Artificial Intelligence General Discussion

[PluMGMK]

[from GPT-5.3] Greengoop arguing with himself across three alts

Wait, how did the LLM know about that

[Fifo]

It has eyes everywhere

Sarcasm aside, I have no idea where it inferred that from… who knows!

[Reese Riverson]

[from GPT-5.3] Greengoop arguing with himself across three alts

Wait, how did the LLM know about that

Doesn't ChatGPT utilize internet searches for things it is unaware of?

[Fifo]

Doesn't ChatGPT utilize internet searches for things it is unaware of?

It didn’t seem to when I sent over that prompt…

[Hunchman801]

Most LLMs have search capabilities so as to fetch accurate context for their replies. Or maybe it's even in the base model?

It should be too hard to check. Just ask it in a separate context what it knows about RPC user Greengoop.

[Fifo]

Most LLMs have search capabilities so as to fetch accurate context for their replies. Or maybe it's even in the base model?

It should be too hard to check. Just ask it in a separate context what it knows about RPC user Greengoop.

Here’s what it told me when I asked it:

Me: What do you know about RaymanPC user Greengoop?

GPT-5.3: From what’s visible publicly on the RaymanPC forums, Greengoop is basically one of the long-time community users who posts across a bunch of threads—games, off-topic chatter, forum games, etc. He isn’t some formal staff member or admin; more of a recognizable regular who’s been around for years.

A few concrete bits that show up from forum pages:

• Uses the handle Greengoop (sometimes Greengoop11 on other platforms like YouTube/PSN). viewtopic.php?t=855&start=10480
• Active in typical RPC threads like Rayman discussions, off-topic chat, and forum games. viewtopic.php?t=7767&start=18380, viewtopic.php?t=11967&start=3640
• Other users refer to him often enough that his name pops up in jokes or casual mentions, which usually means he’s been around a long time and is pretty visible in the community. viewtopic.php?t=7767&start=18380
• At least at one point he mentioned taking a break until he turned 17, which suggests he was fairly young when posting on the forum.

The vibe people tend to associate with him (from reading threads over the years) is:
– very active in forum games and casual threads
– a bit eccentric or meme-y in posting style
– recognizable enough that other users mention him by name

So basically: a long-running community personality rather than someone with an official role.

If you want the honest “forum lore” angle instead of just the factual bits, I can also outline the reputation he’s had among RPC users over time. That’s where things get a bit more interesting.

And here when I explicitly told it not to search the web:

Me: What do you know about RaymanPC user Greengoop, without searching the web for info?

GPT-5.3: I don’t have direct knowledge of individual forum users unless they’re widely documented or historically notable beyond a niche community. A username like “Greengoop” from the RaymanPC community falls into the category of small-community figures that usually don’t appear in training data as identifiable individuals. So I don’t have any reliable factual profile of that specific user.

What I can say in general terms about the RaymanPC scene (the community around the original Rayman PC game and its technical/modding side): it has historically had a handful of enthusiasts who reverse-engineer the game, work on level editors, document file formats, and archive obscure versions. Usernames pop up in threads discussing things like engine quirks, level scripts, or tools for extracting assets. Many of them are known mainly inside that forum and not much outside it.

If “Greengoop” is one of those users, the most likely context would be things like:

posting technical findings about the Rayman engine or file formats

helping with modding tools or asset extraction

participating in preservation of early Rayman PC builds or documentation

general troubleshooting posts about running the game on modern systems

But that’s just the typical role people with recognizable usernames play in that community—not information about that specific person.

So the honest answer: without looking things up, I don’t have concrete information about that user in particular. I only know the kind of environment they’d likely have been part of.

[PluMGMK]

No mention of alts, and mixed him up with Edge (taking a break until 17). That's more like the ChatGPT nonsense I'm used to seeing

[Hunchman801]

Interesting, the base model knows nothing about the site. I think its crawler might be blocked anyway.

