Retro Revival Series
So F*cked Up Yet Fascinating: Writing That’s Real, Relatable & AI-Free
Stop Optimizing For Readership and Embrace Being Messy and Unprofitable
You’ll likely find errors in my writing, its a feature, not a bug.
Let me rewind back a bit.
Much like how corn syrup quietly infiltrated every product in your local grocery store until Americans became walking high-fructose vessels and perfect subjects for the drug Ozempic, AI content has colonized your brain with such stealth that you’re now incapable of distinguishing between what you actually think and what a language model statistically determined would make you click, share, and mindlessly nod along to.
Fuck around with TikTok and it finds out! It knows you!
In a single year, the average American would be exposed to tens of thousands of AI-generated articles per year, which is exactly the number required to completely eradicate any remaining spark of original thought from the human brain.
Voila!
The more you read and react, your thoughts go into the giant logic machine and fully outsourced to AI which thinks you should buy more sh*t you don’t need.
Engagement-Industrial Complex
I think we’ve probably spent a decade or two watching human content creators and marketing factories perfect the dark arts of neuromarketing.
Back at the London School of Economics, we called it “Behavioral Economics,” which was the polite academic euphemism for “commercial psyops and brain hijacking.”
Now, watching AI churn out content that’s weaponized these principles into digital carpet-bombing, I realize the other students were just fucking amateur arsonists playing with matches.
Remember when every headline became “This One Weird Trick” or “You Won’t Believe What Happens Next”?
That was just the warm-up act, humans testing the psychological warfare techniques that would eventually become codified into algorithmic law. We willingly A/B tested our way into digital dystopia, one BuzzFeed quiz at a time.
But now?
The modern internet landscape has evolved beyond those quaint human-operated content mills where sad people in cubicles cranked out articles like “17 Celebrities Who Have Surprisingly Large Foreheads” for fourteen hours a day.
Those poor bastards sitting in the glow of flourescent lights have been replaced by language models that don’t require bathroom breaks, healthcare benefits, or the occasional existential crisis about contributing to the collapse of meaningful discourse.
We’ve commoditized content so thoroughly that it’s now worth less than the electricity required to generate it.
What we’re witnessing isn’t just the industrialization of thought — it’s the wholesale liquidation sale of human expression.
AI systems have mechanized and supercharged every psychological trick previously deployed by digital marketing sociopaths with terrifying efficiency.
There is a formula. Intro hook, bold subheadings, strategic use of numbers, sprinkle in some “you won’t believe what happened next,” conclude with a question to boost comment counts. Rinse. Repeat. Profit.
AI can optimize keyword density. Every AI writer knows that Google’s algorithm is the One True God, and keyword stuffing is its sacrament. Why write “dogs” once when you can write “canine companions for dog lovers seeking the best dogs for dog ownership” instead?
AI has discovered that humans respond to certain emotional triggers with the predictability of lab rats. Outrage, nostalgia, and fear drive engagement metrics through the roof. Why inform when you can inflame?
The result?
A communication space where everything is starting to sound the same — a beige wasteland of competently written, algorithmically optimized, soulless drivel that slides off your brain like hot butter pressed between someone’s butt cheeks.
That visual might be gross, but AI maybe too constrained to come up with something so demented and gross.
When Perfection Becomes the Enemy of Humanity
The irony of our current predicament is exquisite. AI-generated content is technically “perfect”, grammatically flawless, optimized for readability, structured for maximum retention, and carefully calibrated to push all your psychological buttons.
Yet it’s this very perfection that makes it so fucking boring and predictable.
It’s like listening to a technically perfect piano performance by someone who’s never experienced joy, sorrow, or a decent orgasm.
Sure, every note is correct, but who gives a shit?
The problem isn’t that AI writes badly — it’s that it writes too well, in exactly the wrong way. It’s optimized for metrics rather than meaning, for clicks rather than connection.
It’s the same as those Instagram influencers who all visit the same locations, strike the same poses, and use the same filters until they become a homogenous mass of attractive beige.
Wabi-Sabi
The Japanese concept of Wabi-Sabi comes into play, looking disheveled but charming, like that friend who always has a cream-colored oil stain on their shirt but tells the best stories at parties.
