We love stories, and movies, we have favourite fictional characters – and 'the cult of the celebrity' forces so many different imaginary 'personal attachments' to film stars and musicians and people we've never even met. It's fascinating and weird, all at the same time. My motto is "never meet your heroes".

Anyway, for poor old Hitchbot, the cats and dogs thing is the most salient point. We anthropomorphise for sure!

And so, "killing" an inanimate object like Hitchbot – or taking out one's frustrations on it is the same as the kind of internet trolling and bad/rude behaviour on the internet. Apparently it's okay to be a complete asshole online, because the name or tag is a different 'person' than the one sat behind the keyboard right now, (me) typing away – or reading words appearing on the screen (you).

Yes, I'm fascinated by the ability of humans to demonise, or belittle, or bully, if they take a step away from reality. And obviously Hitchbot, as an experiment, was a step too far.

Regardless of who did it, yes, there was no need to destroy Hitchbot – but maybe it was simply a dumb fear "what is this weird thing? Fuck this!!!" smash crash bash!!!!!
I doubt whoever did it, realised that people had built a connection with it – or had known about its journey.

But even if they had, would it have changed the outcome?

Some strange-looking thing, sat by the side of the road, seemingly outside someone's self-imposed 'safe-zone'.