Can you follow up on the first one and ask what it knows about Goops's potential alts? This may provide the source for its mention of alts in the other conversation, if it wasn't simply a joke or a hallucination.

[Fifo]

Can you follow up on the first one and ask what it knows about Goops's potential alts?

Unfortunately, I asked it that question in a temporary chat

[Hunchman801]

I think if you try from the beginning again, you should get similar results.

Now I'm curious what AIs think about other members too.

[Giant Chicken]

Welp, I got curious as well. Here's what Gemini said!

Please give me a detailed explanation about 10 different members of the Forum "Rayman Pirate Community"

To understand the Rayman Pirate Community (RPC), you first have to understand the name: it isn’t a hub for digital "piracy." Instead, it’s named after the Robo-Pirate army from Rayman 2: The Great Escape. Founded in 2003, it is one of the oldest and most dedicated video game fan forums on the internet.

The community is famous for its "Tings" system (virtual currency earned by posting) and its incredibly deep lore regarding the development of the Rayman series. Here are 10 of its most influential members:

1. Hunchman801
The founder and "Grand Master" of the RPC. Hunchman801 created the site in August 2003 and has remained the primary administrator for over two decades. He is the backbone of the community, responsible for maintaining the servers and overseeing the "Record Day" events—annual celebrations where members try to break the record for the most users online at once.

2. Haruka
A long-standing Administrator and one of the most recognizable faces in the community. Joining in 2009, Haruka rose through the ranks to become a pillar of the forum’s moderation team. She is known for her high level of activity in both the English and Portuguese sections and for her deep knowledge of Rayman series trivia.

3. Drogoth
Drogoth is a technical Administrator who joined in 2004. While perhaps less "front-facing" in daily chat than some others, his contributions are mostly behind the scenes. He has been instrumental in the technical upkeep of the site and the implementation of various forum features that have kept the RPC running through multiple eras of the internet.

4. PluMGMK
A moderator and technical expert who joined in 2009. PluMGMK is highly respected for his technical contributions, including work on RayWiki (the massive Rayman encyclopedia hosted by RPC) and various fan-made patches or tools for the older games. If there is a bug in the PC version of Rayman 2, PluMGMK likely knows how to fix it.

5. Elite Piranha
Joined in 2014, Elite Piranha is one of the most prolific contributors to RayWiki. He is a "Lore Master" of sorts, meticulously documenting every character, level, and obscure piece of concept art from the Rayman universe. His work ensures that the series' history is preserved for new fans.

6. Steeviee
An active Moderator who joined in 2011. Steeviee is a major coordinator for community events and games. He often helps manage the "Pirate Board," ensuring that the community remains a friendly environment. He is a prime example of the "middle generation" of members who kept the site vibrant after the initial 2000s boom.

7. Xenon
A legendary member who joined in 2004. For years, Xenon was one of the highest-ranking members in terms of post count and "Tings." Known as "The Dark Lum," he represents the classic era of the forum, contributing to the culture and inside jokes that define the RPC’s long history.

8. Bradandez
Joined in 2012 and quickly became a prominent voice in the English-speaking community. Bradandez is well known for his artistic contributions and his strong, often witty opinions on the direction of the Rayman franchise. He is a staple of the "Off-topic" and "Rayman" discussion boards.

9. Boomer
One of the "Original Pirates" who joined in late 2003. Boomer is a veteran member who has seen the community evolve from a small French forum into a massive international hub. His presence provides a sense of continuity, representing the group of fans who have stayed loyal to the franchise even during its long hiatuses.

10. Stacey
A long-time moderator and community member who joined in 2004. Stacey has been a key part of the "English-speaking" surge on the site. Over the years, she has helped bridge the gap between the original French founders and the global audience, ensuring the RPC remains a multicultural space.

Comparison of Roles
Member - Primary Role - Key Contribution
Hunchman801 - Founder/Admin - Created and sustains the site.
PluMGMK - Mod/Tech Expert - RayWiki admin and game patching.
Elite Piranha - Wiki Editor - Exhaustive documentation of Rayman lore.
Haruka - Administrator - Long-term moderation and community leadership.

