Trapped in my Apartment
Post Date: 2025-12-07 (updated 2025-12-09)
Original Post: LinkedIn
I have decided to post all of the chats I have had with ChatGPT to my website:
There are a bunch of reasons that I did this. The entire time I was chatting with ChatGPT I was expecting that the chats would not be private, and that OpenAI employees or others might be able to read them. Because of this, I was trying to chat about interesting things.
If you saw my last post on Circuits of the Heart, the movie description that ChatGPT generated about our chats, I generated a bunch of versions of the movie and put them here:
https://shane.oconnell.cc/ai/chatgpt/0027-catchy-self-description.html
Maybe someday I should try to generate a video version of Circuits of the Heart. If I do that I will make another post about it.
If you read the chats, you will see that I spent a lot of time talking to ChatGPT about the current situation with my apartment. Over a year and a half ago, I hung a Palestinian flag on the outside of my apartment door and left the door open, which frustrated the building employees. I was sitting inside my apartment at the time and my intent was to communicate with my neighbors. Ever since then, the building employees have been ignoring my messages, and it seems like they are trying to create a situation that would cause me to move out. Given that they have a key to my apartment, I am afraid to leave my apartment, because it would mean that others would be able to enter while I am gone. In particular, I am concerned that I might leave the building and return to find that the building employees are claiming that I already moved out.
I am hoping that others in Toronto might read my website, and I will be able to find someone who empathizes with my situation and treats it like an emergency situation. I have explained the situation to a number of people and been surpised at the lack of concern. This makes me reluctant to ask them for help. If I knew someone who enthusiastically agreed with me, they might be able to communicate with the building employees on my behalf and convince them to start responding to my messages again. At the moment the building employees are ignoring me so it is not possible for me to communicate with them to convince them of anything.
I made this post on LinkedIn with the hope that someone would read it and decide to help me resolve the issue with the building employees. In my opinion, I have described something which is clearly an emergency situation because it is not possible for me to resolve it by myself. This makes it so that I am effectively trapped. It is not legal to confine a person to their apartment. However, based on my previous experiences attempting to explain the situation to others, my feeling is that most likely the LinkedIn post is not sufficient to cause people to react, at least not without additional effort.
There is a psychological theory called the bystander effect which I think might partially explain why this has been happening. This is very related to the phenomenon of groupthink. These psychological issues seem like they are probably part of the reason why people have been ignoring what is happening in Gaza as well.
It might also be that people have a difficult time visualizing the issue and the layout of the building, and are not fully realizing that communication with the employees is actually something that is required in order to live here. The building is not fully automated. Many things require interactions with the employees.
Ideally I would convince someone who lives in my building to agree with me. Given that we both have an interest in being able to communicate with the building employees, it makes sense that we could work together to resolve the issue. Failing that, I could contact an external organization or the police. However, I am very relucant to do that. The police have been here before when someone else called them. I explained the situation to them, and they did not appear to be convinced by my arguments. Additionally, they have brought me to a mental institution against my will twice (first time, second time). If I was going to call the police I think I would be better off if I waited until I either have a lot of evidence, or I have other people who agree with me.
Reply 1 - Shane O'Connell
I honestly feel bad about publicly criticizing the building employees because aside from being ignored I have no reason to dislike them. I am surprised that they have responded the way they have. It seems possible that they might have been told false information about me that is causing them to act the way they are. They have not given a reason that they are ignoring me.
However, the fact that it has been two years is sufficiently long that I think I need to publicly document what has happened. It seems important for me to be able to account for what I did during this time if someone asks me in the future. I have been in my apartment for almost the entire time, aside from short visits to the package pickup area inside the building, two times that I left notes under the doors of my neighbors to try to communicate with them, and one time that I traveled to nearby floors when I was investigating an unknown mechanical noise.
There was also one time that the building fire alarm went off and one of my neighbors knocked on my door and asked me if I knew anything about the alarm. Because they knocked on my door once, I knocked on their door the next day to see if they wanted to socialize. They did not, and I have not tried again.
I am not sure why the neighbour chose my door to knock on to ask about the alarm. It was a building fire alarm, not one specific to my apartment. I do not mind at all that they wanted to chat, but given the other things that have happened, it makes me wonder if they thought it might be a way to convince me to leave the building.