미쳤습니까, 휴먼?

Origin

‘Have you lost your mind, human?’ is the caption attached to an image of an AI robot looking down at a person as if scolding them. The picture was not made as a meme: it is a near-future science-fiction stock image by the artist known as Blutgruppe, produced to be licensed as illustration for articles about AI and robotics. The robot in it resembles the NS-5 from the film I, Robot.

The context in which it entered Korean internet use is the ‘big data joke’. The conceit is that an artificial intelligence has analysed people’s interests and generated the most clickable headline possible; you click, and what you get is the robot image and the line ‘have you lost your mind, human?’ Since the format implies the machine has read your tastes correctly, being caught out is itself the joke.

Spread

Variants appeared quickly: the robot blacked out as though corrupted, or dressed as a police officer delivering a reprimand, along with versions changing only the verb — ‘are you satisfied now, human?’, ‘very good, human’.

Its range widened too. It began as something close to bait-post furniture; now it is used generally to reproach someone, with no bait involved. Calling the other party ‘human’ places the speaker outside humanity, which adds a note of looking down on the species as a whole rather than simply telling one person off. That reading now predominates.

Usage

• Reproaching someone for doing something absurd
• Self-deprecation about one’s own choices
• Variants swapping the verb into the same frame

The distance created by the word ‘human’ is the point, so it reads less as anger than as stepping back in disbelief.

Sources

• Namuwiki, ‘Big data joke’ — the artist Blutgruppe and the stock-image origin; the resemblance to I, Robot’s NS-5; the blacked-out and police variants; the broadening of the meaning towards contempt for humanity in general