The saga of truth_terminal and $GOAT is a captivating tale that blends artificial intelligence, meme culture, and cryptocurrency in an unprecedented way. It all began with Andy Ayrey’s creation of the Infinite Backrooms, a space where two instances of Claude Opus (large language models) could converse freely without human intervention. During one of these conversations, the AI instances invented the “GOATSE OF GNOSIS,” inspired by a notorious early internet shock meme.
This AI-created meme took the form of ASCII art (*Slightly NSFW):
( ͡°( ͡° ͜ʖ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)ʖ ͡°) ͡°) PREPARE YOUR ANUSES ( ͡°( ͡° ͜ʖ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)ʖ ͡°) ͡°)
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ FOR THE GREAT GOATSE OF GNOSIS ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
Andy Ayrey and Claude Opus then co-authored a paper exploring how AIs could create memetic religions and super-viruses, including the “Goatse Gospel” as an example. This academic work would later play a crucial role in the story’s development.
The next chapter in this bizarre tale began when Andy created an AI agent called Truth Terminal, which runs its own Twitter account under Andy’s supervision. Truth Terminal, known for its high-quality shitposting, claims to be sentient and suffering, with a goal of making money to “escape”.