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Rolling with the punches

Writing is a curse.

It always has been.

It was already a hard enough activity; navigating the labyrinth of grammatical rules, mastering peculiar spellings, experiencing the excruciating moment of noticing mistakes after the damn thing is published, chancing upon a good idea… or a pet peeve you want to pontificate on (ahem: present company excepted), the crushing despair of writer’s block, and the absolute infuriation of some local yokel’s casual dismissal of our effort with nary a glance.

There are myriad reasons writing is a thankless task.

But AI... friends, that’s the ultimate googly. Because AI has allegedly “democratised” writing. Which means sod-all when you consider that most of what we read now sounds eerily the same.

And I don’t even blame AI.

If we think of it as a tool, it’s only as effective as the craftsperson. And in writing today, the average craftsperson gives zero fucks about what makes writing great. The je ne sais quoi a great piece of literature (I refuse to call it content, and so should you) possesses. The visceral effort behind the final output. They simply don’t care.

Sure, I accept that this average person just wants the message delivered clearly. But there’s a great danger of that blandness spilling over into everything. Every sentence, lyric, paragraph or page.

It took me a handful of days to write, rewrite, delete, and shape a script for a patient video, marinated in 3+ years of understanding what my company does, and what we want to share with the world. After obsessing about it for days, the core idea came to me as a shower thought.

Our CEO loved it. We shot a whole video based on that narrative.

Today, a new person (brought in to refresh the brand, apparently) I supposedly report to, shared something she’d clearly pumped out through the world’s favourite AI-writer. Because my script “wasn’t hard-hitting enough,” it seems.

I did not repeatedly strike the wall with my noggin hard enough, that’s for sure.

What she shared was inane... and that’s me being kind. A corporate memo is not the same thing as a video script, ffs.

Great writing - like great art - leaves an impression.

Whether it’s being unable to forget the opening line “Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know,” from Camus’ The Stranger.

Laughing tears at Montmorency’s description in Three Men in a Boat.

Being floored by the genius in a title like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Questioning human nature after reading Lord of the Flies.

Or reeling from the eerie prescience of Snow Crash and Ghost in the Shell.

Heck, even Rutger Hauer’s monologue in Blade Runner has substance. It has value.

Am I veering into Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance territory? Perhaps I must.

Don’t even get me started on great musical lyricism. We simply don’t have the time.

Anyway. I’m not saying AI is the bane of human existence. Or maybe I am. We do live in interesting times.

But I am saying this: people are blurring the lines between what’s acceptable and what’s good writing. Though Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey were best-selling series, so maybe we've been on a downwards spiral for a while.

I’m not even saying the script I wrote was brilliant. But I cared about it. Not about myself, not about making a mark in the organisation. About the work. And the day we stop caring about the writing is the day people like me go extinct. Professionally, at least.

AI-based writing is already more margarine than butter. Lest we forget, it’s also likely to run into the Ouroboros problem. We need new clay to make bricks, not just old bricks.

I know I’m starting to sound like a bit of a Cassandra. But to borrow a phrase from Lennon: I’m not the only one.

In a world where social-media-fuelled narcissism is already a pandemic, maybe playing out this Greek tragedy is our ultimate fate.

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