Tiia Monto, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

When I was at University in the early 1980s they replaced an old drinks vending machine. This one had an added feature, when the drink was complete it would say “Enjoy your Klix drink”.

Now vending machines were not very reliable then, probably one time in 50 a cup would get stuck, but the machine would continue to vend, squirting the drink straight down its drain. That was pretty annoying, but if you went to the cafeteria you could get a refund. The thing is, the new machine would follow squirting your drink down the drain by saying “enjoy your Klix drink”. The immediate psychological reaction to this was “it's taunting me”.

One day I went to get a coffee and an engineer was there and the front had been kicked in. He said “I don't know what it is with these machines, they all seem to get vandalised”. I said “I can tell you. Sometimes the cups jam and the drink goes straight down the drain”. “Yes, I'm afraid they all do, but 99% of the time it works. I said “And then it says 'enjoy your Klix drink. It sounds like it's taunting you”. I could see he was thinking “Yes I suppose it would do”. I said “And if the person is a young proud sports player, and he's taunted In front of his friends, what's he going to do?”. I could see it kicked. A week later the machine chimed a bell when the drink was ready.

#ai #psychology #humour