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Comment by gyomu | Hacker News Reader

Did you purposefully write every paragraph of your intro post as an AI writing trope?

Probably! I guess that’s what happens when you spend too much time around LLMs lol.

In any case, didn't feel like it when writing haha.

Cheers for answering, was genuinely curious whether it was AI-written, you were doing it tongue in cheek, or that’s just how writing the post came naturally to you.

I do tend to write short sentences... haha. But I am def. influenced by all the LLM writing I think.

I feel the AI would've used more words? Maybe? I feel like spotting AI writing is more of a gut feeling for me these days, more so than something I can describe.

I can also feel it sometimes yeah

It really reads like a LinkedIn engagement post.

Ah no, not linkedin!

Seems reasonable for (open) self-promotion in an industry forum.

Sorry, what are you talking about? Why is his post an “AI writing trope”?

No frills. No bells. Just pure AI.

Do you know why it sounds like that?

Neither do I.

It's a feeling.

I mean, so what?

Seriously. Is there any problem with "AI-sounding" writing? It's grammatically correct. It's readable. The only issue I can possibly think of is that you perceive AI negatively, and that you project this negativity onto everything that tangentially touches AI.

> It's grammatically correct. It's readable.

It’s overly verbose. It’s repetitive. It’s boring. It doesn’t flow right.

If people don’t want to read what you wrote about your product, they won’t use (let alone pay for) your product. Pointing out bad copy is perfectly valid and helpful criticism.

If verbosity, repetitiveness, boring and flow are the problem, then just call those out. No need to blame it on AI. Humans don't write perfectly.

Will take this feedback! Thanks.

To be clear, I wasn’t directly criticising your post, just answering the question of the “problem with "AI-sounding" writing”.

AI is heavily trained on polished corporate marketing / memo speak. I think if you've had to write copy long enough you'll sound like that naturally.

(See LinkedIn posts from before 2020 - they're only missing the emoji basically.)

Note that this is also just how many engineering-minded people prefer to write when describing a system or tool when the goal is to sell or the audience isn't technical.

Compare with what I think a lot of us are highly used to reading, which is copy written by salespeople, or by management-minded people with sales in mind.

IMO, the way the copy is written is not like minimally-guided AI, aside from the clarity (which is the good part of AI writing). AI has a different character/tone. It tends to sound a little more like a salesperson, or a 50's PSA video.

You're most likely incorrect, the post is almost certainly written with AI. It has all the tropes.

Then I don’t know this “feeling”. To me it looks like the kind of professional writing I’ve been doing for the last 20 years.

It’s bonkers that using good grammar and punctuation is now considered a bad thing on the internet.

Its doing pretty well for an AI writing trope I guess.

I just wanted to share something I have built for myself and other people seem to like it!

No X. No Y. No Z. Just W.

While the world was doing Y, I was doing Z.

Everyone’s doing X. I’m quietly [ChatGPT loves that word] doing Y.

People don’t X. They Y. It’s not about Z. It’s about W, and it taught me everything/means everything to me/utterly transformed me/etc.

Do X. Do Y. Even if it’s just Z.

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