The en-dash – used for interjections, among other things – has been a staple of prose for a long time. Equally, it has been used in corporate communications attempting to sound formal and educated – often wrong, to the point that I myself amn’t sure any more whether I’m using it right at any given moment, or how it is different to the em-dash — even longer, yet less popular because MS Office doesn’t automatically replace a - between words with it.
Is it any wonder, then, that machines trained both on prose and corporate slop produce a soup of words interspersed with en-dashes – whether they make sense or not?
So when I use it, because I got used to it before the machines appropriated it, and people take it as indicator that my slop is artificial, I always get a little sad. I’m not concerned about AI taking my job, but I do worry that it may be taking my hobby:
Writing long, rambling comments of questionable quality on social media.
I do though. Like, I don’t think I really have a separate mode of “casual communication” aside from using abbreviations (idk, imo, tbh) that I wouldn’t use in formal contexts. This is just how I talk, including occasionally rambling. I’m aware that I’m not “normal” in that sense – I’m guessing it’s part of my neuro-fuckery complex – but I don’t think it’s fair to arbitrarily brand weirdnesses as symptoms of AI-slop.
My slop is 100% organic, manually produced by a moderately sized non-model fed with mediocre food instead of mediocre data and frankly quite undertrained.
My favourite example:
The en-dash – used for interjections, among other things – has been a staple of prose for a long time. Equally, it has been used in corporate communications attempting to sound formal and educated – often wrong, to the point that I myself amn’t sure any more whether I’m using it right at any given moment, or how it is different to the em-dash — even longer, yet less popular because MS Office doesn’t automatically replace a - between words with it.
Is it any wonder, then, that machines trained both on prose and corporate slop produce a soup of words interspersed with en-dashes – whether they make sense or not?
So when I use it, because I got used to it before the machines appropriated it, and people take it as indicator that my slop is artificial, I always get a little sad. I’m not concerned about AI taking my job, but I do worry that it may be taking my hobby:
Writing long, rambling comments of questionable quality on social media.
You didn’t use the en-dash in like casual communication i bet, I think that’s what is a giveaway
I do though. Like, I don’t think I really have a separate mode of “casual communication” aside from using abbreviations (idk, imo, tbh) that I wouldn’t use in formal contexts. This is just how I talk, including occasionally rambling. I’m aware that I’m not “normal” in that sense – I’m guessing it’s part of my neuro-fuckery complex – but I don’t think it’s fair to arbitrarily brand weirdnesses as symptoms of AI-slop.
My slop is 100% organic, manually produced by a moderately sized non-model fed with mediocre food instead of mediocre data and frankly quite undertrained.
I also use them in casual conversation, but in form of normal dashes. I don’t think it’s useful to find obscure characters when typing