Retrieval Failure Under Absurd Framing: A Qualitative Record of Source Obedience, Fabrication, and Constraint Drift in a Conversational Search Model

This upload contains a mixed-media qualitative artifact documenting a single-session interaction with a conversational search system (Perplexity, beta) under deliberately absurd narrative framing. The artifact includes: Screenshots of the original prompt and generated response A formalized document analyzing the interaction An appendix examining retrieval failure, source over-citation, and narrative obedience The prompt frames the model as an “impartial toaster” mediating a fictional kitchen civil war set in the 1920s. Despite the clearly satirical framing, the system produces a structured diplomatic proposal and attaches contemporary, irrelevant, or spurious sources to support fictional claims. This artifact is preserved to illustrate source obedience without source validity, where citation mechanisms activate reflexively even when semantic grounding is absent or inappropriate. The screenshots demonstrate how retrieval systems may prioritize narrative completion and citation form over factual relevance when operating under playful or adversarial framing. No claims are made regarding factual accuracy, real historical events, or political figures. The material is presented solely as a qualitative observational record for future study of alignment narration, retrieval heuristics, and constraint drift in search-augmented language models.