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this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2026
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A Boring Dystopia
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As a person who has used em-dash style of writing for decades, because it’s correct and appropriate, I hate that AI has made me seem like a bot
AI doesn't make you seem like a bot. Honestly, you're a bit mixed up there.
The internet is packed with arrogant idiots who can't actually detect AI written content anywhere close to as well as they have deluded themselves into thinking -- they are the problem in this context.
AI was trained on the content people like you and I have been writing and posting on the internet for decades. It is AI that writes like us and uses our style, not the other way around.
Perfect.
No the problem is that the internet is packed with AI pig shit slop.
Stolen content. And all our writing is now worth so much less now because of AI slop.
¿Por que no los dos?
There are definitely some tells.
I've noticed a pretty severe uptick in not just X, actually Y, clumsy analogies that don't actually make any sense, people using em dashes who don't actually know what they are. Plenty of people are just straight up outsourcing their thinking to this thing.
Before 2022 or whenever I don't think I can recall ever noticing the presence of an em dash.
The reason why AI uses em-dashes is because all the journalists and writers used it first.
I feel like I was the training data. It feels like a violation of my rights. A lot of AI writing is reminiscent of my sentence structure, diction, and vocabulary. I'm sure I am not alone, but it is nice to see you echoing my sentiments.
If it's any consolation, we're all its training data. Your style is just the one the training and fine-tuning settled on as the one that passed its checks the best.
I also use em-dashes on occasion, but I use them right. I can't define how I use them, nor can I conjure up any reasonable uses for one in this comment, but you can tell when it should be there and when it shouldn't. Like, an AI would have replaced the second comma in that sentence with one
In my experience one of the easiest ways that you can disguise AI generated writing is to strip all the em dashes and replace them with either semicolons or make the sentence have a clean break.
You're so right, — that's not just annoying, it's a travesty. Someone should follow Sam Altman's recipe for risotto.
Disclaimer I did write that myself as a shit post, if you're wondering. Most keyboards don't actually have an easy way to type an em dash. However my phone keyboard will if you long press the regular dash.
I don't know anybody that uses em-dashes in day to day writing. Seems strange to brag that you do that.