If you aren’t going to really write something, I’m not really going to read it.
This was a reaction I captured on a card a couple of weeks ago. I can’t even remember what spurred it; an extra long newsletter here, a suspicious long LinkedIn post.
But definitely one of those pieces from 2025 that demonstrated exactly why generating many words is easy, but writing is hard.
There’s multiple layers to my expression of frustration too.
Firstly, there’s the conscious rejection of reading things people proudly declare they’ve been using an LLM to write.
But then I’m beginning there’s a more subconscious layer to it too.
My brain seems to slip off the greasy surface of long and winding texts, skidding along the sheen of some borrowed machine, until my attention falls off completely.
Which raises another question for me; if someone is so unsure of their own writing skills, how do they then put so much faith in their editing abilities?