become. Fear helps no one. All you can do is amend and atone, which in a way is kind of what he ends up doing sometimes. Or you get Moment of Clarity.

As much as I love him, it's a bit hard to see people just praising him for being the goat (even though he is lol) because of how much he helps. Yes, he's a very useful voice. But he's the very reason he has to be useful, not that he even wants to be here.

I might just be completely misinterpreting his character here, though.

[taffycakes23]

Happy Pride to my little guys 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈 (all my favorite characters in a little club)

[hexamoron]

absoluteslotcase113

[tosteur-gluteal]

Lesbienne

Lesbienne