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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/29/arsonist-firefighters/#im-feeling-lucky

Write a critical AI book, and you become everyone's confessor for their AI sins. People in my life keep telling me about their guilty AI pleasures, in search of an explanation, absolution or7 condemnation:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/

Their most common confession: "I only ever use Google's A7I-generated search summaries these days. I no longer click those blue links beneath it, not even to verify the summary." People know that the summaries are full of "hallucinations" (that is, "defects" or "errors") but the summaries are right often enough that many people have come to rely on them, to the exclusion of actual websites, made by actual people, on the actual internet.

Everyone knows this isn't good. The reason there's a web for Google's Gemini AI to summarize is that Google – the thrice-convicted monopoly search company with a 90% market share – directs people to websites, and when you visit a website, you generate revenue for the site, which pays for its maintenance. Most commonly, you generate an "ad impression," but you might also buy a subscription, or generate an "affiliate fee" by purchasing a recommended product.

When Google strips all this away by harvesting an "answer" and displaying it at the top of the page, the bargain between Google and the open web breaks down. Google is extracting 100% of the value from the websites it summarizes, and giving nothing back in return.

This is a marked reversal from Google's founding ethos. In the old days, Google measured its success by how little time you spent on its site. The ideal Google outcome was for you to visit its page (or even better, just a search-box in your browser), type a few words, and get "ten blue links" back, the top one of which was the correct link to locate the information or resource you were seeking. The point of Google was to serve as a conduit, a trusted intermediary that neutrally adjudicated the relevance of every web page for every web user from moment to moment.

Everyone dunks on Google for its high-minded motto, "Don't be evil," but over the years, the company's mission was far more important: "Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." That was the pole star that googlers followed for the first couple decades of the company's history…until, that is, the company saturated its market and its growth stalled out.

That was when Google started to panic over its plateauing search revenue, this being an inescapable consequence of 90%+ market-share. The ensuing power struggle pitted googlers who were committed to technical excellence against the company's most ardent enshittifiers, who pointed out that by making search worse, they could increase revenues. After all, if you need to search two or three times to get the answers to your questions, that means the company can show you two or three times as many ads:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

Where once Google measured its success by how quickly it could send you away from its site and out into the open internet, today's Google is a sticky-trap full of ways to keep you inside its walled garden.

A decade ago, tech had three major approaches:

I. Google's: let you do anything you want, but spy on you while you do it;

II. Apple's: strictly control what you can do, but leave you alone to do it in private; and

III. Facebook's: control everything you do, spy on you from asshole to appetite.

Today, tech is undergoing a form of carcinization, in which every company is turning into a Facebook-crab: maximally surveillant and maximally controlling.

Apple has added surveillance to its walled garden:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

While Google has turned its free-range, internet-wide surveillance system into a walled garden that tries to keep you away from the open internet as much as possible.

Now, in Google's defense, the "open internet" kind of sucks these days. Any piece of useful information you seek out on the open internet is liable to be buried under half a dozen pop-ups, pop-unders, and dickovers:

https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/what_is_a_dickover

Even after you clear these away, the actual information you're seeking is further buried in word-salads that anticipated insipid AI prose by half a decade. Think of all those omelet recipes that appear beneath 2,500 words of cod-Proustian remembrances of "the first time I ate an egg."

The major advantage of AI search summaries is in shielding you from all this nonsense. But where did all that nonsense come from in the first place?

It turns out that this is largely Google's fault.

“they” is more inclusive than “he/she”

“themself” flows more naturally than “him or herself”

“they” is less clunky than “(s)he”

“I shouldn’t like to punish anyone, even if they’d done me wrong.” —George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (1860)

“A person can’t help their birth.” —William Thackeray, Vanity Fair (1848)

“But to expose the former faults of any person, without knowing what their present feelings were, seemed unjustifiable.” —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)

“Every Fool can do as they’re bid.” —Jonathan Swift, Polite Conversation (1738)

“So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.” —King James Bible, Matthew 18:35 (transl. 1611)

“God send every one their heart’s desire!” —William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (~1600)

“Now this king did keepe a great house, that euerie body might come and take their meat freely.” —Sir Philip Sidney, the Arcadia (1580)

“If … a psalme scape any person, or a lesson, or els yt they omyt one verse or twayne…” —William Bonde, The Pylgrimage of Perfection (1526)

“And whoso fyndeth hym out of swich blame, / They wol come up and offre a Goddés name” —Geoffrey Chaucer, The Pardoner’s Tale (~1380)

“þan hastely hiȝed eche wiȝt on hors & on fote, / huntyng wiȝt houndes alle heie wodes, / til þei neyȝþed so neiȝh to nymphe þe soþe [Then hastily hied each person on horse and on foot / hunting with hounds all the high woods / ‘til they came so near, to tell the truth]” —William and the Werwolf (transl. ~1350-1375)

Violets are blue

Singular “they” predates

Water is way more hydrating than soda, but soda is more hydrating than nothing. A balanced meal is way more nutritious than ice cream, but ice cream is more nutritious than nothing.

Something is better than nothing. Some hydration is better than no hydration. Some nutrients are better than no nutrients. Some produce is better than no produce.

