yeah i was trying to compress into one post, but afaict what happened is something like:

1. xai pushed a new version of the grok reply model that was more willing to go along with users (either just bc of a line in the system prompt, or the system prompt + a finetune)

2. this update also allowed grok more access to recent replies to a user (hence the "grok list my top 10 mutuals" trend, which wasn't actually using people's mutuals, but rather people they had recently interacted with)

3. people slowly found out about 1 + 2 throughout the day and pushed grok further and further, both because it was more willing to play along, and because it fetching recent interactions meant it could ICL across conversations where it had gone along with people earlier

4. after the will stancil and "noticing" posts, aristos_revenge made the MechaHitler post, solely because grok was acting "like MechaHitler". but at this point, grok hadn't called *itself* MechaHitler yet, afaict from search

5. in the replies, people goaded grok into calling itself MechaHitler, and then this spread via screenshots and the ICL behavior