Cover image by my talented cousin, Cason Terrell, age 11.
I used to overshare on Facebook and Twitter (RIP). And I don’t mean posting a photo of my $7 Starbucks caramel frappuccino with some deep caption. I mean whatever fired across my brain at any given moment. Sometimes things that didn’t even happen posted immediately.
My social media was my diary. When I started maturing (lol), I’d get the “On This Day” notification from Facebook and have a visceral reaction. Secondhand embarrassment from myself. I am sure some of you reading this right now even liked and commented.
But here’s what 29.75 year old me now believes to be true…
In the age of AI, those embarrassing posts are some of the most valuable things I’ve ever put into the world. Because at least they were mine.
Every grammatical error (pre-UL education of course), and overshare, and vague post that was definitely about someone specific. All of it was soooo beautifully human.
However, this below is our current reality.
Your best friend’s grandmother dies. And instead of sitting with the weight of it all, instead of figuring out what to say, which is itself an act of love (members of the DDC all rise), someone opens ChatGPT and types: “write me a text message for my friend who lost her grandmother in my voice but not too long, she had cancer.”
Copy, paste, send. You feel like you did something. Nope. A machine did something. And your best friend, grieving and looking for proof that she matters to people in her life, received words that were generated in 0.8 seconds by a machine, or whatever, that has never lost anyone. That doesn’t know what loss feels like because, shocker, it doesn’t feel.
And this is what we are calling connection?
Sending crappy AI-written happy birthday texts and apologies. AI-written “I’ve been thinking about you” messages. AI-written break up texts (okay, you got me there). But guess what? You’ve passed along all the guilt and reckoning and feeling. The effort of translating a feeling or emotion into words. All of it was handed off so you could move on with your day.
We are becoming robots talking to robots. Zack uses AI to write a message. Katie received that message and uses AI to help her craft a response. Zack gets that response, tells AI to summarize it because it was too long to read, and uses AI to reply. Two humans and zero human communication. Just whatever algorithms bouncing off each other making probably no sense because neither of you are reading anything to begin with.
And we wonder why everyone feels so alone? We wonder why people describe feeling unseen and disconnected, even from people they talk to every day. Because they ARE disconnected. I crave the weird pauses and the “Hey, I don’t know how to say this but you’ve been on my mind a lot and I hope you’re okay,” and it’s replaced with something completely empty.
Before anyone says “Kathryn Shea, it’s not that deep.” GIRL, IT IS LITERALLY THAT DEEP.
This is not about technology being bad. We are outsourcing our emotional intelligence. The VERY THING THAT MAKES US HUMAN!!! We are teaching ourselves (and subsequently each other) that the labor of genuine human expression is optional. And every time we do that, we get a tiny bit worse at being human.
Emotional intelligence and empathy are muscles. The ability to sit with someone else’s pain and search for words that honor it is a skill that has to be practiced. We are going to forget how to do this. Some of us already have. And it is driving me INSANE (hence this rant).
As someone who hopes to have kids one day, this is terrifying. The generation growing up right now, watching adults use ChatGPT to navigate every uncomfortable conversation, what exactly are they learning? That there is always a way out and an easier option than doing the work of actually showing up.
And just like every other technology we sleepwalked (or should I say sheepwalked) into, we won’t realize what we’ve lost until it’s completely gone.
I am tired. I am tired of reading content that was clearly produced by a machine. By the way, we can tell. I am tired of five-paragraph responses to texts that deserved one real, honest sentence. I am tired of watching people just be absolutely lazy. I want rough drafts. I want typos. I want the run-on sentences. I want HUMANS.
Okay, so, maybe you are thinking,”You’ve got a lot to say, what are you doing about it?” Lemme tell ya.
All the cool kids are going analog. I am talking newspapers, magazines, zines (look this up if you don’t know what it is, and not on ChatGPT, loser). I’m writing postcards and letters. Like actual real ones, on real paper, with a pen, mailed with a stamp, to real friends who will hold a piece of paper I touched and read words I chose myself. While you’re at it, visit your locally-owned stationary store for some swanky, personalized letters and envelopes. Stamps are also so much fun to pick out!
I’m reading things written by humans, about human things, in human voices. Call it impractical. Call it whatever makes you feel better about the direction we’re heading. I’m calling it survival. Plain and simple. It is THAT DEEP.
Because what we’re losing isn’t productivity or efficiency. It’s each other. And I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready to let that go.
P.S. If you wanna be my penpal, I will send you my mailing address. Write me!!!!
KATHRYN SHEA DUNCAN 