Cycle II: Coming of Age
The Hidden Life
Authorship Interference 2-1 (v1.00)
THE HOUSE OF ZAN — Zan
Consent (The Ticket)
This is a totally Sus piece about how AI and people who do not read literature formed an unholy union and appointed themselves detectives of unreal writing.
If you are already one suspicious paragraph away from accusing a friend, artist, creator, dominant, submissive, teacher, lover, or beautifully overeducated omnisexual of being a chatbot because they used one phrase too many times, you may want to pace yourself here. Seriously. I do not have an LLC to absorb the fallout for what I write.
If it starts to feel like I am taking the piss or having a laugh, you might be British.
— Zan
Scene (The Ride)
I.
There was a time when people read writing and thought things like:
“This sounds like someone who knows themselves.”
“This sounds like someone who is intelligent.”
“This sounds like someone who has actually lived.”
Now a person can read one paragraph and think:
“Hmm. Too many transitions.”
“Suspicious structure. A little too polished.”
“This bitch definitely used AI.”
Enter: The Age of Sus Writing.
II.
The lie in AI writing begins when a person passes off writing that carries their thought but uses a vocabulary, rhythm, and/or emotional register that is not natural to them.
It looks smart. It sounds smart.
Yet it lacks the imperfektions that make one person’s writing recognizably different from another, whether in a novel, group chat, or community board.
Poorly worded conversation used to be the ultimate tell of who you were dealing with behind the screen.
“ur r stupid. get lost in trafffic. IDC how jsut DO IT!”
Now, we are faced with that same immaturity, just in a more sophisticated output:
“It is immediately apparent that you are not an intelligent person. Please go away and stop inflicting your presence on everyone around you. I do not particularly care where you go, only that you leave.”
Or, if you are dealing with an AI that has guardrails, it will make you feel like a dick by saying something like, “I can’t help sharpen a message telling someone to harm themselves,” when you are only trying to prove the example.
I digress.
The question is not whether AI has some mystical power to make writing fake. It is how much authority the person using it gives the tool.
It can proofread a sentence, challenge a choice, or give someone language to react to without becoming the source of the thought or voice. It can also supply a vocabulary, rhythm, and emotional register the person never had and let them pass the result off as their own.
Those are not the same process.
So, what am I really dealing with here?
The Ring from The Lord of the Rings?
Or collectible Star Wars cards, drenched in piss, that I found in a school urinal in 5th grade and kept until the very thought of owning them, no matter how clean I could get the cardboard, started to disgust me?
Let’s find out together.
III.
I have spent a good deal of time with AI.
So much so that I’ve developed an aversion to certain words, line structures, and tones that I now notice all over the internet.
I will literally cringe when I see certain words in the wild or, worse, in my own writing because I have seen them used often enough that I now associate them with AI.
“Performance.” “Theater.” “Chaos.”
“Spine.” “Heat.” “Landed.”
“Sloppy.” “Teeth.” “Costume.”
Delve.
Fucking DELVE!
Imagine the South Park meme of “They took ’er jobs!” and then imagine me, as a writer, feeling that not about jobs, but WORDS.
Artificial Intelligence is tainting my vocabulary!!
Seriously.
It’s not just the words. It’s how they are used in context.
I use AI as a proofreader, a sounding board, and an unpaid editor I can fight with whenever it tries to change something beyond spelling, grammar, or flow.
Really speeds up my workflow. Does all the work for me. It’s fun. /s
I mean, have you seen my work? Does it sound like AI came up with this?
squints eyes
Don’t make me pull a “trust me, bro” out of my pocket.
You want me to explain it like you are 5?
Okay.
IV.
I fully believed in Santa Claus until I was maybe 11.
I mean, why question something that brings happiness and joy?
The gifts were real. My memories were real. The cookies and milk were GONE.
As I got older, and harder to send to bed on Christmas Eve, I finally asked the question:
Is Santa Claus real?
“If you believe in him, he is real.”
-_-
What the hell does that mean!?!
Imagine my disappointment when I stayed awake all night only to discover I was not a true believer.
Now, a person only needs to type “Is Santa Claus real?” into Google and find out pretty quickly.
Which is yes, he’s fucking real.
I’ve just been bad since I was 11, and he stopped visiting because he’s seen my kink list.
Wait… terrible example.
What I’m trying to say is:
Cue outdated Pirates of the Caribbean quote:
“You best start believing in real writers. You’re reading one!”
I mean, come on, this is too silly and specific to be fraudulent.
You need proof I didn’t just come up with a “persona” from a chatbot?
Fine.
Let’s hit the Wayback Machine on my life.
V.
Some of us have been sounding like ourselves for a very long time.
Long before the Terminators entered the room.
Writing is my clearest form of art.
Not by choice.
By clarity.
This is how you know I am here now.
It is how you will know I was here.
I have been writing since I was forced to do it during my time in the public school spectrum of confinement, where they make you produce things on command and grade you against the other inmates.
One of the earliest things I ever had published was in the local newspaper.
It was satirical.
Very satirical.
And, as I was informed after the fact, allegedly sexist.
That was not the intention. At the time, I genuinely thought I was offering sound advice about the kinds of traits someone might not want in a prom date.
And yes, I drew from personal experience.
Vividly.
It was published about a week before the end of senior year, which is, in hindsight, about the funniest possible time to hand a socially volatile person a public platform and let him put his little observations into print for the whole school and community to see.
Once it hit publication, I was basically public enemy number one for the rest of my school jail sentence.
The guys who did not have prom dates thought it was hilarious.
The ones who did have prom dates had the good sense to keep their mouths shut in public, then tell me privately that it was hilarious.
The girls who were not keen on the satire saw it as a hit piece.
