Funny Business foil blocked redacted cover Funny Business — Part joke book, part Turing Test, Funny Business is a collection of interactions I had with the customer service departments of global brands. In a world where more jobs are being automated, I wanted to find out whether I was talking to a human or bot by telling each recipient a (terrible) joke I’d made up via the live chat feature.
What started off as a playful idea intended to brighten up an employee or bot’s day, soon evolved into a series of loose observations about out-sourced labour and corporate culture.
To present my findings I scooped screengrabs of each chat session up and self-published them as a book called Funny Business. I had an introduction written by someone smarter than me and on legal advice redacted all the brand and employee names.
Here’s one of my favourite jokes from the book:
Q. What Manchester United legend is best at pottery?
(Answer at bottom of the page)
I spoke to It’s Nice That and Totally Dublin about the book.
Some poor jokes.
Some more poor jokes.
Possibly the poorest joke.uosɐƃɹǝℲ sɔᴉɯɐɹǝƆ :∀