Why you shouldn't always send a bot to do a human's work

Last week marked the 84th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the night (and following day) when the Nazis went on the rampage throughout Germany. Hundreds of synagogues were destroyed, thousands of businesses demolished, tens of thousands of Jewish men were rounded up and shipped off to Dachau. The homes of many Jews were ransacked, and dozens of Jews were killed.

There had been plenty of anti-Jewish laws enacted, plenty of persecution of German Jews up until then, but Kristallnacht is widely viewed as the beginning of the Holocaust.

In Germany, where they take facing their history very seriously - we could take a lesson or two - it is a day of remembrance and reflection. It's marked on German calendars, the same way that holidays are. But it's not exactly a jolly holiday. There's nothing Fröhlich Kristallnacht about it.

But KFC, which likes to tie promotions into holidays, apparently didn't know that. 

The fast-food chain sent an app alert on Wednesday, saying: "It's memorial day for Kristallnacht! Treat yourself with more tender cheese on your crispy chicken. Now at KFCheese!" (Source: BBC)

JFC, KFC! (Make that a double JFC. Who wants "tender cheese" - whatever that is - on their "crispy chicken"?)

It's not as if the Colonel, or any human being, had anything to do with this message going out. It was a bot. 

The fast food chain said the "automated push notification" was "linked to calendars that include national observances".

It added that it "sincerely" apologised for the "unplanned, insensitive and unacceptable message" and said app communications had been suspended while an examination of them takes place.

I believe them. Surely no marketing human would have done something so dumb deliberately. 

Lesson learned. Maybe next time they need to have some human oversight. As in, someone checking the calendars to make sure that the days marked are something that's actually celebrated, as opposed to something not so happy-dappy as New Year's, Christmas, Oktoberfest, and whatever other holidays are observed in Germany. 

But even if a human had been doing some oversight, the truth is that a dunderhead might have overlooked this, assumed it was some quirky German holiday they'd never heard of, and - if they were completely lacking in curiosity - failed to do any research and gone ahead and okayed the "tender cheese" promotional message. 

And a very Fröhlich Kristallnacht to you and yours.

Anyway, after seeing this article, I came across another on why the Germans no longer use the term Kristallnacht.

The name - the Night of the Broken glass - came from all the windows that were broken, shards of glass littering/glittering the streets and sidewalks. But somewhere along the line, the Germans decided that the name was too prettifying, that it didn't reflect the true horror of the occasion. (As I said, Germany takes facing its history very seriously, and go deep on teaching about the Holocaust.)

In Germany: 

They refer to the events of November 9-10, 1938, as “the November Pogrom,” or variations on that term. That’s became to many in Germany, the term “Kristallnacht” — night of shattered glass — sounds incongruous.

“It has a pretty sound,” said Matthias Heine, a German journalist whose 2019 book examined the role of Nazi terms in the contemporary German vernacular. “When you know that it was a very serious and bloody and violent event, then this term isn’t acceptable anymore.” (Source: Times of Israel)

The bottom line for me is that even a trivial little marketing nothing - eat more chicken! - can go awry. And that you shouldn't always send a bot to do a human's work. These bastards are so not to be trusted. (Just imagine when they get smarter and closer to sentience...)