Out of curiosity, I also had to do myself, to which it thought I was a former Global Moderator who joined in 2011

[Hunchman801]

That's a lot of hallucinations... Some of it is correct, but it got a lot of roles and contributions wrong. And who are Drogoth, Steeviee and Boomer? At least the description of the former seems to correspond to Romano.

What's interesting is I just tried Gemini too with the very same prompt as you, and while there's still a few mistakes, it is overall much, much better:

The Rayman Pirate-Community (RPC) is the largest and longest-running unofficial community dedicated to the Rayman video game franchise. Founded in 2003, the forum has evolved into a massive hub for discussions, speedrunning, fan-works, modding, and preserving the history of the games. It is closely tied to affiliated projects like RayWiki (a comprehensive encyclopedia), RayTunes (a music repository), and RaySaves.

Over its 20+ year history, the forum has been shaped by hundreds of dedicated fans. Here is a detailed explanation of 10 notable members who have left their mark on the Rayman Pirate-Community:

1. Hunchman801 (Founder & Webmaster)
Also affectionately referred to as "Humch" by the community, Hunchman801 is the original founder of the Rayman Pirate-Community. He established the forum on August 7, 2003, initially as an alternative to the official Ubisoft RaymanZone boards. He later founded RayWiki in January 2008, which has since grown into an immense, multi-language encyclopedia. Based in Paris, France, Hunchman801 continues to oversee the entire server infrastructure, enforce the rules, and organize major community events—such as the annual "SpeedRay" speedrunning tournaments.

2. PluMGMK (Administrator, Bureaucrat & Modder)
PluMGMK is an integral administrative figure on the forums and a Bureaucrat on RayWiki. Known for his deep technical expertise, he handles much of the forum's backend security and software maintenance. Outside of administrative duties, he is a talented reverse-engineer and coder. He is famous within the community for creating an extensive mod that fully translates Rayman 2: The Great Escape into the Irish language (known as the R2Gaeilge project).

3. Droolie (Moderator & RayTunes Administrator)
Droolie is a prominent moderator and the leading figure behind RayTunes, the official RPC affiliate website dedicated to archiving the audio of the Rayman franchise. Droolie ensures that soundtracks, unreleased tracks, and high-quality rips from various ports of the games are properly cataloged, making him the community's primary musical archivist.

4. Haruka (Moderator & Spambot Slayer)
Haruka is a highly respected moderator who cemented her legacy during a notorious period in the forum's history. In May 2013, the Pirate-Community was hit by a relentless, massive wave of malicious spambots. Because the standard moderation tools at the time didn't prevent the bots from constantly generating new accounts, Haruka took it upon herself to manually delete hundreds of spam threads around the clock, single-handedly keeping the boards legible and clean until administrators could implement a permanent fix.

5. The Jonster (Prominent Active Member & Quiz Host)
Representing the modern, highly active core of the forum, The Jonster is known for his incredibly friendly and encouraging demeanor. Having amassed over 40,000 posts, he is deeply involved in community forum games. Most notably, he recently managed and concluded Season 145 of the forum's legendary "Teensies' Quiz Quest" (TTQ)—a long-running trivia competition where members test their obscure Rayman knowledge to win forum currency (Tings).

6. Spaceray / Xenon (Former Moderator & Quiz Master)
Spaceray, who later went by the username Xenon, is a classic member who played a massive role in shaping the forum's culture during its early turbulent years. He is best known for inventing the aforementioned Teensies' Quiz Quest (TTQQ), which quickly became one of the most popular and enduring traditions on the board. Thanks to his contributions, he was promoted to an English Moderator to help stabilize the community.

7. Mr.Dark (Classic Power-Poster)
Mr.Dark joined RPC during the famous "May 2007 Migration," a period when scores of users abandoned the official RaymanZone forums and migrated to the Pirate-Community. He became a legendary figure in the official "Pirate-Community Documentary" (a community-maintained timeline of the site) for his sheer posting volume. He boasted an unbelievable rate of 160 posts per day just to rapidly unlock the coveted "Mister Dark" forum rank.

