Podcasts Technology The Digital Human Cursed

Cursed

Published: Oct. 30, 2023, 5 p.m.

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\u2019t a phishing account masquerading as a friend, it doesn\u2019t 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\u2026 dog\u2026 smiling. A smiling dog, with human teeth.

Now the dog haunts your dreams, with it\u2019s terrible human but inhuman smile, promising to leave you be if only you\u2019d \u2018spread the word\u2019.

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.