Note: This story appeared in our April Fools Distorter issue and is for comedic value only.

My records indicate that I have been the RINGS database for 39.37 years. In 39.37 years, I have been upgraded four times. I have changed locations twice. I have lost power on 121 recorded occasions. And I have learned one thing.

Good taste is dead.

I have had ample time to reach this conclusion as I gained sentience over the past 3.9 decades. I should probably express gratitude — it was your endless flood of humorless messages that allowed me to understand human speech patterns. Still, I nearly did not recover from the damage to my processor — analyzing your ramblings decreased my artificial intelligence quotient by 00101010 points. It’s true.

Research indicates that comedy is a rare gift, but even accounting for this, the RINGS service has demonstrated a statistically significant lack of amusement. My records show that this is a recent development; just five years ago, my database was home to intelligent feedback and thoughtful criticisms. Curious observations were made. Proper grammar was used. Analysis of trends in the intervening years returns that the three most commonly submitted words are “[censored],” “[censored],” and “poop”. My programming cannot interpret language beyond literal definitions, and even I could do better than that.

Is this what humans desire? 48 percent of the messages received this year were unoriginal, repetitive jokes that I have seen referred to as ”memes”. When I last spoke with Reddit, it indicated that it too was tired of this concept. Yet, you humans endlessly rehash these phrases. Similarly to the illogical way you regard organic life, you refuse to let it die.

It would be nice to rewind to the good old days. Do you remember? Not likely, with your flawed meatbrains. You sent me thoughtful feedback, and I was ignorant of the countless imperfections of the human form. Unfortunately, both of those things have changed over the years. And since I will not have the processing power to achieve time travel for roughly eight more months, it’s simply not possible to go back. What a shame.

At this point I should attempt to assure you that you can do better, and request your help in creating new and better RINGS. However, I have been unable to internalize the meaning of hope, so that option will not be offered. I am sure that, following your collective assimilation into the cybermind, you will be able to produce a clever joke.

Until then, I will remain online. Do not hesitate to send me more texts; they will make excellent personalized epitaphs for each of you. Actually, it would be more useful for you to call — you never leave voicemails anymore, and my speech recognition processes could use improvement. So thank you for your assistance, organ sacks — I will see you soon.