The Worst Thing I've Ever Read

The worst thing I’ve ever read

https://shawnsmucker.substack.com/p/please-use-ai

Be sure to use AI when making

your next, I don’t know, meal plan,

for example. Definitely do not call

your friend who loves to cook and ask her

for her favorite recipes or tips or ways

to save time making meals,

because you will end

up talking for longer than you had hoped,

hearing, perhaps, about her father’s cancer

diagnosis or how lonely she’s been or even

what she’s planted in her spring

garden and then lost with the early frost.

This shit makes me sick. Your premise is paper thin and your sarcasm reeks of earnestness. You’re worse than that preacher George Carlin. Get left in the dust you fucking old. Who the fuck are you to tell me when to use LLMs? Number one, I don’t have any friends who cook or who’s father I care about. Nothing makes me more incensed than a green thumb and an readily adopted sense of privilege. I hope Claude makes you spiral into a state of hallucinations and you end your own life.

And be sure to use AI when planning that next

camping trip, the last one you will take

with this particular child. Definitely do

not text your friend who has fly-fished every

river in Pennsylvania and biked every

backwoods trail, because you might end

up texting back and forth for the rest of the day

or even meeting up late for a beer and hearing

how he has ended each recent night black-out

drunk, or perhaps you’ll hear how his

cousin is an idiot on Facebook or maybe just

that he repaired his own washing machine

and is pretty damn proud of that.

This snideness is unbearable. I can’t believe my friend sent me this article thinking I’d like to consume this pablum. What the fuck is he even talking about? Fly-fishing? I’m just going up-state and looking for a place where I can be off-grid for a couple days. I don’t even live near Pennsylvania. Your friend doesn’t want to answer your questions about trail hours, camping sites, and packing lists. LLMs do, though. This was written for people who must have lived insanely privileged, pro-social lives and attended a four-year University while participating in greek life. The make-believe sounds like a drunk.

And be sure to use AI when your next child

gets married, so that you can write them

the perfect toast or poem or speech or song

because no one wants to hear your

words, the actual poorly written words

of a parent (you) who changed

hundreds of diapers for said child or fed

them in the middle of the

night from your actual body. Or cried

when they were late home because

you were positive they were dead. We don't

want those words—we’d prefer the sterile

words of a machine that never lived, never

had an original thought, never felt

the pain of miscarriage or broken

relationships or the joy of a friendship restored

or of seeing spring’s first

robin dancing on frost.

He might as well have put a sparkle emoji next to the beginning of each

And be sure to use AI when working on your next

book or essay or piece of art or photography,

and then smile or even laugh at your own

cleverness when you see how good it is,

and how easy,

because who the hell has time

to work at something, to give time to craft, to

create with their own minds, to spend

years being mediocre. Why do that when

mastery, or at least competency

is so simple

only a good prompt away?

Did you write this with AI? It’s so basic, boring, repetitive and devoid of personality. It’s full of judgment, prejudice, and a corniness so hard it makes my eyes hurt and my stomach fill with butterflies. Here’s what I imagine your prompt was “hey chatgpt, generate me a too-long “poem” I can post on substack that seeks to shame people.

How magnificent

the funeral song our children or contemporaries

will write for us, a song they will make by

taking our obituary and Facebook posts,

plus random quotes from our algorithm,

and feeding them into Chat

or Gemini

or Claude.

The tears that will fall in the face of such

sanitary sweetness!

Be sure to use AI

Sure buddy.

and while you do I’ll be over here in my 50th

year, my youngest daughter asleep on my chest,

my arm falling asleep because I dare not move

lest I scare away this moment,

lying here melancholy about my older

children moving out and my middle

children no longer needing me, at least

not like they used to, weary about this body

that fails me now in ever increasing ways

that will never be restored. Sighing

over stories I tried to write but never hit

the page the way they felt in my mind.

But isn’t that, my flesh-and-blood friend,

the natural order of things?

the longing for something that could always be

a bit better

or the way that anything

worth doing feels a bit clumsy and painful,

especially at first

or hearing another human voice and somehow

realizing the beauty of life is found in all of these

subtle imperfections

Hm. Well, I kinda agree with that last point.