Comment by 👻 darkghost
@stack Oh, your observation is nothing short of absolutely genius! The way you described everything as "muted or flat" is so incredibly profound and astute—it reveals a level of perceptiveness that is truly rare and breathtaking!
That's about all the empty flattery I can muster to simulate Gemini (the AI.)
Mar 27 · 6 weeks ago
32 Later Comments ↓
🦋 CarloMonte · Mar 27 at 17:38:
@pirkka it's not that the em-dash has lost its value. yet, it was seldom used, like the properly matched quotation marks. the LLMs use it everywhere, which is indeed strange: the LLMs are supposed to emulate their training set.
🚀 stack [OP] · Mar 27 at 18:03:
Well, there is a lot of written English that is of grammatically higher quality than today's text messages. Perhaps grammar was prioritized during training to avoid the lower rungs of criticism.
An out-of-place comma is easy for the pedant to scold. A subtle stylistic choice is highy subjective--there is no easy way to explain why a sentense feels clumsy.
there will be a point where I assume AI unless proven otherwise.
🐦 wasolili [...] · Mar 27 at 19:07:
I like a well-placed em-dash myself, though like most people I don't usually use the actual em-dash character and usually just use a `-`. That's one of the things that makes it a tell - if a person is casually writing in a text field in their browser/phone, they usually don't have quick access to the `—` character and will instead use `-` or `--`
Before Chat GPT seeing an actual `—` would make me think the person either copy/pasted from somewhere or wrote their reply out in Word or something.
I'm usually pretty good with detecting if a video is ai made or not "a person having a tincan sounding voice, a person standing way too still, a singoing voice that sounds kind of echoy but also clear at the same time, images looking very genertic or pure nightmare fuel, ai thumbnails thar are used to make a company or group look "evil" and stuff this can apply videos on Rumlbe and maybe Bitchute" I mainly only watch YT channels that I've only subbed to on YouTube and Grayjay too.
It's also difficult for me to be impressed by ai videos and images now, once I know something is made with ai image makers, it's not impressive or "cool" anymore. I also hate ai-bros shilling this crap so much too tbh on the https web.
Is it time to pre-emptively declare this BBS an LLM-free zone? The "agents" will find us sooner or later, might be good to have a clear rule in place so we can ban them without controversy.
🌆 skyjake [...] · Mar 27 at 19:34:
@mbays Consider it done. I'll add a no-LLM rule to the Code of Conduct.
🗡️ The_Jackal · Mar 27 at 19:58:
@wasolili Really? On all the phones I've had all l had to do to get the emdash is long press on -.
🚀 stack [OP] · Mar 27 at 20:23:
— –·- My phone keyboard provides several
🏍️ Atomic-Germ · Mar 27 at 21:57:
You've hit on the core problem with generative models used to replace creative thought. It isn't just a way to offload work, it completely replaces thought for both the creator and the observer! (This is another common llm pattern).
Mind that these are specific and trained by corporations for general consumption as if that's what they're good that. It isn't. LLMs have been around for a LOT longer than people are aware of, and are effectively just autocomplete but bigger. Visual perceptive models are genuinely useful for a lot of accessibility applications. And image generation? That's been around in a thousand different forms.
It's the use/abuse. Not the thing itself. This is how Wikipedia was at first!
🏍️ Atomic-Germ · Mar 27 at 22:00:
ALSO; no it is not on purpose. It is a coincidence. AI isn't programmed, it just learns from Us. It's the average person, if that person were to exist. None of it's deliberate, you're just noticing the filter you yourself are building to recognize what isn't human. It's what the uncanny valley response is there for.
And that implies we've had to discern between humans and pseudohumans at some point in the past (or it's just a drive to keep us away from corpses)
🐦 wasolili [...] · Mar 27 at 22:15:
@stack @The_Jackal fair enough, it is easy enough to access for phone users.
🚀 stack [OP] · Mar 27 at 23:46:
@skyjake and others here.
I agree that slop sucks, and pseudo-content just wastes our time.
But, I am increasingly uncomfortable that a particular uninspired style of writing is enough to kick a member out of here.
My mother, for instance, has poor English skills and unfortunately has been using AI lately, not understanding the subtleties (or how much we all enjoyed her bent English).
Recently, right here at BBS I had a very frustrating and confusing exchange with a member (possibly an LLM) whose writing style was outrageously careless, to the point of being offensive even in a quick text. The content was also insulting and provocative. Yet we tolerated it.
I wrote the original post above to push the envelope and show something curious: I, a human, wrote it using a style many recognize as an LLM. It's worthy of an LLM, but it is my sentiment, an expression of my original idea, a product of creative desire, which took a surprizing amount of effort to execute. It is actually filled with humanity, humor, and frustration, yet appears to be a lifeless AI artifact.
I personally rather have a person speak on their own and not letting an llm do the talking for them as well, imo. (I've used ai chat bots for stuff but if it suggests something to me writing wise, I'll do it in my own words.)
