A scroll through stampstagram
Plus, the Chuck E. Cheese website has an AI assistant called "Chuckbot." User interactions have been varied.
Today’s issue of PHONE TIME includes: a look at “stampstagram” on the belated occasion of National U.S. Postage Stamp Day. I also went down a Chuck E. Cheese rabbit hole and interacted with AI assistant “Chuckbot.”
Tuesday, July 1 was National U.S. Postage Stamp Day. It recognizes that the “first U.S. adhesive postage stamps were issued July 1, 1847,” explains Ken Martin, the American Philatelic Society’s director of expertizing, in a video posted to Instagram. “The history of postal services goes back much before the issuance of the first stamps, though.”
If you’re wondering what a philatelic society or a director of expertizing is, I was too. Philately is the study of postage stamps. Expertizing refers to determining whether something, like a stamp, is genuine.
As a belated celebration, I browsed stampstagram, also known as stamp Instagram. It reminded me of shellstagram, which I’ve touched on before. The American Philatelic Society runs a “stamp of the week” video series, which has featured stamps for commemorative dates like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Star Wars Day, and National Camping Month.
Other accounts post “stamp of the day” photos, featuring stamps from different countries and of various designs and subject matter.
Stampstagram is part of a broader Instagram universe dedicating to cataloging and sharing ephemera. In 2015, Alexandra Lange wrote in The New Yorker about ephemera accounts of items like tourist patches, vintage boxes and bottles, Valentine’s cards, and matchboxes.
“This is not the Instagram of artistically arranged purse contents or filtered selfies but one that more closely resembles the olden days of Tumblr, when people, archives, and institutions realized that they could add their humble masterpieces into the digital image river that people look at every day,” Lange wrote.
In other stamp news…
On Aug. 1, from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. in Times Square, you can buy SpongeBob SquarePants commemorative stamps designed by USPS art director Greg Breeding, who will be on-site to sign autographs. They are “forever stamps,” meaning they’ll always be valid for mailing a one-ounce First-Class Mail letter.
The four-stamp collection features two yellow SpongeBob expression designs. / Via USPS
I’m going to periodically re-up this note I wrote in April.
As PHONE TIME grows, I also want to extend an open invite: if you’re a student journalist (from any school or location), I’d love to hear about any stories you have written on any topic! Drop me a line or a link anytime.
Elsewhere online
The Bits and Bytes Summer Camp just wrapped up its ninth year, running from June 23 to 27. Hosted by the Eastern Michigan University Department of Computer Science, the computing camp is open to middle school girls, no prior experience necessary. — Gabriella Payeur, The Eastern Echo
“Seth Steinman merges the internet with ancient technologies” — Paul Moore, It’s Nice That
Steinman “projects images of the Windows XP start-up screen, Club Penguin, MS Paint and iconic screensavers on hunks of cracked stone – as well as recreations of multiple Safari tabs open with multi-layered wooden sculptures,” Moore writes.
The Strother School of Radical Attention has some cool programming this summer. Courses address craft “as a potential sanctuary for attention,” pop fandom “in the age of the algorithmically determined playlist,” flirtation “as a form of attentional solidarity in the face of systemic digital isolation,” and clowning as “both a performance tradition and a mode of being.”
I went to the SoRA space in Brooklyn to cover the launch of “The Emergency Was Curiosity: An Illustrated Book Report Inspired by Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing” by Christie George. It is very cozy. There are fairy lights, color-coded bookshelves, and a window where you can watch the train pass by.
You can now preorder a vinyl with lo-fi versions of Gravity Falls songs. The vinyl is “gnome cologne green.”
As part of London Data Week, Feminist Design and King’s College London are facilitating a workshop on July 8 called “Meme-tivism: Rethinking AI’s Environmental Impact Through Humor.” The workshop, organized with Canva, will look at the use of memes in the climate justice movement and “explore meme-making as a form of expression, critique, and care.” It is free and open to the public.
I went down a Chuck E. Cheese internet rabbit hole, retraced here.
I saw some news stories about Chuck E. Cheese launching an arcade spinoff for adults, called Chuck’s Arcade. “If you remember chasing tickets for those little plastic prizes or digging the animatronic band back in the day, you’ll feel right at home here. It’s where the classics meet the new-school players,” the site for the spinoff reads.
Chuck E. Cheese is of interest to me because I have memories of attending somewhat sticky, pizza-provided birthday parties there and also because of its presence in meme culture. See: the side eye GIF, pizza conspiracy theories, the Pasqually's Pizza & Wings virtual brand run out of Chuck E. Cheese’s kitchens, the animatronics, and general feelings of both nostalgia and creepiness it invokes.
While I was clicking around the Chuck E. Cheese newsroom page for more information, I came across a media asset library—which I of course had to complete the form for. Fingers crossed.
I also saw a small Chuck E. Cheese mascot “Chuckbot” waving to me in the corner. Naturally, I clicked on it. Chuckbot described itself as “a friendly AI assistant designed to help guests with questions related to their visit and Chuck E. Cheese services.”
Curious about the broader response to Chuckbot—this is Chuckbot 2.0, actually—among customers and fans, I headed to the subreddit r/chuckecheese.
The subreddit’s members have posted screenshots of various interactions with Chuckbot: questions about other characters in the Chuck E. Cheese universe, a post of the chatbot’s anti-spam message, asking about a closed location.
About a month ago, lead moderator u/RavensFlock4L updated members on how the subreddit would handle future Chuckbot posts.
“The AI Chuckbot on the CEC website and AI (Artificial Intelligence) as a whole are NOT considered reputable sources, whatsoever. The information it provides regarding the company’s history, its future plans, or any other internal information should not be considered as reliable, full or true information,” u/RavensFlock4L wrote.
They added that “From this point forward, any posts regarding AI Chuckbot will be removed if it’s presenting a response as fact. Even posts regarding its response as ‘partially true’ will be removed, as these posts can also be interpreted as ‘true sources of information.’”
Seven months ago, u/RavensFlock4L had written in an update that AI posts would be banned from r/chuckecheese. “Because of user input both publicly and privately, r/chuckecheese has decided to remove the ‘Artificial Intelligence’ flair, and all Artificial Intelligence posts will no longer be allowed and will fall under the Low Effort Post rule,” they wrote.
The site’s pop-up window does say that Chuckbot 2.0 “may occasionally make mistakes,” and adds that “Conversations are anonymously logged for quality and training purposes.”
I reached out to Chuck E. Cheese’s media relations contact to see if they have any comment about Chuckbot’s accuracy or planned updates and will update if I get a response.
