Britney Was Right.
First, People Are Great
I recently received a sweet email from a long-time YouTube subscriber of mine. She’s been a fan since I first started dumping thoughts on the internet, back in 2019.
It’s bittersweet, because it reminds me of this weird duality (which I will explain in a mo). Here’s a snippet. This particular fan is from Ukraine, and at the start of the war moved her entire family to Poland, where they’d have some safety and sanity. (Her husband is in his 40s and able-bodied, and would no doubt have been hit by a bomb-drone on the front lines of the meat grinder by now if they stayed, but I digress.)
She actually apologized to me for not reading my work sooner. That’s nuts, and she’s awesome (mild spoiler here, so if you haven’t yet read SPACE PEW PEW, be warned):
I love writing. I love being creative. I love the fans that enjoy my work. An email out of the blue from a fan who I haven’t connected with in more than a year really puts all of that into focus. This brings me a mountain of joy.
She doesn’t care if there’s AI on my cover.
She doesn’t care if I take a long time between writing projects.
She knows me, knows I enjoy what I do with a lot of passion, respects how I do it, and loves my writing.
As great as everything surrounding writing and fans can be, my biggest adoration is saved for the friends I’ve made while putting myself out there:
Seriously. How can you not cherish this crew?
, , - these are my people!Yet, with each passing day I’m loathing the “Writing Community” (capitalized to highlight the amorphous massive entity it describes) more and more. I have this increasing GenX desire to give everyone the finger and go live in a cabin alone with a hoodie and some sunglasses.
Come to think of it, Kurt was right, too:
If only I didn’t have this urge to share stories reflecting all of the things I’ve experienced.
Damn you, human experience *shakes fist*.
Mind you, my disdain for the Writing Community isn’t due to people like my friends. It’s due to the cliques, the groups, the “mobs” and the “everyones” that Kurt’s eloquently highlights making their home in this particular neighborhood.
Second, “Communities” Kinda Suck
I'm seeing a weird kind of "mob creep" happening in the writing community, watching these toxic high-horse folk try to weasel their way back into the spotlight. We've had "Sensitive Content" arguments, then straight-up Trigger Warning fights.
And hey, if you use 'em, good for you, doesn't affect me, don't care.
But now the mob sees another opening and is promoting the idea of "No AI" disclaimers. This discourse is becoming more common, and it’s getting more insane.
I mean, look at this totally real image, which was definitely not AI, illustrating how crazy things have become that we’re now stating that food hasn’t been artificially created and processed with any use of AI during the entire production lifecycle!
Anyway.
Purity mob gonna purity mob.
And for the record, personally? I don’t give a shit if you use AI to write a book. The readers will decide. I don’t need to decide for them. If it’s a garbage book, it’s a garbage book. If it’s (miraculously) a great book, it’s a great book. I don’t think it’s possible for it to be great (not for my chosen genre, and I’ll show you exactly why below).
THE WRITING IS THE DISCLAIMER.
However …
The toxic implication courtesy of the mob is that if you DON'T include the disclaimer, you're automatically guilty. So a bunch of terrified writers all raise their hands and join in with the bleating idiots promoting the latest and greatest virtue signal because they're afraid of a sales hit - courtesy of this super-supportive “Indie Community” cancel mob.
And you know what?
It works.
Then comes the mad dash to analyze someone's writing, look for "tells" which can be invented to make anyone guilty of anything. Like the po-po pulling you over because they “thought” you didn’t have your seat belt on and the next thing you know you’re cuffed on the hood and your “threatening” yorkie has a 9mm round stuck in his brain courtesy of a SWAT team firing from the high ground of their armored mil-spec Hummer H1.
The mob feeds at the slightest whiff of chum, and when people get tired of the crap and rightfully call out the nonsense, they find another purity angle to hyperventilate about, create another purity test over it, etc.
Are they representative of the entire Writing Community?
Nope. But they’re entrenched in it. It’s a safe home for people who enjoy echo chambers.
I've now experienced 1-star no-review bombs because of my stances on this sort of thing, particularly AI use on a cover. How do I know they are bombs due to my opinion?
They were published on the same day I make my opinion known, and they’re my only 1-star reviews.
This is all a stupid game, and I choose not to play.