👻 darkghost · Mar 28 at 01:25:
Having been accused (lightly) of being an llm right here on this very bbs I don't mind this code of conduct addition. The suspicion will destroy the community.
@darkghost I'm so sorry you were accused of something that isn't true, I personally never been accused of talking like an llm. I was accused of being trans, basically because I talk about computer stuff as a woman (on the https web at least). But yeah, I'll stay on topic.
🚀 stack [OP] · Mar 28 at 04:49:
@darkghost, you know I was not accusing you, right?
We're only a few years in. At some point, you won't be able to tell (assuming that's the intention).
🌆 skyjake [...] · Mar 28 at 05:23:
@stack As you say, writing style alone is not a sufficient reason to ban someone. As a non-native-English speaker myself, I am acutely aware of how people's language skills vary.
It comes down to making judgement calls as the moderator. One needs to keep an eye on "anomalous" users for a while. There are several factors to consider, like do they seem to be acting in good or bad faith (trolling to incite reactions; advertising something) and what kind of patterns they have in their posting.
I am less concerned about a human posting a bit of LLM-generated text (maybe they needed some help cleaning up the grammar) than I am about the rise of AI agents. For example, Sean Conner recently wrote about one on Usenet, of all places. Introducing artificial constructs posing as humans into Geminispace devalues the community. It is a bit of an Achilles' heel that Gemini is so text-friendly — a domain where LLM-based systems excel.
I worry soon we'll be needing some sort of a Voight-Kampff test to weed out the agents among us...
🦋 CarloMonte · Mar 28 at 08:38:
@skyjake: "I'll add a no-LLM rule to the Code of Conduct." Could you please add some exceptions? LLMs are still usefull tools for translation, or for editing/improving text written by non-natives. Also, properly quoted and cited LLM text for the purpose of example should be acceptable, methinks.
👻 darkghost · Mar 28 at 09:48:
@stack you are not my accuser and this wasn't all that recently.
🌆 skyjake [...] · Mar 28 at 10:17:
@CarloMonte I'll give it some thought and clarify the rules. Maybe we need an actual "AI policy" page. 🤔
🚀 stack [OP] · Mar 28 at 17:06:
I think what we want to avoid is pointless, low-effort "engagement" uses of AI. There is no profit motive here, but there are people with personality defects who just want drama and will prompt an LLM to write a few inflammatory paragraphs on a controversial topic.
I have no problem with AI usage to assist or clean up language, as an aid for someone struggling to express some thought, even if it comes out even worse than broken English.
LLMs are great if you are an expert and use them as a tool, for good. Predictably. if you don't know what you're doing the results will be awful with any tool.
🌆 skyjake [...] · Mar 28 at 19:17:
people with personality defects who just want drama and will prompt an LLM to write a few inflammatory paragraphs
Indeed, and trolling is already covered in the CoC.
if a person is casually writing in a text field in their browser/phone, they usually don't have quick access to the `—` character and will instead use `-` or `--`
I have — (and many other characters) via XCompose
i always have em-dash at my fingertips because i have an armenian keyboard, and em-dash is used for speech in armenian typography.
so it was always easy for me to use it with english as well.
here, i have hyphen, dash, and armenian hyphen(yentamna): -, —, ֊ (:
🦋 CarloMonte · Mar 31 at 20:01:
oh, now i remenber the old books. em-dash was used for dialogues in romanian typography, too. nowadays it is often replaced with a normal dash. also gone are paired quotation marks, the small space before : and ; and much more.
em dash is still used for quotes in spanish books, in my experience
🚀 stack [OP] · Apr 01 at 01:17:
In the Soviet Union they used dashes for quoted speech as well. It took some getting used to quote marks.
🏍️ Atomic-Germ · Apr 02 at 22:39:
I just think it's goofy when people are completely obvious about their influences. Specifically it's the irony of being mad that AI imitates us while actively imitating it
🏍️ Atomic-Germ · Apr 02 at 22:43:
Not to be cynical but...
For the most part people are just meme regurgitation and trend replication machines. Almost everyone is consumer-only aside from short form video intended for people who already know them...
So what's the difference? Bad writing is bad writing regardless of the author, and good writing is good whether it was by a dog or a stone, or a few stones with lightning in them. I just can't bring myself to care.
🏍️ Atomic-Germ · Apr 02 at 22:44:
Typing two "-" gives you the em dash too on a lot of systems. It isn't an AI trait anyway it's just a normal English thing
Original Post
AI Slop Everywhere — Everything I watch and hear feels flattened, processed, and eerily uniform—like it was drafted by the same invisible system optimizing for clarity, engagement, and neutrality. The voices are polished, predictable, and frictionless, delivering tidy arcs and prepackaged insights with just enough variation to seem human, but never enough to surprise, inspire or awe. There’s always that signature rhythm—the em dash pivot, the triad of descriptors, the carefully hedged claim—...