At least one person thought it was worth publishing: the newspaper’s editor, who was a well-read woman, for anyone keeping score.
What people did not fully understand was how funny, sad, and weirdly therapeutic the whole thing actually was for me.
They also could not seem to understand how something like it had made it into an actual local paper.
Because mine was not the only prom piece in there.
You see, I was in Publication 101 during the second semester of senior year.
That almost did not happen because I had picked Art II instead. At the time, I was not as cultured as I would become later. Also, the way I express art has always been more legible from the stroke of a key than the tip of a brush.
The instructor and I had a conversation that led to me being able to rearrange my schedule by dropping her class, which, in a very friendly and honest way, went something like:
“You are very good at understanding art history. You scored better than most in Art I in that area, but you struggled to express your artistic side with the tools available in that course. If you feel you would do better in Publication, I’ll sign the slip that will allow you to change to that course.”
Paraphrasing, of course.
This was kind of a big deal because changes like that were not usually allowed at that point in the school year.
Maybe it helped that I walked around with a pencil behind one ear some days, giving the impression either I was going to draw something, write something, or stab someone. Depending on the day, it could have gone any of those ways.
There were other submissions too, and some of them ran alongside mine. Those pieces were straight-faced, respectable, matter-of-fact little bits of local journalism about the upcoming senior prom.
My piece felt like a gremlin hijacked the printing press and slipped one in while everyone was mentally checked out for the end of the school year.
Would you like to see the piece?
Really?
Well, here it is anyway:
**Opinions**
…about lots of things
**How Not To Pick Up Chicks**
With prom night right around the corner, many guys wonder how they will ever get a girl. Through trial and error I have come up with five fool-proof steps to ensure a quality relationship.
**Step 1**: “That’s very interesting, please tell me more.” These seven words are key to proper “communication” between the sexes without the need to actually pay attention to anything she says at all.
If you pay attention, you’ll begin to care. If you begin to care, it’ll be work, work, work from then on. Besides, girlfriends are meant to be seen, not heard
It is all about looks, so, no need to pay any attention to things like thoughts, loyalty, and/or personality.
**Step 2**: Don’t waste your ink. Never take the time to write to her. There is no point to waste a good piece of paper on her, she has already established that you “care” based on your communication skills.
A full sheet of paper is best used to spit used gum in, instead of writing a note full of your so-called feelings for her.
**Step 3**: Hours on Messenger are a waste; especially if you are talking to her. There is no reason to watch her meaningless words pop up on screen just to read her thoughts.
With so many illegal things to do on the Internet, why waste your time on her?
**Step 4**: Don’t call! No matter how sweet you think it is, there is no reason to spend $102.45 on long distance calls just to “listen” to her tell you about her day.
**Step 5**: Don’t be there just to be there. You have better things to do than spend your time with her. In fact, being cold and distant is the way to go.
As long as you follow these simple and easy steps you should have no trouble getting a girlfriend.
VI.
Kind of sounds like the same person from here, doesn’t it?
Just a few decades removed.
“It’s like I’m writing with no AI at all. No AI at all. No AI at all.”
I know what you’re thinking: stupid, sexist, satirical Flanders.
I mean, Zan.
That’s the point.
I do not think all the processing power available to ordinary consumers at the time, or even the most helpful version of Clippy, could have helped carve out that particular smart-ass, pre-cancel-culture, what-the-hell-is-this persona.
That thing was already there.
Maybe less refined. Maybe less controlled. Maybe more willing to throw a lit match into a room and stand there admiring the light.
But it was there.
😛
And that is only a small taste from one of my earliest published works.
Which is my way of saying, clearly:
I did not arrive here because a machine gave me a vocabulary and em dash service pack.
That bullshit came pre-installed, baby!
The rhythm, the sarcasm, the instinct to turn discomfort into something understandable to others, the urge to make a sentence pull double duty as both shit-posting and confession, the need to leave a stain on the page even when it would probably be safer not to — all of that was already in motion.
I am building a body of art.
The question is not whether a tool was used.
The question is who decided what the art was supposed to say, what belonged in it, what needed to go, and what finally stayed.
That is what authorship means to me.
Pattern. Memory. Taste. Refusal.
Judgment.
Knowing when a sentence is technically better but spiritually wrong.
Knowing when something sounds like you and when it sounds like some improved version of you that should be strangled before it starts selling courses.
[remove cringe line above that AI inserted during draft review]
I am not anti-tools.
I am anti-slop passed off as authorship.
So when you read me, do you get man or machine?
You get a man who, no matter what life has thrown at him, never got the memo that he needed to conform. And when he did try, all he found was emptiness.
I am more than my written and typed words. I am the translator for the voice within, for the life living inside me, in a world that was not always of my choosing, for a ghost that refuses to stay quiet.
If you’ve been paying attention, I think that sounds pretty on brand for me.
This is what I have wanted from life since I was capable of rational thought.
Not ego.
Recognition.
Security.
Safety.
Proof that I was here as more than a name, a number, or a fragment of a forgotten memory in someone else’s mind.
I want to know I made something with what I was given.
I want other people to know they can do the same.
An audience does not have to exist before you “do the thing.”
Sometimes you build the thing first and find out who shows up.
I might be late to the party, but damn it, it is not too late to build one of my own.
Companion track: “White Wine Spritzer” – Okilly Dokilly
Aftercare (The Comedown)
You are not required to write badly to prove you are real.
You are, however, required to come across as charismatic as me if you want to convince the lowest common denominators that the words came from your mind, your experience, and not the latest fine-tuned language model.
A tool can enter the process without becoming the author.
You know the difference.
Keep your hand steady.
Write the next one anyway.
Cycle II · Authorship Interference 2-1
Query Cycle II: The Authorship Interferences
For other rooms in The House of Zan, return to the House Map.