As we descend into the 10th Circle of Slop (my take on Dante’s 9 Circles of Hell) I keep getting sent back to myself…quite literally.
I’ve been researching some old pilot shows, checking to see if I’d missed any information before I committed to keyboard, and one link sent me to Lost Media Wiki (here) which turned out to be details for The Jimmy Carr Chat Show pilot, from 2018 (Carr-Tell post here).
The image used was from my post…and The Carr-Tell is cited as numbers 5.0 / 5.1.
Full disclosure (before you think “hypocrisy”) the Carr-Tell story has citation links to the British Comedy Guide and Chortle stories (I like to back up all of my posts with provable facts) – but I’ve got screenshots from the original CPL casting call shout-outs and other background info. I just didn’t think that my other, locally stored, content added much to the story, which was pretty light on details anyway. Plus, that same image was repeated on everything. In a way I suppose you could say that The Carr-Tell is researching and regurgitating information the old-fashioned way (with more sense checks).
And then we go to a 2021 pilot, Value For Funny (Carr-Tell post here). Lost Media Wiki (again) here has cited The Carr-Tell and has an image that I had in my PC, but didn’t use (taken from another website – there is a “fair use” copyright policy that I try to follow). Bizarrely mentions someone called Jenny Carr.
Next up is Judge Jimmy (Carr-Tell post here). As an experiment I’ve added a new image to see if it gets picked up anywhere. Lost Media Wiki cited The Carr-Tell again (original post here).
Then What Are You Looking At? (my post here). Another Lost Media Wiki article (here). I hadn’t posted an image for that one so the LLM used the picture from Wikipedia.
What we then ended up with is an article about a 2007 pilot that has a photo on it from Jimmy’s 2024 appearance on Neal Brennan’s Blocks (here). Which doesn’t make any sense.
Colour of Funny 1999 (Carr-Tell post here). Lost Media Wiki (here) again and the image used is some text from an Aberdeen newspaper. Not sure where that was “nicked” from but sites like the British Newspaper Archives let you download images of old papers – but under copyright control. Which is why I sometimes type some text out, in posts, but don’t add screen shots.
AITA pilot (Carr-Tell post here). Here the Lost Media Wiki is slightly off as it’s got the wrong image for the pilot. As mentioned in my post – the pilot was made with Rob Beckett, but the picture used (by LMW) features Jimmy. It also says there is a logo for Rob’s pilot – but uses a citation for BCG, which doesn’t actually have a logo on that page (I’ve never seen a logo anywhere).
One problem with this scraping of information is that when you know what it SHOULD say, you can always find something slightly off. Example Chris Tarrant: A Comedy Roast (LMW – here) doesn’t really belong on this Wiki (it’s not lost) and the other 4 shows, from that series are not mentioned at all. The Tarrant entry says “There does survive some scant details online of some jokes and skits…” but then ends the piece by saying where copies of the videos can be found. See Carr-Tell post here.
Distraction is also full of errors. The article is headlined as a C4 shows that ran from 2005-2006 (Lost Media Wiki here) but those 2005-6 shows were made for Comedy Central US and C4 was 2003-4 (see Carr-Tell posts here). Once again though, this is not LOST as they are just about all available on Archive.org (ironically, it’s the C4 series that have some episodes missing).
The point I’m illustrating is that this is becoming more frequent, as the LLMs hoover up my articles (and everyone else’s) and then regurgitate them in a new, slightly mangled, format.
Sure, The Carr-Tell is credited. But some of these sites can spit out content by the hour – as witnessed by all of these posts / citations mentioned above being from July 17th and 18th 2026. What took me hours and HOURS probably took minutes to generate.
And these site (potentially) get themselves further up the search engine listing because some of them also generate automated social media posts to drum up viewing figures. Not that many people click through to websites lately…much easier to just read the Google AI overview (which can add in its own level of nonsense).
And so we descend…
Relative Bios
Or Bios of relatives…
Back in May I wrote about Word salad AI stories (here) where these AI / LLM posts have moved on to Jimmy’s mother and brothers for stories.
This week I noticed that Jimmy’s older brother, Colin, has now been targeted repeatedly.
What follows is a story of slop chucked into a blender!
Back in May Magazine Celebs (here) had an article that, apart from a nice pic of Colin and Jimmy, pulls in some family background info from Jimmy’s Bio…filling out Colin’s background on the assumption of “they grew up in the same house so the details must match”.
A lot of the info comes from The Carr-Tell (and there is a credit) but this was just the start of Colin Carr’s new found (unsought) recent fame…
On to September 6th and Global Nova (here) virtually repeat the information, with the same approach of “lots of words to say burger all”.
This time they credit Jimmy’s official website, instead of The Carr-Tell, which is a bit of a fib as his website has nothing at all about his family on it. But we do get another new picture of the brothers (no idea where they are getting them from).
Then we get to Today USA on the 8th September (here) with another new picture. This one is naughtier still as it gives zero citation credits.
This latest one means that each iteration of this regurgitated slop has drifted slightly further away from the source material.
You can summarise the 3 of them (6,500+ words between them) as the below (to save you reading them):
- Colin is Jimmy’s brother (followed by regurgitation of info about Jimmy’s family background, just applying it to Colin)
- What is his DOB – don’t know, older than Jimmy
- Where does he work – don’t know, but he was described as a city banker years ago
- Where does he live – don’t know
- Does he have children – don’t know
- How much is he worth – don’t know
- Investment portfolio – no idea
- Property portfolio – no idea
- Is he a comedian – no
Finishing off with the epic “No sh*t, Sherlock” paragraph:
Beyond those points, Colin has remained largely private. Rather than fill those gaps with assumptions, an accurate profile should distinguish verified information from internet speculation. His story is ultimately that of a private professional whose family connection places him alongside one of Britain’s best-known comedians.
Global Nova even have a cheeky paragraph titled “Why “Jimmy Carr’s brother” is more accurate than most online bios”.
In one way – that may be right as the bar has been set SOOOOOOOOOOO low.
Finally…
All of which means that you REALLY have to be careful about trusting sources that were not of human origin. These posts are “only” about comedy – imagine how much more serious this is when people are relying on LLMs for advice on life, finance…health.
What is the most depressing aspect of this whole process (stealing the work of all of humanity) is that the AI companies have been buying up millions of old books (that were printed before 2022) as sources of “clean” data. Clean as in they KNOW how bad this output is.
They rip the spines off, scan the books and then pulp them (story here) even though there are machines available that can do it without damaging the book. Anthropic called their project Panama.
Considering all that I’ve mentioned above – you have to consider that, if we lose all physical books, then we have to trust these corporations to provide digital copies that have not been altered in any way. To Kill a Mockingbird, for example, was removed from certain schools and libraries because the language was considered problematic. How tempting would it be for someone in the future to just “tweak” the digital version?
Seeing all of these errors, every day, makes me trust online sources less and less. But lots of people don’t realise how bad things are (and how much worse they can get).
The one small light at the end of the tunnel is the number of comments I’m seeing that indicate people moving back to physical media (and refusing to sell old books).
As more and more companies try to move everyone on to subscription models the sale of CDs, DVDs and video games on CD are steadily rising.
Resist the machines!
And trust The Carr-Tell as your main Jimmy-news-source (a 100% human endeavour!!).
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