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@zoy@merveilles.town

Post #381496

2026-02-21 01:33 UTC

Instead of defending the use of LLMs for polishing up your writing, we could be advocating for unpolished writing. Blog posts with spelling errors and awkwardly repeated words. Emails that sound a bit less warm and professional because you forgot the preamble of "Apologies for the late reply, hope you're well! Thanks for the thing last week". If there's no budget for a human editor, why should the text meet a "professional" (middle class, formally educated) standard? Dyslexic people can just write how they write and people can deal with it. Autistic people can just say what they mean to say and not waste energy on the double empathy gap. We can learn to read for a more inclusive world, instead of wasting the planet's diminishing resources masking our differences.

Replies (24)

  • @reillypascal@hachyderm.io 2026-02-21 01:39

    @zoy@merveilles.town this is what I always think too!

    Open ##2867094

  • @michaelc@scholar.social 2026-02-21 01:54

    @zoy@merveilles.town There are also lots of people who have proofreading/editing skills who are happy to help out if it's a special piece or from an author who is struggling or whatever. Like, most of us don't want to be taken advantage of, but like, gimme an actual cookie and I'm happy to proof while I eat it (or whatever)

    Open ##2867095

  • @a_cubed@mastodon.social 2026-02-21 02:02

    @zoy@merveilles.town @da5nsy@social.coop I teach academic writing to uni students. One of the things I talk about is the level needed for different types of work. I point out that their exercises for me will only be read by an audience of one (me). BUT I'm training them to write well for a much larger audience. When you want/hope hundreds or more will read your work, then not editing it properly is pushing the work of figuring it out onto all those readers, rather than the one writer. Aimed at one reader, rough is fine.

    Open ##2867097

  • @zoy@merveilles.town "we could be advocating for unpolished writing" There is a wonderful true story by @WeirdWriter@caneandable.social which does this beautifully: https://sightlessscribbles.com/the-colonization-of-confidence/

    Open ##2867103

  • @onekind@beige.party 2026-02-21 04:03

    @zoy@merveilles.town 'instead of accommodations we should just eliminate the role of grammar in class distinction.' this is my least favourite leftism (and I'm a socialist). no reform, only radical change allowed! people asking for incremental accommodations are traitors to the revolution! making writing accessible to all is one of the very few good things about LLMs. let the unconfident writers polish their prose and let's target the financial and environmental and industrial injustice and unsustainability of 'AI' directly.

    Open ##2867107

  • @Alsy@theforkiverse.com 2026-02-21 04:20

    @zoy@merveilles.town I agree. Also, AI isn’t making people’s writing better. It’s making it so bland and generic as to be completely unreadable.

    Open ##2867125

  • @JoBlakely@mastodon.social 2026-02-21 05:34

    @zoy@merveilles.town YES!!! Much preferred to burning the world down to garble stolen expertise, to appear ‘nice’.

    Open ##2867126

  • @zoy@merveilles.town I feel like you might enjoy https://multimodal.art/manifesto/

    Open ##2867127

  • @zoy@merveilles.town A relative recently was going on about how much she liked ChatGPT because she had always felt her birthday and Christmas cards were awkward and now they are 'smooth as glass.'

    Open ##2867128

  • @iagondiscord@wetdry.world 2026-02-21 06:13

    @zoy@merveilles.town autistic writing can be coherent or not, long or short, but it always means something Chatbot writing is long and coherent, but ultimately says nothing at all I would rather not waste my time reading bullshit that has nothing to tell me, personally

    Open ##2867129

  • @depereo@mastodon.social 2026-02-21 06:16

    @zoy@merveilles.town I *did* read all of Feersum Endjinn because I wanted to hear what the author had to say. Maybe a little less polish would be nice. We're supposed to be into authenticity now, right?

