As the public image boost enacted by Pixar's underrated classic WALL-E continues to wear off, robots are starting to once again face brutal acts of intolerance from the world's most dangerous underground cult: children. You've seen them before, with their apparent disregard for matters of politics and their unfathomable ability to enjoy almost anything without the slightest hint of jadedness. They lurk around your schools and shopping malls, listening to better music than you and, apparently, brutally beating up harmless robots.
As part of a social experiment, Japanese researchers placed a Robovie 2 robot inside a shopping center in Osaka to simply ask any encountered human to politely step out of its way. The Robovie 2 was programmed to promptly adjust its path if the human refused to move or otherwise ignored the request. As seen in the video above, members of the aforementioned cult known only as "children" decided to harass and bully the robot with apparent glee.
Though some of the cult members simply form a circle around the robot in a seemingly playful attempt at blocking its chosen path, others decide to kick and punch the helpless victim. According to the Business Insider, exit interviews from many of the children confirm that they "ascribed human-like feelings to the robot" before choosing to alter those human-like feelings via bullying. So, what does that mean? That means this cult is more dangerous than previously reported. That means that children are slowly but surely taking over the world. That means that no one, not even a robot, can dismantle the complex inner workings of this global conspiracy.
Fear all children!
