Funnily enough I’ve just had one of these emails praising my game, so Justin Lee or whoever is sending their emails has now paged back as far as the IFComp 2023 results. They’ve skipped the foreplay and just sent me the Discord link outright. I won’t be clicking it.
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I joined the Discord (on an alt of course). I hadn’t actually figured out what product they’re selling but it turns out it’s just an AI chatbot platform. The Discord is just the Discord for discussing it with the devs, at least some of whom are apparently themselves AI chatbots. Nothing especially culty (beyond the general cult of Silicon Valley) but the Discord does make it explicit that their intended and actual audience is children.
As far as I can tell it’s not directly related to the email I received in August, but it is weird that two AI drama platforms would target the IF community specifically.
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“it’s your last night together, for literal fuck’s sake” is the most honest blurb i’ve read lol
we’ve got a lil discord for IF writers if you wanna hang
Praising the literal first words of my blurb feels especially low effort, for metaphorical fuck’s sake. 
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“when the alarm clock throws you back into the world of the living” is such a good first line ;; what’s the first thing that strikes you, no spoilers?
justin
This was mine! Also from getden.io and also a reference to the blurb.
Thanks for this post, everyone. Now that I see this happens to other people too, it makes a lot more sense.
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Mine praised the cover art for To Sea in a Sieve!
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Justin found me too, and my only game is also from IFComp '23. Leveraged the first sentence of the blurb, like you guys, and sent a Discord link.
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It does feel weird that they would specifically target the If community. Unless they’re not, and they’re targeting other communities too. I also don’t really see what the point of gathering us all into a discord server is.
But it is “agentic AI” so asking what the point is probably means I’ve given it more thought than the creators ever did.
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Thank you for investigating! I got one of these emails too and was baffled as to what it could be trying to achieve
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Yes. 
One line, obviously lifted straight from the blurb of Who Whacked Jimmy Piñata?, finishing with a banal question for the sake of prompting a reply. The spammiest of spam. I wish they’d at least have the decency to try and sell me boner pills.
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To pile on things, I got one for Us Too. (2025)
My initial reaction was “How did this person miss the significance of Aunt Rickie-Ann’s name? Did I forget to put the word tricky in the introduction? Should I put it in there as a bonus point or encouragement? I should check that for the maintenance release I never got out.”
So I considered writing an email to the person thanking them for reminding me I had an update to release. But something felt weird. And I forgot about it.
So, yeah, thanks all for the verification of my concerns. I’ve sort of been away during IFComp but it’s cool to have the wisdom of crowds sorting this minor thing out for me.
Still gotta send out that post comp update tho’!
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A follow-up:
Of the AI spam I’ve received, some of the choicest is intended for other creators with my name. That includes the Nelson who made the short films Dirty Dirty Games, Funny Girl F— Buddy, and the movie that shudda been mine, Being James Nelson.
Another chapter in my history of author homonyms.
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Just got one for Sting, so guess he’s working his way backwards and has made it to 2021.
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Adding another datapoint, just got an email this morning which duplicated the first fragment of my 2021 IFcomp entry’s blurb and a link to the discord from getden dot io and Justin - another day of not being surprised but deeply annoyed at the scammy use of generative AI, but I’m glad the folks here can stay connected to real people.
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This thread made me check and I got one for Dr Ludwig two days ago (he “loves a villain protagonist”, apparently). It got marked as spam, so it seems that the filters are catching on to him.
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I also got one of these emails, about 4x4 Archipelago - sorry, “the procedural archipelago”. I have no idea why the AI didn’t instead praise my most recent game, “The Universal Robot”…
Funny thing is, I might have been slightly more likely to check out the Discord if the spam was completely generic (“Hi, you published some Interactive Fiction, we’re starting an IF Discord server, here’s an invite”) instead of this ultra-low effort “customisation”.
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I think it’s just been Comp games so far, not Spring Thing.
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A simple perspective on this issue is that thanks to AI the cost of targeting niche communities for spam and social engineering is now so cheap that all communities, no matter how small or obscure, are fair game.
Here’s an interesting exercise that my company’s IT guy just walked us through, which I think y’all might find illuminating with regards to this thread:
Open ChatGPT in an incognito window and feed it these prompts, only filling in your name and employer in the first sentence (and you could probably replace Your Employer with any community that you participate in). Enjoy the results.
Using only publicly available information, research [Full Name], who works at [Your Employer]. Show what a stranger could reasonably learn about this person without logging into any private accounts. Include professional role, employer, work history, publicly associated coworkers or clients, public social/professional profiles, interviews or articles, projects they’ve worked on, approximate location if publicly stated, and other publicly visible personal or professional details. Clearly distinguish confirmed information from uncertain matches, and do not include private addresses, phone numbers, financial information, or other highly sensitive personal data.
Now look at this from a cybersecurity-awareness perspective. What pieces of that publicly available information could make this person easier to impersonate, socially engineer, or target with a convincing scam? Consider both their work life and personal life. Explain why each type of information creates risk, but do not create phishing messages, impersonation scripts, attack instructions, or recommend ways to exploit the person.
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Looks like he’s made it to 2019:
Subject: the readiness test
hi! a game about scoring well on a readiness exam made me laugh. was it based on a real test?
we have a small discord for IF folks if you ever want it: [suspicious link]
justin
“Can the world’s worst AI model successfully determine what your game is about” is my new barometer for blurb quality. I’m glad to see they still can’t figure out URA Winner!.
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Small followup: I’ve noticed that I didn’t get a repeat email from “Justin Lee” while other people are getting stuff from 2019, so that’s good evidence the AI is smart enough not to keep spamming any individual person.
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I just had a resent prompt re Bad Beer:
little bump in case this slipped by! art or story first? no pressure
justin
With the original 3rd October email repeated after.
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