    Open ##2867130

  • @zoy@merveilles.town cool idea in theory. frequently leads to me eating lots of shit in practice

    Open ##2867131

  • @Furthering@convo.casa 2026-02-21 06:47

    @zoy@merveilles.town I work with writers who are not native speakers. These days, I sincerely cheer them on when they have the courage and determination to express themselves without using the LLM crutch even when they know they'll make errors. Bring on the quirks and the correct-adjacent phrasing. There's so much humanity in it, and I find it absolutely beautiful.

    Open ##2867132

  • @somebody@tech.lgbt 2026-02-21 06:51

    @zoy@merveilles.town Even my formally educated affluent ass finds LLM output repulsive. There is really something so grotesque about the output of a machine that doesn't have the slightest personal affectation. I am proud of my rough edges, because I'm a person. I can write "perfectly" and I have great diction. But a robot can't wax poetic or get upset the way I can. Whether someone uses polished or vulgar language, I submit I can still tell the difference between whether they used a language model to glaze me or they came to me as a person with real desires. I do all that polite crap in my emails, and yet, no machine could predict what I'm going to say because I will never say what would be considered the most lubricious or incontrovertible thing. While I do think that learning to write well is a good thing and that education should be more universal and patient than it is, I completely agree that if we're looking for merit in a post or a submission, that it's never in how much you sound like an automatic sycophant.

    Open ##2867141

  • @gimulnautti@mastodon.green 2026-02-21 06:54

    @zoy@merveilles.town This might even arise naturally, as a mechanism for identifying humans among bots. 🤔

    Open ##2867142

  • @ketmorco@fosstodon.org 2026-02-21 06:54

    @zoy@merveilles.town I like artisanal words and artisanal things.

    Open ##2867143

  • @MamaLake@beige.party 2026-02-21 07:03

    @zoy@merveilles.town this is the human renaissance that I see coming, give us lo fi grammatically incorrect humanness, please!!

    Open ##2867144

  • @tinybird@timetheft.social 2026-02-21 07:12

    @zoy@merveilles.town also, spellchecked/autocorrected writing is often harder to read because it ends up picking *a* correctly-spelt word that's completely the wrong word

    Open ##2867145

  • @adavid@aus.social 2026-02-21 07:14

    @zoy@merveilles.town The most ridiculous outcome of this whole AI-crafted slop, is that no human in a corporate setting will read email. AI excretes an email then, and is summarised by the receving AI and replied to by AI and decisions will be acted upon by AI and .............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

    Open ##2867147

  • @zoy@merveilles.town These authors slowly allow their skills go erode as they use AI more and more. The final stop is when all of "their writing" is just slop owned by the company, which they will pay for while they labor to scrounge for pennies in the facist system. Their creative mind is gone and unable to resist the "Kings" of the world. All for shiny dopamine trap made to be addictive and easy. I would advocate for learning and growing as a writer - taking the time to read and write more. Improve.

    Open ##2867148

  • @mad@freiburg.social 2026-02-21 07:35

    @zoy@merveilles.town A friend of mine trained a LLM on his "personal style of mistakes" so that nobody would notice the difference. 🤷

    Open ##2867149

  • @zoy@merveilles.town a human touch matters. This perceived need to be polished into conformity is sooooooo boring. For everyone. Writing "corrections" erase one's voice(style). Canva graphics (I get it, it's easy) make everything look the same, and corporate. A bulletin board of all the same---- nothing stands out, eyes wash over it. A boring ass AI-designed "approved" looking website blog is boring as hell. Makes me want to NOT keep looking or reading. Sterile. . . . And no, I don't want AI to fake human error and flaw to pass. Gross.

    Open ##2867150

  • @zoy@merveilles.town I once read how boring classical music recordings have become because they are now pimped to perfection. Music with a personal touch/imperfections was a much more approachable experience.

    Open ##2867151

  • @giacomo@snac.tesio.it 2026-02-21 08:44

    @zoy@merveilles.town You'd be surprised to note how many typo I intentionally (and unintentionally 😅) include in my English prose. And I'm literally designing a programming language to be funny for programmers and toxic to #LLM. @tiotasram@kolektiva.social

    Open ##2867152