The Digital Human

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Factual: Science & Nature: Science & Technology

Aleks Krotoski explores the digital world

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The Digital Human: Series 30: Cursed

Cursed

Series 30

BBC Radio 4 - The Digital Human, Series 30, Cursed

Aleks Krotoski traces the origin of an iconic internet curse - Smile Dog.

After getting an unexpected email attachment, Aleks Krotoski traces the origin of an iconic internet curse - Smile Dog.

Emails from friends should be safe. From a trusted friend especially. Hey, Aleks, check out this cool attachment. The message is a bit brief, sure, but you check that it isn’t a phishing account masquerading as a friend, it doesn’t seem like a hack. And the image, Smile.JPG, sounds like it might be something silly but cute. So ok, you open it up.

And you see… dog… smiling. A smiling dog, with human teeth.

Now the dog haunts your dreams, with it’s terrible human but inhuman smile, promising to leave you be if only you’d ‘spread the word’.

For this Halloween Aleks traces the origin of curses in the online world, discovering what Smile Dog reveals about our subconscious fears, our own culpability in sharing anything and everything online, and how the evolution, and disintegration, of this iconic curse sheds light onto something deeper - the rot of the internet itself, and the possibility that we may all now exist within a cursed internet.

The Digital Human: Series 30

BBC Radio 4

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The Digital Human

Series 30

Cursed

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