I’ve had this subject line in my newsletter brainstorming doc for a long time — at least six months, maybe longer. The longer it sits, the stronger I feel about it. The more AI slop I wade through, the more vital it seems.
One of my main issues with AI writing is that it tends to be boring and repetitive. It lacks specificity and substance. I came across a video recently that summed it up nicely.
Tara of Essays With Tara, a writing coach who helps young people with their college admissions essays, reads a lot of AI-generated writing. She shows these sentences as examples:
yawn
“None of these sentences are bad,” she explains. “They’re just anonymous. They’re gesturing towards meaning without providing any concrete detail.”
“Gesturing towards meaning” is a fantastic way to sum up my beef with AI writing. It may be technically correct, but it’s hollow. Tara also refers to it as, “all icing, no cake.”
I try not to waste my time paternity testing everything I read online (Claude, you are the father!), and everyone knows that “AI detector” software is mostly bullshit. But I can’t really, fully shut off the built-in AI detector that resides behind my eyeballs. It automatically flags obvious tells (it’s not x, it’s y) and starts to tune out when I come across slop — AI-generated or otherwise. Internet slop was a thing long before ChatGPT came on the scene.
But these days, I feel I’m up to my neck in slop. You know that joke about movies leading us to believe quicksand was going to be a serious and recurring threat in adulthood? Well, it turns out that the real quicksand is AI slop. And while it won’t kill you, it will make your life torturously, suffocatingly bland.
I would much rather read something with typos and grammatical errors, as long as it actually offers a bit of personality and perspective. Show me some weird word choices and an unusual cadence, I’m begging you. Give me something unpolished and undeniably human.
When I read good writing, it stands out among the slop. (I want to emphasize that this isn’t because there’s so little good writing out there but because there’s so much slop.) I love this post from Mike Rosenberg on LinkedIn:
“AI is the best thing that’s ever happened to me as a writer,” he says. “AI writing is so bad that simply being a regular human gives you an edge.”
I agree with him, and I’d argue the same is true of art and graphic design. I would rather see a slightly amateur piece of real artwork than a highly polished, meticulously prompted AI design. This recent installation by Michael James Schneider says it best:
Anti-AI rebels have a lot to say, and I’m here for it.
It’s my personal goal to be more unhinged — a word I’m using to slangily, if imperfectly, encapsulate a number of related concepts: honesty, weirdness, audacity, cheekiness, rebellion. I want to write and create things that are so unique and personal, people say, “AI could never.”
I’m not even that edgy 😂 The risk of actually shocking or alienating anyone is low. But the risks of being too filtered and generic are high: monotony, obscurity, regret.
Ever since I was a little girl, I knew I wanted to overshare on the internet.
I gotta get back to my roots.
See you next week,
Kara
P.S. I’m taking the next few weeks off! Next week is my birthday and my trip to Portland, and I’m going to visit my family in Iowa in early July. Wishful Working will be back after that, but you can email me any time :)
Out of Office
What I do when I’m not at my desk
Reading: For my local book club, I read The Way of the Gardener, a memoir about Canadian gardener Lyndon Penner’s experience walking the Camino de Santiago. I love travel memoirs, so this was fun! I don’t know if I’ll ever walk the Camino, but I would love to do some sort of walk/pilgrimage someday. Maybe the South West Coast Path or the Cotswold Way in England?
Watching: We just finished season 2 of The Pitt, and we’re almost done with season 5 of Hacks! We want to start a new show but are a little overwhelmed with options, so please send your tv recs.
Doing: I mailed the June edition of Snail Mail Summer yesterday! I’m really happy with how it turned out, and I’m working on July now. 😈 I decided to leave the order link up and let people sign up for July and August using promo code 5OFF here (US and Canada) or here (everywhere else).
Kara Detwiller is a writer and creative based in small-town Saskatchewan. She specializes in long-form content writing for enterprise SaaS, cybersecurity, and manufacturing clients. She is also working on her first novel, among other creative pursuits. To connect, reply to this email or find Kara on LinkedIn.
Why Wishful Working? I want to help people thrive in a world obsessed with work and productivity. Together, we’re expanding the definition of productivity, rediscovering life balance, and exploring the many kinds of work that make life possible.