But the bigger question is why does the mob do this, and why does the mob care? It’s because they found a pressure point they can leverage.
Have a look at this chart, and I’ll explain …
This organization took to 1.8 million website visitors on a plethora of blog posts. Above some posts, they had a disclaimer that it was “AI Written.”
Sure enough, posts with the disclaimer had an average read time of 1:21.
Human posts? 2:36.
The kicker?
EVERY POST WAS WRITTEN BY A HUMAN.
There was zero AI content. Only the disclaimer. Yet people were convinced.
The seed was planted, and the engagement was killed.
This is why the mob exists, and this is what they’re after. They don’t care about anything except for sinking someone with which they disagree. They don’t give a rats ass about fellow indie authors, I’d posit that they don’t give a rats ass about AI use, either. They’re salty cowards. That’s it. It’s about the purity test, and that they come out on the “right” side of it. There’s no virtue. There’s no “standing up for the little guy.”
It’s about power, period.
There may be zero AI used, they’ll accuse it anyway. They may disagree with the author’s political stance, they’ll throw the accusation regardless. Since the “tells” are unreliable at best, and straight up imagined at worse makes no difference. The accusation sticks, and as very clearly shown in the above image, the damage will be done.
So if you happen to be part of said mob and enjoy your games of shutting out voices with which you disagree, or who choose to use AI as a tool for images, outlining, website, etc., I have a simple request:
Ya’ll can go aggressively pound your doody-hole with a rusty wire-brush.
Sideways.
Do I write with AI? Nah. AI is absolute dogshit at humor, and I'm not. Plus, I really enjoy the process. I don't need or want a ghost writer, man or machine. Nobody’s coming up with what I’m coming up with not because I’m some kind of super uber especially talented writer …
… but because I write humor from my experiences. It’s my fingerprint. My voice. My style. It cannot get replicated. I don’t tell jokes, I tell stories that reach into the deepest corners of my head and my heart, grab some pain I’ve experienced, then throw it on the page as a gag, because that’s how I cope to avoid sinking into yet another depressive episode.
Want to know how great AI is at humor? Try this …
Dear Lord, that’s awful.
Meanwhile, a few nights ago I was lying in bed, and this gag popped into my brain, which I will absolutely be rolling into one of my next WIPs, so you cannot steal it:
“I like my women like I like my raccoons. Cute, trashy, and eager to steal shit.”
Now let’s look up “I like my women like I like my raccoons” on the Google Machine and see if that joke exists:
Well, no. AI scolds me for being a dehumanizing piece of shit woman-hater even though the punchline wasn’t in the search, and you get ONE result across billions of sites and … the comment doesn’t even exist on the page.
By the way, I don’t hate women. I wrote the book on being vulnerable and connecting with the beautiful lady in your life, remember?
(Also, you should go buy it, it’s hysterical with … you know … actual comedy.)
In Closing …
Here we are. The last gasp of relevancy from a mob acting like aging hippies in a brave new world, walking funny on account of wire-brush handles sticking out of their ass.
Use AI. Or don’t. Write stories. Or don’t. Create art. Or don’t.
Anyway, as I said in the beginning of this article …
People are great!
You do have a way with words, David!
I have been on the fringes of what would become the Indie writing community since 2000 (I had to edit that because my brain doesn't want it to have been 25 years), and then up to my neck in it since 2010 when I first worked on becoming published. That worked out so well I published my own work starting in 2011 and have been doing it ever since. This sort of thing? The mobs, the cancellations, the bullies and the abuse? Have been there all along. You are taking exactly the right tack to avoid it. Don't bend, don't bow the neck (they'll just cut your head off) and don't back down.
On the other hand, there are great people in this realm. You've found some on Substack and probably on X (I'm not really active there, bad for the blood pressure, you know). I've been writing with a group of them over at the Mad Genius Club for well over a decade, with the mission of giving new writers the tools to succeed and to do their own publishing (and we've been 'canceled' for evading the gatekeepers over there, too). Helping one another out and fighting back to back against the mob. It's what we do.
Bravo, sir. Bravo!
Crabs in a bucket. 🫤
Lots of folks can't compete, so they trash talk anyone they think of as competition. 🤷♂️Thanks for posting this, David.