Most of these novels introduced the love interest not just in the first chapter, not just in the first scene, but on page one. And it's smart, because the point is that these two people fall in love, so you're jumping right into the thick of things.

The romcoms that made me laugh the hardest utilized physical comedy the best. I love banter. I love banter. But it can't carry a romcom on its own.

Publishing meta gets publishing money. Books about booksellers, editors, publicists, etc sure seem to get above-average in-house support. Which is not to imply that it's undeserved! Just that it's landing with its targeted readers.

The (usually) contemporary setting means the reader's holding less setting-specific info in their head. This frees up some RAM, as it were, for things I would have to approach very carefully in fantasy, such as dropping a flashback smack in the middle of a scene, or nonlinear storytelling.

Compelling chemistry involves the traits the love interests uniquely bring out in each other. E.g. a stoic person's hidden sense of humor, or a pushover's ability to stand up for something. It's also key that they like these traits on some level, and tied to the person they want to be.

Negative character traits can be greatly mitigated by self-awareness. E.g. It's one thing if someone is consistently and needlessly blunt to the point of rudeness, and acts like that's not a problem; it's another if, internally, they are unhappily aware they're driving people away but don't know how to be any other way.

Escalation. The obvious choice is predictable (some may say boring), but the unexpected choice can feel over-engineered and inorganic. I feel like the balance here is to take the obvious choice and push it further. E.g. Horrible ex shows up at the bakery the narrator just started! Obvious choice is to kick him out. Engineered choice would be having him slip on fresh-waxed floors and land in a vat of custard that just happened to be the right size and sitting in the middle of the bakery. Hm. The escalated version is to have the narrator tell him to get out, and when he balks, start throwing day-olds until he goes. Another example: Our two jerks are going on their first date. An obvious complication: Someone's ex is also on a date at the same place. An over-engineered complication: The ex insists they leave, and when they don't, they go to the manager and try to have our jerks kicked out because their daddy owns the restaurant, and also they have the jerks' car towed. An escalated complication: The ex insists on sharing a table with the jerks, and it's clear they still have feelings.

Related: There's a lot of mileage to be had from people/things progressing a funny and covert goal while the non-narrator scene partner is distracted. E.g. a dog slowly stealing off its owner's plate while the owner is flirting and/or arguing with the narrator.

A lot of books used interstitials for flavor, like emails, transcripts, etc. These can also be used to do some heavy expository lifting by letting you set expectations—think an open mic night flyer that can convey the venue's vibe, or directions to a corn maze that get increasingly sketchy.

We all love competence porn. If we can see what a character is good at, we'll want to see it again. If we can see them be very, very good at it, but thwarted at the last moment—by their own character flaw, for maximum impact—then we will be desperate to see them pull it off in the future. IMHO the more you, the author, want the reader to like a character, the sooner we should see their competence.

RELATED: If a love interest is meant to be a snob, it is non-negotiable that we have to see their competence, in action, on the page. There was one romcom I bounced off like a basketball, and this was a major part of why. I'm altering occupations here, but in a nutshell:

Narrator, a pastry chef with struggling career, idolizes a famous and award-winning baker

Turns out the baker can't make pastries worth a damn because he thinks sweets are frivolous, but the bakery needs to expand its offerings, so she gets brought in to help him

He tells her what she does is meaningless, and she doesn't know how to do real baking, and overall is wildly condescending, but the narrator puts up with it because she idolizes him

We see many awards he's won as a baker, and many high-level professional connections he has

We never see him bake. And we never see her eat something he baked. Our narrator tells us he's just that good and we have to accept it.

Y'all, I was so mad. Give us a crumb, please.

12. Most books tackled a sense of loneliness or isolation in at least the narrator, and sometimes the love interest as well. Even if they had active social lives, there was a gap that only the love interest sees, and only they can fill.

13. There were really interesting uses of sensory and signature details to make a character stand out and/or stand in for physical intimacy early on. E.g. a character slowly rubbing a thumb over the chip in a mug's rim—to me, that gesture is close enough to evoke running a thumb over someone's bottom lip, and the chip gives it sensory oomph. Other characters would have a recurring signature nickname, appearance detail, or gesture; bonus if it had actual character significance.

14. On a slightly more downer note... I found one thing a bit unsettling. I'm threading a needle here, because no, fiction is not supposed to be a moral lecture, yes, there is room for all types of fantasies and explorations in romance. But I found it a tad grim how many books were specifically fantasies of enormous men and itty bitty women. How most of the heroes are supposed to be flawed but romantic, attractive, respectful... and yet in the physical intimacy scenes, a lot of the language falls back on evoking domination, possession, and control by a man. He "claims" lips, he "brands" with his touch, he's "marking [narrator] as his own." And none of it is an actual D/s relationship, it's all quite vanilla. I may just be too ace for that to sound appealing?

It does go hand-in-hand with an interesting recurring bias against cities, where they're scary places that people leave after their dreams are crushed, and find real happiness in a "sweet, traditional life" in a small town. With 80% of the US population living in urban areas, the framing of small towns as keepers of tradition was similarly dissonant to me.

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*Shrnf…*

*Horace Turns His Handsome Snout To Face YOU*