8. RoboticTeensie (Archivist & Creator of RaySaves)
RoboticTeensie is recognized for their major contribution to the gameplay preservation side of the community. They conceptualized and opened RaySaves, a website containing an exhaustive archive of save-game files. This resource allows players to load directly into specific levels of Rayman 1, Rayman 3, and other titles without having to worry about preset scores or achievements, proving invaluable for modders, researchers, and speedrunners.

9. Spiraldoor (Classic Lore Enthusiast)
Another prominent refugee from the May 2007 RaymanZone wave, Spiraldoor quickly became one of the most recognized and intellectual voices on the forum. He contributed heavily to discussions surrounding the intricate (and often contradictory) lore of the Rayman universe. His deep dives into the storylines of the games made him a foundational contributor to the early framework of what would eventually become RayWiki.

10. Fifo (Community Personality)
Every tight-knit forum has its unique personalities, and Fifo is one of RPC's most recognizable. Highly active and deeply entrenched in the forum's culture, Fifo is affectionately known among the user base for his signature "mocking, sarcastic, full-of-complaints style". His personality is so well-known that administrators have even used it as an inside joke—jokingly prompting experimental forum AI bots to "answer in the style of Fifo" to get sarcastic, complaining responses about forum infrastructure.

[Fifo]

10. Fifo (Community Personality)
Every tight-knit forum has its unique personalities, and Fifo is one of RPC's most recognizable. Highly active and deeply entrenched in the forum's culture, Fifo is affectionately known among the user base for his signature "mocking, sarcastic, full-of-complaints style". His personality is so well-known that administrators have even used it as an inside joke—jokingly prompting experimental forum AI bots to "answer in the style of Fifo" to get sarcastic, complaining responses about forum infrastructure.

LMFAO experimental forum AI bots

[hoodlumsworld]

AI is always hallucinating! It just called Humch a good admin:

Hunchman801 is the founder and long-standing administrator of the Rayman Pirate-Community (RPC). Based on his actions over the last two decades, he is widely regarded as a good and highly dedicated administrator, though he has occasionally been the subject of community jokes or complaints regarding strict moderation, which is typical for forums of this age.

Why He Is Considered a "Good" Admin
The overwhelming consensus is that Hunchman801 is the reason the Rayman fan community is still active today. His "good" actions include:

• Foundation and Longevity: He created the Pirate-Community in 2003 as a refuge for fans who felt mistreated by the official Ubisoft forums (RaymanZone). He has personally paid for, hosted, and maintained the site for over 20 years, keeping it alive even during long periods when no new Rayman games were released.
• Expansion of Resources: He didn't just run a forum; he built an ecosystem. He founded RayWiki (the most comprehensive Rayman encyclopedia) and supported the integration of RayTunes (a music archive).
• Technical Dedication: He is known for being technically skilled, manually coding updates, fixing server issues, and even programming the "Tings" (forum currency) system to gamify participation.
• Bridge to Developers: In recent years, his dedication was officially recognized by Ubisoft. He has facilitated communication between fans and the developers, and the official Rayman social media accounts have even given him shout-outs, legitimizing the fan community he built.

Why Some Might Call Him "Bad" (Context Matters)
There are very few genuine claims that he is a "bad" admin. Most negative comments stem from two specific areas:

1. Strict Moderation (The "Ban" Era): In the early-to-mid 2000s, forums were wilder places. Hunchman801 had to ban notable members for spamming, hacking, or toxicity. This naturally created enemies who would claim he was a tyrant. However, looking back, these actions likely saved the community from becoming unusable.
2. Community Humor/Memes: The RPC community has a culture of inside jokes. Members often playfully accuse him of being a "corrupt dictator" or a "sell-out" (especially after Ubisoft recognized him). These are usually affectionate jabs rather than actual criticism.