For those who slept through Philosophy 101, Wabi-Sabi embraces imperfection, transience, and incompleteness. It finds beauty in the flawed, the weathered, and the worn. It’s the cracked tea bowl that’s been mended with gold, more beautiful for having been broken.
In a world of AI perfection, embracing Wabi-Sabi in our writing might be the only way to reclaim our humanity.
The Beauty of the Rough Draft
AI never shows its work — unless you ask it to. It presents perfectly polished prose on the first try. But human writing — real writing — often begins as a beautiful mess.
Our false starts, tangents, and awkward phrasings reveal the authentic process of thought.
The Value of Weird Tangents
AI stays ruthlessly on topic because algorithms have determined that’s what maximizes engagement.
But the best human writers follow their curiosity down strange rabbit holes, making unexpected connections that no algorithm would ever prioritize.
I would deliberately add grammatically errors to act as a watermark of my work. Feel free to find it.
I call these “naunces”.
The Power of Genuine Voice
Every AI writer can mimic a casual, conversational tone, but none of them actually has skin in the game.
They have no real experiences, no personal stakes, no moments where they got drunk and made bad decisions that nevertheless taught them something vital about existence.
Write Like An Imperfect Human Being
If we want to reclaim our digital spaces from the beige tsunami of AI-generated content, we need to embrace our messy, glorious humanity.
Embrace Your Weird
Whatever bizarre specificity you bring to writing — your obsession with medieval beekeeping techniques, your collection of 1970s blender repair manuals, your highly detailed opinions about the evolution of shoelace technology — let that freak flag fly.
No AI can replicate your particular brand of strange.
Show Your Scars
AI writing is sanitized of genuine struggle because algorithms have determined that aspirational content performs better than honest accounts of failure.
Fuck that!
Write about your failures, your setbacks, the times you were utterly wrong. Paradoxically, nothing is more universally relatable than specific accounts of personal struggle.
Break the Formula
AI excels at formulas, templates and perfectly succinct bulleted outlines.
Three-act structures, hero’s journeys, problem-agitation-solution frameworks — algos have mastered them all.
So break the rules.
Start at the end.
Put the conclusion in the middle.
Abandon your point entirely to talk about something more interesting that just occurred to you.
Be structurally chaotic in a way that no engagement-optimizing algorithm would ever allow.
Policing grammar? Phuc it!
You forgot a comma, but your readers still got the message. Mission accomplished.
Write Drunk, Edit… Maybe?
Hemingway probably never actually said “write drunk, edit sober,” but the spirit of the advice stands.
Not literal intoxication (though whatever works for you), but the willingness to write in a state where you’re not constantly second-guessing yourself against some algorithmically determined “best practice.”
That’s probably why my writing is so disconnected and often just a bad transcription of my stream of consciousness.
Pardon the interruption. Take a moment to follow me for actionable advice and insights to navigate this uncertain world.
Revolution Will Not Be Optimized
Look, I’m not suggesting we all start writing incomprehensible manifestos with a stolen pen from the lobby of the Westin Hotel (though again, you do you).
What I’m advocating for is a conscious rejection of the algorithmic imperative — the insidious pressure to shape our thoughts and expressions according to what will perform well rather than what feels true.
The most profoundly human quality we can bring to our writing isn’t perfect grammar or strategic keyword placement — it’s authenticity.
The willingness to be messy, contradictory, and occasionally wrong.
The courage to write something that might not maximize engagement but might actually matter to someone.
In a world increasingly dominated by AI that’s optimized for engagement rather than meaning, our imperfections aren’t bugs — they’re features. Our tangents, our rough edges, our occasional incoherence — these aren’t weaknesses to be eliminated but humanity to be celebrated.
So let’s embrace our inner Wabi-Sabi. Let’s write things that are beautiful not despite their imperfections but because of them.
Let’s create content that bears the marks of having been made by an actual person with actual blood in their veins rather than an algorithm with metrics to hit.
Because in the end, I’d rather read one gloriously flawed piece written by an actual human being than a thousand perfectly optimized AI-generated articles that slide off my consciousness like rain off a waxed car.
The robots may have mastered the science of writing, but they haven’t touched the art of it.
That remains messily and imperfectly human.
Let’s keep it that way.
Thanks for reading!
