A Reckoning For Low Quality Content
I Can No Longer Justify Being the Human Equivalent Of ChatGPT
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I haven’t been enjoying writing these posts for 12 months. Maybe longer.
Not that writing has been totally without joy. In fact, once the post is published and in people’s hands, it’s as rewarding as it has ever been — maybe even more so because my reach is broader now. But all the actual writing moments — from deciding what to write about to going over the final edit — those moments have been painful.
It’s like I have to thread a series of needles every time I open up a blank document. That isn’t what I wanted to be doing.
I finally realized that it’s the same feeling I get when external forces lead me to push my business in the wrong direction. It took me a while to figure that out, because I try very hard to not view my writing as a business, so I often disconnect my writing from the basic concepts that I’m very, very good at when it comes to business.
Thus, if I was doing this writing thing like I run a business, I would have made a writing pivot six months ago. And I didn’t. So I’m doing it now.
For instance, this is normally the point in one of my posts where I switch from what’s spilling out of my head to a more common format and structure. But now I realize, somewhat ironically, that the moment I make that switch is where I’ve been making a critical mistake.
And you know what finally got me to realize that?
ChatGPT.
Or rather, the reason why ChatGPT seems as valid a blogging tool as anything else right now.
Every time I see a blog post that’s obviously been ChatGPT’d without crediting ChatGPT (bonus points for using a DALL-E generated author photo), I get angry and sad — not because AI might replace writers who are genuinely trying to say something or help people, but because it was so easy to replace them.
I don’t want to contribute to that cycle, because it’s a valueless proposition — in that it erodes the value of something that was already valuable.
So I’m changing my game.
