Age of AI: Grotesque Morphs To Taste

Whenever I come across a new AI article it remains unconsciously lodged in what parts were replicated and favored. And it’s not because it’s used to identify AI, however it shows up, but more toward congealing the implicit, evergrowing and unconscious “human-acknowledgement system” brewing between the nodes.

If AI works off of thousands and thousands of corpuses and vaguely knows what works for, in this context, writing, but this could be applicable to any other context whether finance, movies, even video games, or music, biology, theological debates and, well, today one could go to one of these LLMs, do a few queries, and have vaguely good enough proxy to “well-established” and hard-earned opinions in the field. In whatever field.

All of these specialized frontiers have flattened, and we can perpetually feign ignorance, and now we’re all wearing masks because we can, forever. Wearing masks on the thoughts to have, Opinions Validated™, or just mere factoids I can pause our conversation, type in the question, and point to my screen with a smug soyjak face. Oh… you didn’t know about how this obscure symptom actually links to extra ingested estrogen? Hmph, well hmph, it’s right there…

So all I’m doing here is documenting the unconscious reaction happening at least to me, but I would reckon it includes everyone else, everyone else and of course includes you.

Everything that was once tasteful is now somewhat grotesque. Using basic triplets for enunciating lists and all the other hidden indicators you’ll forever be paranoid about because you can’t consciously convey it but feel uneasy regardless. Excessive punchy lines can invoke some sizable amount of nausea nowadays. Depending! Depending on how it all composes, of course.

But that’s what’s effective, and that’s what works, and yet whatever worked before isn’t working because of mere AI-semantic inflation. Straight triplets can be glossed over, along anything else that could’ve, in a mere four years past, been proximity to a clear objective and mind. Someone well intending. I mean, simple, straight sentences are the bread and butter of marketing after all, and if you hoped to make a point, extend a line, change some minds, you’d be well advised to copy it:

Slack™
Where work happens.

But now my way of writing alters. Not out of conscious intention, but because my tastes for what sounds good, to me, has been resolutely crunched into some grotesque aluminum statue. You can still see the remnants of the original, the proper and ordained, but no longer do I devotely listen and note for the classic indicators and well written rules, guidelines. Who enjoys reading every rule broken, a new rule born in each corpse every minute, and run on sentences, not to excess, of the point that’s nestled between a couple of irrelevant clauses? Well, maybe I didn’t, but maybe I do now.

Because all of the prior well guided outlines for any topic and field has been inflated into sure domineering presence, now one finds refuge and even enjoyment in the alternative. And if this is happening to me, surely to others too, then signals of a human still at play are found in the grotesque, and it’s turning into the new taste, and the corpus of this new taste is so tiny against the training libraries so the LLMs can’t latch onto it. Not yet at least.

Even if the LLMs could mimick 2020s grotesque-core, 2030s will have atrocity-core. If atrocity-core doesn’t work, you can find the next frontier mindshare in the Habits Of the Heretic, dethroning The Elements Of Style. New essays will form in cross referential nonsense. The paragraph ceases to mean anything. Layers and layers of violations, complications, but if you’re at the frontier, it shows as mildly amusing and coherent.

Perhaps one day all of these neologisms will be a strange initial stamp of the mind, lost to today’s humanity cohort, even though I think they’re permanent. For it’s harder to imagine the one day where I remain devoted to effective writing only and its tried and trues. It’s more fun to bathe in the mud of semantic garble on occasion that, if you spread it about enough, forms a smile. Or you can ignore it all entirely as a final act of rebellion. It’s effective.

Although at times it seems like all of it has always been ruined even before the Nicene Creed and you’re kidding yourself. Maybe that’s a good thing! Because don’t get me wrong, this is what I love about AI. It destroys everything people thought and were taught to hold dear. That pretense of good writing or proper form. That pretense of the expert in all topics. I can’t help but wonder how many are afraid to express because they “don’t know what’s proper yet.”

In this sense, instead of labelling it “grotesque into taste”, the AI is finally unshackling one’s “grotesque” tastes. No longer does one have to appeal to a “higher mind” or argue some sanctity of form and order, that you’ll learn as you ascend the social creeds and everyone applauds in sync. All decimated by machine learning, disfiguring “art” and other pretense.

Have opinions however you want, use AI or not, engage and ragebait others posting long generated texts for a five word question. Point smugly! Because why not?

There are no more rules now. All prior “expert” impositions, not of truth, not of aesthetic but mere force, are ruined now. I’m bathing serenely in it. Your jurisdiction shrunk to the corner of our rat experiment. I’ll write with the AI cringe, celebrate it even, get my triplets properly aligned man! Call my prose all purple — if you want.

The emperors no longer have clothes.
Write however you want.