incarnadine dreams

A dream of the fields

Meanwhile, in the Ghost City:

hey so. not meaning to pick on you for this, but:

there are various types of word processors or other text inputs which will automatically convert -- to —, meaning its difficulty in being typed out is irrelevant

there are a lot of people on tumblr, including in the notes of this thread, who have actively said that they use the emdash in their writing

the whole point of LLMs is that they train on real people's writing; they are not just randomly picking characters from the US-ASCII charset to include; AI would not generate text with emdashes if its training base did not also include writings by real people that used them

okay but real talk? if you see someone using itemized lists in a conversation, that’s a dead giveaway you’re talking to an AI and here’s why:

1. like, unless you’re giving a presentation or writing a formal email, who actually structures their casual thoughts as

- neat

- little

- bullet points

with perfect punctuation? *please.* humans ramble, use em dashes—like this—or just throw in a chaotic mix of parentheses and ALL CAPS for emphasis.

2. bots are programmed to present information *efficiently*, which means they default to lists because it’s the easiest way to break down responses. humans, meanwhile, will write a 10-paragraph essay about their hyperfixation with zero regard for readability.

3. itemized lists lack *voice*. no sarcastic asides, no abrupt shifts in mood, no “anyway, here’s a meme to explain.” it’s just *cold, structured info*—which, congrats, you’ve spotted a robot trying (and failing) to mimic human flow.

4. humans *assume* context. we’ll say “ugh, you know what i mean” instead of listing every single detail. but an AI? it’ll give you a *numbered breakdown* of why your cat is judging you, complete with subcategories.

**tl;dr** – if it looks like a corporate memo and reads like a wikiHow article, you’re not talking to a person. you’re talking to a chatbot that *wishes* it had ADHD-fueled chaos like the rest of us.

if cameras existed in ancient china