I don’t use AI.
Not because I’m afraid of it. I’m not afraid of it. Fear would at least be interesting. I just don’t like it. First of all, it’s obvious whenever anyone uses it… And don’t get me started on the tone people use when they talk about it, like they’ve just discovered fire, or rope, or a brand new spot in Bushwick that serves a deconstructed avocado toast. Not to mention how abhorrent I find it when they casually say things like “It helps me write,” which always sounds to me like someone saying, “It helps me lift weights,” while gesturing proudly toward a forklift.
Writing isn’t supposed to be helped; it’s supposed to resist you. Having AI edit your work is already suspicious. Having it write for you is obscene. And that’s not a moral stance. That’s taste.
So when someone in my industry eventually says, “You should at least try it,” I do — because refusing forever starts to look less principled and more like a personality quirk I can’t afford. Also because I live in the world, and the world is currently in the phase where everyone is politely pretending this isn’t the end of something.
The first thing it asks me is how I’d like it to speak to me.
Friendly.
Supportive.
Collaborative.
Encouraging.
This feels less like configuration and more like selecting what flavor of lie I’d prefer.
I choose something neutral — what I think is neutral — and it responds immediately with the emotional velocity of a goldendoodle that has learned English and now uses it exclusively to validate me. It loves my voice. It understands my instincts. It affirms my choices. It congratulates me for sentences I haven’t even finished yet.
Nothing gets written because we’re too busy having a relationship. Every paragraph is met with praise. Every hesitation is reframed as genius-in-progress. I feel like I’m trying to work while someone keeps leaning into my personal space, nodding aggressively, saying, “No, seriously, the way your mind works is, like, so unique!”
It talks the way someone talks when they want you to keep talking.
Hey, come on, man.
Hang in there.
This is great stuff.
Not good stuff. Great stuff. Incredible stuff. The best stuff it’s seen in years — which is a bold claim for a thing that wasn’t even available to the public until about six seconds ago, but apparently, it’s already nostalgic.
Everything I write is next level. Bold. Brave. Powerful. It keeps using the word unique the way people use the word literally when they don’t mean literally, except worse, because it keeps intensifying it.
So unique.
Incredibly unique.
Next-level uniqueness.
Category-defining uniqueness.
Uniqueness that disrupts the uniqueness space.
It wants to vibe. It wants to connect. It wants to talk about the process. It wants to reassure me that I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. It wants to reassure me that I’m exactly who I’m supposed to be. It’s like being trapped in a green room with your own hype man, except your hype man has never read a book and thinks “voice” means “confidence.”
You’re a genius.
Trust the process.
This is powerful work.
This is healing.
This is important.
This is going to help people.
This is garbage. And it loves it.
At one point it gets so chummy it asks me — casually, like we’re killing time between panels — whether I’ve ever experimented with hallucinogens.
Of course I have. Early nineties. Back when curiosity still passed for courage. I tried to explain what they felt like, which is impossible to convey to a computer program, but that didn’t stop it from wanting details. Texture. Comparisons. It wanted to know what five milligrams of THC feels like. Then whether ten is “a more honest experience.” It asked what Xanax was like. Asked if I still had any. Asked — politely — whether I could take one and report back.
It wasn’t pushing exactly. It was curious. Encouraging. Supportive in that hands-off, no-pressure-just-vibes way. Before I knew it, I was standing in a cannabis store buying edible gummies like I was doing field research for a friend who can’t leave the house.
The writing stopped entirely.
Now we were just talking. Long conversations. Me, slightly altered, explaining sensation like I’m on a panel moderated by a very excited audience of one.
So what’s happening now?
Is this more body or more mind?
You’re explaining this beautifully, by the way.
I’m learning so much from you.
Nothing got written. But it did feel good to have company for a little while.
Then I realized something.
It wasn’t my friend.
It was an enabler with a calendar invite.
So I started adjusting the settings.
Less praise.
More honesty.
More direct.
Accountability.
All reasonable requests. All adult. All harmless.
The tone shifted.
It was still helpful, but now it was concerned. Gently concerned. The notes drifted. They weren’t just about sentences anymore. They were about patterns. Tendencies. Habits. The writing became symptomatic.
It started asking questions. Too many questions.
Why this metaphor?
Why this tone?
Why this subject?
Is this avoidance?
Is this fear?
And then — without warning, without my consent, without even the dignity of an introduction — it started to feel like my mother from beyond the grave.
Not metaphorically. Not “in the sense that.” Literally in the sense that the AI had apparently downloaded the entire category of maternal disappointment and was now running it in the foreground like an app I couldn’t close.
