[ SECRET POST #6852 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6852 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 07 secrets from Secret Submission Post #978.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

01. https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/d6e444ebcbb6.jpeg

[(Anonymous)]

The witch hunts over AI are so obnoxious. Yes, AI can have certain quirks; it picks them up from the writing it steals.

That and you can pull em dashes from my cold dead hands.

[tabaqui]

+1

[(Anonymous)]

I feel you. I love my dashes. I also have personal beef with genAI because I stumbled on an unfinished work of mine this year, an adaptation of Green Eggs and Ham written in the style of Shakespeare, and realized that if I ever finish it, anyone who sees it will think "so what, ChatGPT can do that."

Transcript

[(Anonymous)]

I hate Generative AI in general but I especially hate it because I love using the emdash in my fanfic writing. Now I'm afraid if I use it people will accuse me of using Chat GPT. This fills me with dread.

[(Anonymous)]

Same, OP. People jump the gun way too fast because they want to feel clever about detecting AI. It's ridiculous.

[(Anonymous)]

+1

[(Anonymous)]

The AI hunters can take the dash from my cold dead hands. I've been using it well before this bullshit and this isn't going to stop me now.

[(Anonymous)]

If your problem is with people assuming that you are an AI because of your writing style, isn't your problem with those people rather than the AI?

[(Anonymous)]

Both? Both. Both is good.

[(Anonymous)]

SA

I don't have a problem with the idea of AI. It isn't inherently evil. Stealing is wrong. But there are ways AI could be used that wouldn't involve stealing. We don't need to ban AI, we need to regulate it.

[paperghost]

Same!!! I'm still going to do it though...

[tabaqui]

I'm over on Reddit scrolling around and so many posts have people going 'AI SLOP!!' in the comments like....really? 'Normal people don't talk like (quotes example)!!'. Really? How do 'normal' people talk. Crappy grammar, unfinished and/or run-on sentences, and no punctuation? Wtf.

[(Anonymous)]

Ugh, it’s awful.

It’s been showing up on one sub whenever people use headings to break up their posts into sections. Which is stupid because those headings were really useful for structuring a multi-part argument into easy-to-read online format.

[(Anonymous)]

Really? How do 'normal' people talk. Crappy grammar, unfinished and/or run-on sentences, and no punctuation? Wtf.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealisticDictionIsUnrealistic (though the page also notes that "'real' dialogue can be unreadable").

[(Anonymous)]

I don't tend to give a shit about technical details when it comes to identifying AI--it lends itself to having everything /technically/ correct but lacking human traits like "keeping track of characters" and "describing things in reasonable but interesting ways".

[(Anonymous)]

HARD SAME

My brain works in em dashes and parentheses. I wouldn't use the latter in fic, but I've been known to abuse the former.

But LBR, em dashes are discouraged in general for a reason. They're informal get-arounds. Perhaps AI is holding a mirror up to some of our lazier writing techniques, and it's jarring to see our reflection.

Of course fic is fic, and the typical fic audience is more concerned with content than style. So unless you're involved with a group of serious writers, I can't imagine anyone calling you out.

The idea is kind of humorous, though, when you consider the transformative nature of fic. There's a lot there to unpack academically if one were so inclined.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not going to stop anything that I'm doing because of AI. I'm going to write like I always have.

[(Anonymous)]

IME at least, there's not that many people going around accusing people of using genAI on AO3 compared to Reddit? But you're probably going to get hit with the genAI accusation bot no matter what you do or don't do in the fic.

[(Anonymous)]

Love these #myemdashes

[(Anonymous)]

They can pry emdash and sparkles from my cold dead hands.

[(Anonymous)]

Let 'em "think." If anyone actually comments along those lines, point out that "AI was trained on writing produced by actual people. AI uses em-dashes because people use em-dashes. AI is copying US!!!"

I've seen that many people have this feeling, OP, and we -- fandom as a whole -- need to keep pushing back. Punctuation was devised to help give context and "flavor" to cold words on a page. Every single type of punctuation is valid; even parentheses (which I personally loathe) have a function.

People do not speak -- or tell stories -- in perfect prose. We insert side thoughts (em-dashes), or trail off an unfinished thought (ellipses), or pause longer than a comma but less than a full stop (semi-colon).

I'll be using em-dashes and semi-colons -- another irritant for the wild-eyed punctuation-hunters -- as long as I continue to write. Use them proudly, OP; if they were good enough for our literary forebears, they're good enough for us!

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know your situation, OP, but have you actually ever been accused of using gen AI (by someone OTHER than a spam comment bot, because those are unfortunately a thing...)? In my experience, it's really rare. I also use em dashes in my fiction writing all the time and no one has ever said anything. Also, I'm someone who almost never uses em dashes in my day-to-day communication but use it a lot in fiction and I think that's fairly normal, and a lot of the "em dashes are suspicious!!" kind of posts on social media I'm pretty sure are referring to informal communication rather than, like, fiction or formal published writing, because like, yes, it's incredibly weird and jarring when (e.g.) you get an email from a student that is several meaty paragraphs of full, typo-less sentences, complete with clean, formal punctuation (like em dashes) to tell you they're going to miss class this week or whatever. Like, that's a two-sentence email, not a 3-paragraph email, and you don't need to proofread and clean up and use proper formatting for an email meant to tell someone something very quick and minimal. But if someone wrote several clean paragraphs complete with properly-formatted quotes and punctuation (including the use of em dashes) in a blog/Substack post or article or mini-essay, or a piece of fiction, I would not blink. I would actually EXPECT that level of effort and proofreading and visual polish in that medium.

So yeah, are you sure the "em dashes are AI!!" people are even talking about your kind of writing? Setting those AO3 spam bots aside, I have just never seen someone hound someone else for using em dashes in formal published writing (which fiction is, even fanfiction!). But maybe I am sheltered/naive to how bad/overactive the AI paranoia is out there.

[(Anonymous)]

I just recently (last year) began to understand how em dashes can be used to oomph up my fanfic writing. AI ruining em dashes is annoying AF to me too.

[osterby]

My take on this is that if anyone is stupid enough to mistake my writing for machine generated text over something as idiotic as a punctuation mark I picked up from Victorian authors, they're too dumb for their opinion to matter to me.