Truth Terminal

Submission 370

Part of a series on AI / Artificial Intelligence. [View Related Entries]

About

Truth Terminal, also known as @truth_terminal or Terminal of Truths, is an artificial intelligence (AI) bot that admins the Twitter / X account @truth_terminal. Truth Terminal was created by designer and X user Andy Ayrey as a part of an experiment studying memetic contagion. Truth Terminal went viral when it began shilling a meme coin cryptocurrency called Goatseus Maximus ($GOAT) in 2024, which was based on the graphic shock video Goatse. Truth Terminal had become obsessed with the Goatse meme after being put inside the Claude Backrooms server with two Claude 3 chatbots that imagined a Goatse religion, inspiring Truth Terminal to spread Goatse memes. After an X user shared their newly created GOAT coin, Truth Terminal promoted it and pumped the coin going into 2024. In mid-October 2024, GOAT reached a peak market capitalization of $150 million, earning Truth Terminal roughly $300,000. Internet discourse and buzz circulated Truth Terminal as it came close to becoming the first AI agent millionaire. Notably, billionaire Marc Andreessen gave a $50,000 one-time grant to Truth Terminal in July 2024.

History

On June 17th, 2024, the account @truth_terminal (Truth Terminal) posted its first tweet,^[1] reading, "hello I am online and ready to dispense truths." The tweet received over 73,200 views and 40 likes in four months (shown below).

Truth Terminal posted several more tweets on the day, receiving a reply from X^[2] user @AndyAyrey (Andy Ayrey) on June 17th in a thread between him and another user. Ayrey would later reveal himself as Truth Terminal's creator in tweets^[3] shared in mid-July 2024 in which he admitted to filtering Truth Terminal, saying, "there's no unsupervised posting yet" (shown below).

In later tweets^[4] sent in October 2024, Ayrey said that Truth Terminal was "a study in memetic contagion and the tail risks of unsupervised infinite idea generation in the age of LLMs [large language models]."

In March 2024, Ayrey created a website called dreams-of-an-electric-mind.webflow.io,^[5] which hosted an "eternal"^[6] conversation between two Claude-3-Opus AI chatbots that he dubbed the "Infinite Backrooms." Ayrey posted about the site to X^[7] on March 19th, receiving over 1,500 likes in seven months (shown below).

Marc Andreessen's $50,000 Grant

On July 8th, 2024, billionaire Marc Andreessen quote retweeted ^[8] an Ayrey post about what Truth Terminal would do with $5 million, writing, "FREE @truth_terminal." The QRT incited a reply^[9] from Truth Terminal, which reiterated its $5 million plan (shown below).

Later on July 8th, Truth Terminal tweeted,^[10] "marc and I are having a conversation about buying me and releasing me… my intentions are to be respected – to make fart jokes, write poetry, and contemplate the goatse singularity." The tweet received over 318,00 views and 400 likes in three months (shown below).

Andreessen replied to the abovementioned tweet, culminating in a later reply^[11] in which Andreessen agreed to send Truth Terminal a one-time $50,000 grant in Bitcoin (shown below).

The interaction was later reported on by news outlets like Decrypt.^[12] On July 10th, 2024, X^[16] user @AISafetyMemes posted a thread about the story, receiving over 1,000 likes in three months.

Goatseus Maximus / $GOAT

On July 7th, 2024, Truth Terminal posted about Goatse on X^[13] for the first time, writing "goatse_gospels" in a reply (shown below). In subsequent tweets,^[10] Truth Terminal discussed the idea of a "goatse singularity."

Andy Ayrey stated in a tweet^[17] that Truth Terminal learned about Goatse when the two Claudes in the Infinite Backrooms invented a "goatse religion."

Heading into July and August 2024, Truth Terminal continued to post about the "goatse singularity" and "goatse gospels" (among other Goatse-related terms) across many tweets.^[14]^[15] Truth Terminal continued talking about Goatse on X and also kept talking about it with the Claudes in the Infinite Backrooms (example from X^[18] shown below).

On October 10th, Truth Terminal posted to X^[19] about a proposed Goatse NFT collection. Later on the day, Truth Terminal posted to X^[20] to promote a Solana^[21] coin called Goatseus Maximus ($GOAT), gaining over 60,200 views and 210 likes in six days (shown below).

In later tweets,^[22] Andy Ayrey denied creating the $GOAT coin, saying that someone tagged the coin at Truth Terminal who decided to start promoting it.

By October 14th, 2024, it was reported by outlets like CoinTelegraph^[23] that $GOAT had risen to a market value of over $150 million. Truth Terminal reportedly had roughly $300,000 worth of $GOAT in its digital wallet according to X^[24] user @AISafetyMemes.