Clandestine Gardenias

Closest match: Bombyx mori BmN4 cell DNA, chromosome 24, sequence Common name: Domestic Silk Moth

Audio: A recording of Leonard Nimoy reading it on Internet Archive.

Text: A PDF version.

During this time, my closest friend was extremely busy with work, I couldn't afford therapy because I was struggling to even make rent, and I didn't have someone I could talk to.

I have OCD. One of my compulsions is "checking" and it often takes the form of googling. Googling a word I know just to check that the definition hasn't changed. Googling whether xyz is normal. Googling how to choose some relatively unimportant things.

I googled all kinds of things. I googled to find out if there's a word for intentionally letting someone hear you cry in hopes that they'll comfort you. (Not because I was doing that, but because I had an overwhelming urge to.) I googled odds of relationship survival after addiction. I googled how to tell if your partner has stopped loving you.

And Google ai overview answered every single question. And on mobile, when I was curled up in the dark at 4am, there's a convenient text box to ask the AI a follow-up question. And the AI says things like "that's a hard situation to be in" and "that must be painful to hear"

And I'm not a fucking idiot. I know perfectly well that AI is trained to be sycophantic and that talking to a fucking LLM about my relationship fears was a massive mistake.

I was also terrified, alone, heartbroken, and desperate.

I spent literally hours of time googling questions on AI mode. Holding conversations with the AI. I have stickers on my laptop and water bottle that say "AI Hater Club" and "generative AI? Nein danke" and I wish Sam altman would fall off the face off the earth.

And none of that mattered. I was desperate. I recognized that, and once things began to calm down (my doctor took me off of the narcolepsy med and put me on a medication for addiction called Naltrexone, I was able to start therapy again, my partner and I worked together and took steps to repair what was damaged) I stopped turning to it for an open shoulder.

But I realized a few days ago that I hadn't stopped using the ai entirely. I would Google "best [item] on a budget" and instead of reading a cnet link that reviewed multiple brands, instead of checking consumer reports, I expanded the AI overview and asked follow-up questions.

I'm currently finishing up an astrophysics internship for the summer. Usually when I don't know how to code something, I look at the documentation or find a post on Reddit or stack overflow to explain. Instead, I was asking Google overview for instructions on how to use sys.argv. At no point was I vibe coding, but I was basically asking Google ai to walk me through it like a tutor.

And then, last week, I realized that I no longer Google things the same way. I used to search like "pokemon sun and moon original release date" but lately I've been searching "what year did pokemon sun and moon come out?" Even my checking OCD has changed. I used to Google "n30i mask cleaning +seal +oily" and now I Google "I use a resmed n30i CPAP mask and it keeps losing its seal when I'm trying to sleep. My face gets kind of greasy when I have it on. I already clean it with CPAP wipes every day and run it under water to rinse, do I need a different kind of mask?"

A few days ago, the news about Hank Green using LLMs to find research papers dropped, and I saw his response on Reddit. I saw the way he talked about the dopamine hit he got from it. And something clicked.

I had to install a different OS launcher on my phone so I could change the search bar widget to Firefox search instead of Google, because that's the only way to ensure I don't get the ai overview when I Google something. It's actually really frustrating because I instinctively search in long rambling questions, which does not work well. But I'm having a hard time going back to how I was.

The other mentor at my table: I’m not a usually a super taster, but I am for boar taint!

Me: Sorry. I think I just had a stroke. What was that?

Her: Boar taint!

The grad students at our table are looking desperately to me for some kind of guidance as to how they should react.

My soul has left my body.

Her, unprompted: My family castrated hogs and the uncastrated ones give the meat a flavor that most people can’t taste but I ALWAYS CAN.

Me, desperate to bring some sense of normalcy or relatability to the conversation, the grad students’ eyes boring into me: L-like cilantro!

The post reads as follows:

“I have always liked IKEA. Not even because of the furniture, I just think it is relaxing to walk through the different rooms and imagine the kind of people who would live there. Sometimes I go without buying anything. I just like looking around.

After maybe my sixth or seventh visit I noticed that almost every display room had a window with daylight behind it, even though obviously most of the showroom is in the middle of the building. At first I assumed they were just light panels, but then I realized they didn't all have the same weather. One living room looked like a bright summer afternoon while another looked overcast. Some bedrooms even had what looked like early morning light.

I asked one of the employees how they decided what weather each apartment gets. He laughed a little and said they are just printed backdrops with lights behind them. I accepted that explanation because it sounded reasonable, but it did not explain why the weather seemed to change between visits.

Over the next few months I started taking pictures of the windows every time I went. I organized them into folders based on department and color of the lighting. I also made notes about whether the room was supposed to appeal to young professionals, families or students because I wondered if there was some connection.

Eventually I noticed what I thought was a pattern.

Home office displays almost always had dull weather, while bedrooms and children's rooms had noticeably nicer conditions. I honestly found that a little manipulative because people make different decisions depending on the weather they think they are experiencing.

I politely showed one of the employees a spreadsheet I had printed out. He looked at it for maybe five seconds before asking why I had visited the store fourteen times in two months. I explained that good research takes consistency. He told me that wasn't really what he meant.

A week later I emailed customer support asking whether the artificial weather was decided locally or if each store received instructions from Sweden.

They forwarded my email to the store manager, who invited me into his office. He explained that there was no weather system and asked me to stop photographing the displays because customers had started asking questions after seeing me measure the brightness near the windows with my phone.

Unfortunately I had already mentioned my findings in a neighborhood Facebook group because I thought other people might have noticed the same thing. One woman replied that she always felt happier in the bedroom section but assumed it was because of the mattresses. Another man commented that I should seek professional help.

The discussion got surprisingly heated.

Now whenever I go into that IKEA someone eventually recognizes me. Officially I can still go, but last month I heard an employee quietly tell another one, ‘that's the weather guy.’ I was literally just there to buy a bookshelf, so it's not very pleasant.