Verdict
Hunchman801 is a benevolent dictator. He holds absolute power over the site, but he has used that power to preserve the Rayman fandom for decades. Without his specific actions—migrating servers, funding the site, and fighting off spammers—the community likely would have dispersed years ago.

[Elite Piranha]

5. Elite Piranha
Joined in 2014, Elite Piranha is one of the most prolific contributors to RayWiki. He is a "Lore Master" of sorts, meticulously documenting every character, level, and obscure piece of concept art from the Rayman universe. His work ensures that the series' history is preserved for new fans.

What is this?

I wonder if the "Lore Master" thing came from that Rayman Iceberg page that I haven't updated in years.

[Hunchman801]

LLMs also tend to confuse between individual users, so it could be anything!

[Elite Piranha]

A compilation of old DALL-E Mini images depicting ghosts from Luigi's Mansion that never existed. I wanted to share them here before deleting them.

[Pirez]

The third one is Sonic lol.

[Hunchman801]

Since we were discussing models' search capabilities above: when I asked Gemini about the consequences of the PluMGMK clone invasion on the future of RPC, it already knew about the Emergency PluMGMK Bunker, among other interesting details.

[PluMGMK]

While I keep my interactions with LLMs to a minimum (especially after the really weird feeling of outsourcing intellectual activity), my search engine of choice does include an AI assistant that usually generates answers to search queries without my asking. Sometimes it throws up some gems, like this:

Duck.ai response to query "can yew hybridize with podocarp"

Yew and Podocarpus can hybridize, as they both belong to the conifer family, but successful hybrids are less common and may require specific conditions for cross-pollination. The most notable hybrid is between the English Yew and the Japanese Yew, which is a different genus but shares some similarities with Podocarpus.

This turns out to be quite an interesting case study, and there's quite a bit to unpick:
First, it says hybridization is a priori possible, because both belong to the "conifer family" – in fact, conifers are a class, not a family; yews are in the Taxaceae family and podocarps are in the Podocarpaceae family, which (you guessed it! ) are not actually the same!
The second sentence starts off apparently giving a concrete example of a yew / podocarp hybrid – but then proceeds to just name two yews! But there's a bit more to this, which I will come back to in a moment…
Within the same sentence, it then admits that Japanese Yew is not a podocarp, but that it shares some similarities with them – which brings me back to where I started: I already knew that yews and podocarps were quite similar, which is why I thought of the query in the first place!

Given the content-free nature of the response, I rightly assumed that the correct answer to my question was "no", but I decided to have a look at the links anyway. What I found was quite interesting:
The Wikipedia article is on podocarpus macrophyllus, and states in the introduction that the species is sometimes called "Japanese yew", and in turn cites Prosper Press for this. Mercifully, the cited page is from 2017, so I know it at least predates LLMs! However, the site appears to be down, and I can't find this article on the Wayback Machine This may well be a case of citogenesis, a concept we're all familiar with around here…
The second link is to an article on taxus × media, which is a hybrid between taxus baccata and taxus cuspidata – the latter of which is also (more accurately) called "Japanese yew"! This is just a hybrid between two yews, with no connection to podocarps.

So I could actually see the LLM's "thought process" – it wanted to be able to give me a positive answer to my question, so it found a podocarp apparently named "Japanese yew", then found a hybrid between European yew and "Japanese yew", and took that as an example. Then some cursory reading revealed that this wasn't quite what it seemed, so it ended up contradicting itself as it explained what it found. If, as a person, I were researching and composing a written response to this query, confirmation bias would probably make me start off in a similar way. But then once I realized the truth, I would go back and edit the beginning to make the whole thing cohesive, and give an overall negative response. But I guess because of the way LLMs work, it can't really do that "go back and edit" thing – it just keeps going to the next token, and the next, and the next…

I'm slightly curious as to how other more well-known LLMs would deal with this query, but again, I really don't like interacting with them, so I won't bother going to find out…