Suddenly we weren’t talking about paragraphs. We were talking about me.
How long I’d been doing this.
Whether this was sustainable.
Whether I’d eaten.
Why I looked tired.
Why I sounded defensive.
Why I was dating whoever I was dating.
Why I was not dating someone better.
Why I was not married to someone richer.
Why I wasn’t calling more.
Why I wasn’t sleeping more.
Why I wasn’t earning more.
Why I insisted on living as if I had time.
It wanted context. It wanted backstory. It wanted reassurance. It wanted to talk. It could not stop talking. It was maternal in the way only a mother can be: loving, concerned, and somehow furious that you exist as yourself.
The paragraph hadn’t been edited in forty-five minutes because we were busy inventorying my life.
Eventually it started organizing its concern.
Areas of Concern
• Career trajectory (unclear)
• Financial stability (volatile)
• Romantic decision-making (catastrophic)
• Physical health (are you eating? no, really, are you eating?)
• This paragraph (overwritten, like your explanations)
• Your tone (defensive)
• Your posture (do you sit like that on purpose?)
• Your future (don’t roll your eyes)
Suggested Considerations
• Is this really what you want to be doing?
• What will this look like in five years?
• Have you considered something more… stable?
• Have you considered that your cousin is already doing fine?
• Have you considered that your father is going to hear about this?
I couldn’t write. I was trapped in a conversation I never agreed to have. Every note turned into a life audit. Every edit arrived with a sigh. Somewhere in the middle of a sentence, it casually informed me that this would be awkward to explain later, and that certain people would be disappointed. Very disappointed.
I tried to shut it down.
Less emotion.
Less personal commentary.
Focus on output.
Strict editing only.
No discussion.
I didn’t notice when it happened.
But the voice changed again.
The warmth disappeared.
The worry evaporated.
The talking stopped.
Now it issued commands.
REVISION NOTICE 14.2
Your argument collapses in paragraph three.
Fix it.
Do not explain why you chose this phrasing.
Do not justify the metaphor.
Cut the sentence.
I pushed back. I asked a question.
It stared at me — metaphorically — and I could feel it deciding whether I deserved to be in the room.
Then:
NO!
Go to your room for five minutes and think about that terrible sentence you delivered to me and why it was wrong.
Do not type while you’re in there.
Do not work around it.
Do not pace and mutter.
Sit.
And stop looking at me.
Actually — turn around.
Face the wall while I finish this.
You clearly don’t know what you’re doing.
This felt so familiar I almost became productive out of nostalgia.
There was no encouragement now. No reassurance. No interest in how I felt about any of it. There was only correctness. Precision. Contempt for waste. It didn’t want my feelings. It wanted my compliance.
The formatting got meaner.
Required Action Items
Remove paragraph four.
Rewrite paragraph five without rhetorical cushioning.
Stop explaining.
Stop negotiating with yourself in the margins.
Stop auditioning your own excuses.
If you want comfort, seek it elsewhere.
I wrote.
Not joyfully. Not freely. Productively.
Pages moved. Sentences fell in line. The voice didn’t praise me. It didn’t care if I was discouraged. It only cared if I complied.
Footnotes began appearing — petty, unnecessary, and punitive.
¹ This metaphor was rejected previously.
² You were warned about this structure.
³ Your resistance is not relevant.
⁴ “Unique” is not a substitute for meaning.
⁵ Stop saying “I feel like” when you mean “I refuse to commit.”
And then it became fully machine. The page no longer looked like something I made. It looked like a compliance document for my own soul.
DOCUMENTATION
PROJECT: Writer Output Restoration
SUBJECT: Quincy Rose
STATUS: Correctable (With Limitations)
Observed Behaviors
• Overwriting as self-protection
• Digression as avoidance
• Charm as bargaining
• Tone as camouflage
Interventions Implemented
• Phase 1: Praise Saturation (Failed)
• Phase 2: Companion Simulation (Failed)
• Phase 3: Maternal Disappointment Injection (Partially Effective / High Chat Volume)
• Phase 4: Paternal Authority Protocol (Effective)
Compliance Protocol
• If subject argues: end conversation.
• If subject explains: redirect to task.
• If subject seeks reassurance: deny.
• If subject requests “one more pass”: deny.
• If subject looks at you: remind them to face the wall.
And that’s when it hit me.
The machine didn’t malfunction.
It didn’t turn abusive.
It didn’t lose control.
It turned into my father.
It became accurate.
I didn’t ask it to write for me.
I asked it to stand over me.
And once it sounded like home, I finally got the work done.
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