2026-10-20 People who hate to write
===================================

Why do people like chat bots to write for them? My personal opinion is
that this is an extension of learning to write in school. Adults keep
telling you what you did wrong. Orthography! Grammar! Messaging! It's
all wrong. And you learn to hate to write. So you only write when it's
necessary, and it's only necessary when things are important: A cover
letter, a job application, a flat you want to rent, a CV you send
along -- and the rejections keep piling up. If you don't write for the
love of writing, then writing is a chore and an endless test with the
world out there to judge you and reject you. And here comes the
machine that writes for you! People read what it wrote and nod their
head and say to themselves, if only I could have written it that well!
So convincing! Such vocabulary. Such fluency! Such elegance. I wish I
had written this. This is what I wanted to write. Send.

I don't see a way out, here. Before AI, people were looking for
example letters to adapt online as well. Now they're using the chat
bot for the same thing.

People who love to write might think, ah, but what hurts is when
people write notes to their family using the chat bot! And when I look
around, I see plenty of people sending me voice messages. Everybody
writes instant messages instead of writing long love letters. To focus
on the few that write their love letters using a chatbot is to be
irate at the smallest minority: The ones who don't like to write, feel
that the must write and have no other option. If they could have sent
a voice memo, they would have. If they could have made a phone call,
they would have.

Every misplaced use of AI, I feel, is a need that we failed to address
before the advent of AI. Now we're using the terrible hammer for all
these problems that remain unresolved. If you love to write and wish
for more people to write in their own voice, we need to figure out how
teach people how to love to write. Or we need to learn how to live in
a world were fewer people have to write. And as long as this tension
is not resolved, the chat bots will do the writing people hate.

Anyway, these thoughts prompted by @Remittancegirl@mstdn.social
writing:

> … it is very easy to feel like one's voice isn't heard and doesn't
> matter. In that case, what does it matter if one's voice is being
> usurped.

I think that's at the heart of it, yes.

#AI