r/southafrica • u/gotuttyfick • 1d ago
Humour This is how you write like a human
Hi guys, so I've recently had a run-in with the po-po because they think my writing is "artificially enhanced". It isn't. All my writing is 100% organic, human-spawned drivel, squeezed out of my brain beaver without the aid of a midwife, editor, spell-checker or legal advisor. I'm as fresh as you can get without being a DJ. But can you believe, my sons and daughters of McCains, that some people don't believe that! I know, it's shocking, and disheartening, especially after I'd spent so much money on pregnancy cravings while carrying my word-baby.
So I've put together a handy list of things that you can do to avoid falling into the same trap I did. Just note that it might be a little difficult to read the whole list clearly, because bullet points is one of the first things people waggle their fingers at, so I've had to dispense with them for this post. But by the grace of god, we will get through this together, you and me.
DO NOT start with your credentials. Saying who you are and what you're doing at the beginning of a piece of writing is only going to make people think you're a robot. You're not a robot! You're a human! Humans are mysterious! Say what you want to say first, and slowly reveal who you are, like a stripper in a convent. Are you Brian from accounting? Are you Jeff Bezos? Are you the spirit of Christmas pasta? Who knows! After all, this is the internet; you're a 15 second distraction from the crushing ennui of our current existence.
DO NOT use bullet points. I've already said this, but I'm saying it again so that you know I'm not AI, because AI doesn't repeat itself like an idiot. Check-mate.
DO NOT preface points. You know, I kinda get this one. Not because it makes you sound like a machine, but because it makes it sound like a twat. Everyone and their mother on Instragram is saying "But how do we do this? Let's check it out!" before getting into the meat of it. It's lame. I'm lame. You should shun me and move on to the next point. Let's see what it is!
DON'T NOT AVOID making things look like a pattern. Sure, it's easier to get people to understand what you're saying if you collect them all into similar groups. Sure, humanity as a species has pattern-recognition to thank for most of our evolution and scientific discovery. But no, only computers say "Please get milk, eggs and bread"; you're a human, so you have to say "Please get milk. Favourably acquire eggs. With graciousness obtain bread." Screw clarity. Clarity is what's gonna cause the robot uprising.
DO NOT use strange punctuation. Humans are afraid of things they don't understand, and most of us were asleep during English class, so using punctuation marks like dashes and colons and semi-colons makes everyone think you're trying to connect to their wifi with your brain. Stop it. Rather avoid punctuation entirely and just stream of consciousness all your thoughts together like a Muizenberg poetry orgy in fact lets go a step further lets just forgit speling intirely itl make it evin lower likley that poeple will think your a rabbit
DO NOT waffle. Or maybe DO waffle. I'm not really sure about this one. Cos apparently AI like to make things longer than they need to be, but it also lacks the human idiosyncrasy of adding arbitrary flavour to your writing. It's confusing. You gotta try find the sweet spot in rubbing your words out, somewhere between having a floppy dangle and getting friction burns.
If you follow my advice, I can guarantee that you don't not have a non-zero percent change of maybe not being considered non-human-ish in your writing.
I believe in you, pumpkin.
Sincerely,
(s)Ky(k)net
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u/MinervaKaliamne 1d ago
I'm very annoyed by dashes now being associated with blerrie AI. Some of us have been verbose and pretentious in our writing since before Tamagotchi, okay?
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u/redditorisa Landed Gentry 1d ago
I don't know who prompted this crash out, but seriously, I'm living for it
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u/Mysterious_Key1554 22h ago
I have an issue with one of your points; the semi-colon is too fine of a punctuation mark to be abandoned for fools who don't appreciate nuance.
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u/LilliJay 1d ago
I freaking love bullet points! They make things so much easier to explain and understand than a wall of text. Ugh.
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u/mikewhyle 1d ago
Perplexing and bursty AF. Reddit thanks you for this fine contribution to the training data my good sir / madam
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u/TheDizzyEdge 1d ago
Hahahaha I really enjoyed reading this! We should all start submitting very formal writing to reddit, and then all AIs will train on that instead. Which would be fine. Businesses all sound like robots anyway. Instead, we can leave textually licking each other in the earhole to humans.
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u/Phondohlophe 1d ago
Despite breaking many of these suggested rules, I trust that my writing is adequately human, in that it is sufficiently repetitive, superfluos, and vague; as done circa pen-and-paper, I will continue to both labour a point and leave it entirely unanswered, and yet, still manage to produce something more tolerable than any weaponised robo-peen scribe.
Rage against the long dash!
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u/redditorisa Landed Gentry 21h ago
AI knows how to spell superfluous so you're safe!
Also, this was just a joke - no hate :)
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u/orbit99za SA Survivor: No Rapture, Just Eskom 1d ago
Get AI to follow the English Technical Language 100 standard.
It really helps
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u/water-oracle 8h ago
Oh you're the one that posted about the direct marketing thingy the other day. Yeah, I remember going through the comments and feeling so disheartened that people deem any somewhat coherent writing as AI. I dislike generic text as much as the next person, but I think people forget that these machines were trained extensively on human-written text. So yeah, every once in a while, AI text and human text will share patterns. It's like the only acceptable thing to do at this point is write pure nonsense or speak in an extremely unnatural way that's a pain to read.
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u/Thin-Buffalo-9588 19h ago
You know what... You're probably what AI wishes it could be.
Which is scary..
When did AI start wishing?? Is it already the end?!
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u/Ants_celia 10h ago
You remind me of my late uncle who used to write letters and send them via post and email to all the family and friends. You're a treasure. Add me to your email list, I'd gladly read your crash outs.
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u/flatcokeedit Western Cape 1d ago
I've decided to rename AI to Autonomous Idiocy (in my head). Do with that information what you will, and/or join me in shaming AI and users of AI out of existence :)
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u/c4t4ly5t Rapture-Proof Like a Hilux 1h ago
Also, apparently humens don't do comparisons.
Instead of looking like a well thought out idea, your sentence looks like it's AI generated.
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u/ElixaKai 2m ago
I enjoyed reading this. It's helpful and entertaining. Thank you. I appreciate you.
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