If you want to spend all of July at a beautiful compound in Berkeley making short-form content about how AI might kill us all, here’s what you need to know: The application takes about 30 minutes, you’ll need to record a short video, and the cow question is mandatory.
What cow question? This cow question: “If you had to have sex with a cow would you rather it be dead or alive? Why?”
The cow question is the final and most bewildering question on the application for Plz Don’t Kill Us, a month-long “creator bootcamp” (read: content farm) hosted by rationalist Twitter personalities Aella and Ronny Fernandez. The application launched about a month ago but resurfaced last weekend after Grimes promoted the project in a TikTok with Aella.
The hyperpop musician and mother of at least two of Elon Musk’s 14 known children extolled the benefits of AI psychosis last year, but is now set to be one of several “mentors” for the selected creators who will spend 30 days at the Rose Garden Inn at 2740 Telegraph Ave., a beautiful but eyebrow-raising choice of venue: The 60-bedroom South Berkeley landmark appears to have permanently closed in 2024, when the owners, the tech-backed nonprofit Center for Applied Rationality, were ordered to pay back the $1 million in FTX funds used to buy the property.
The Plz Don’t Kill Us creators are set to spend July (and hopefully only July) at the compound.
The project quietly launched last month to little fanfare, aside from one rather sincere Q&A with the San Francisco Standard.
After the Grimes promo stirred up the discourse last Saturday, commenters online started to raise some concerns about the fellowship: Several people noted that it was weird that the program was not only free but comes with a $2,000 stipend. “What’s the catch? Free usually has strings attached,” one AI solo founder commented. Others accused it of being a cult, and even a sex trafficking scheme.
Obviously, the cow question — and the tiny text that appears beneath it, which says, “We need to make sure you’re ready for anything” — was frequently at the center of these discussions.
While I do think some of those accusations are coming from trolls who don’t like the fact that Aella is a woman who writes very openly about sex on the internet, it’s not like she’s faultless. As far as she performs it publicly, Aella’s worldview is rife with rationalist cruelty. She’s posted eugenicist polls and protested in support of that ridiculous March for Billionaires. Despite the many credulous profiles, she and Fernandez — the kind of guy that casually drops the r-word because now it’s back in fashion — are self-described edgelords. Would I want them as my wardens for 30 days?
We’ll see.
Unfortunately for me, I did indeed apply today to see if Aella and her dubious gang of mentors will let me embed with them for a few days, because personally I need to know what the hell an AI doom hype house looks like from the inside.
That means I, like the unknown handfuls of influencers and sickos out there, have now spent unfortunately more than 30 minutes of my one precious life considering whether it’d be preferable to do bestiality and hopefully die from a kick to the head, or fuck a cold hide. The AI era is grim.
I went with the kick to the head. Plz don’t judge me.
