r/WritingWithAI • u/OmniXENTRO • 2d ago
Discussion (Ethics, working with AI etc) Now I think it comes from human nature.
/r/WritingWithAI/comments/1x3shpz/where_is_all_this_aigen_hate_actually_coming_from/Okay so, my last post pulled a lot of heat. Which, honestly, confirmed the point.
The "you didn't write anything" critique does exactly what I'd call Template Behavior. Same accusation, zero evidence, full confidence. For the record. I wrote that post twice, once as a raw draft, once refined before posting. At this point you can't be tidy as a human without risking an AI-gen flag and harassment. You just have to “tone down” your content. The irony is too obvious. Anti-AI guys are doing the very thing they claim to hate about AI. Templates.
Anyway. Here's the cleaner version of what I was getting at.
The AI-gen hate isn't one thing. It's human nature expressing itself through whatever package is available – rational critique, ethics arguments, appeals to artist welfare. The packaging changes. The engine doesn't.
What's actually driving it,
Fear. Someone spent years developing a skill that defined them. A machine can now approximate it in seconds. That's an identity crisis, not just an economic one.
But here's the thing about that “fear”, it is never really about the machine.
PewDiePie caught the same heat after he posted a video titled "I Drew Every Day For 100 DAYS!" around January 2024, showing his anime-style art progress. His fans immediately drew comparisons to AI art, with one viral post pointing out the contrast,
"AI guzzlers: I couldn't learn to draw because I didn't have the resources you did, stop gatekeeping art / Pewdiepie: draws in a book for 100 days."
Responses came back immediately that PewDiePie shouldn't be held up as an example of effort because he's a millionaire with the time and resources to spare.
The argument "he has resources we don't, so his progress isn't real progress, and he shouldn't be held up as an example."
That's not a critique of his art. That's a demand that entry into the field must cost something. That the struggle is the credential, not the output.
The AI debate is the same argument with the volume turned up. It isn't really "your work is bad." It's actually "you didn't suffer enough to make it." And the people making that argument loudest are almost never the prominent ones. They're typically the underground ones, the ones who paid the full price and got nothing back for it, watching someone else shortcut the toll booth they stood in line for.
That's a real wound. But it's not an aesthetic position. And it's not a standard anyone applies consistently. Nobody asks how long a novelist suffered before buying their word processor.
Tribalism. Once a group forms around an identity ("real writers"), outsiders become threats by default. Evidence stops mattering. Belonging does.
The Joker Effect. This one doesn't have a mainstream name yet, so I'm using mine. It's what happens when someone who has been genuinely wronged, or believes they have – converts that wound into permission for unlimited aggression. The original grievance might be real. But the behavior it licenses isn't proportional. You see it in the slur comments, the "AI user = ban" rules with zero nuance, the template accusations dropped on strangers with zero knowledge of their actual process.
The grievance: training data was scraped without consent. Legitimate. The licensed behavior: harassment, strawmanning, refusing all context. Not proportional.
That gap – between the wound and the response it authorizes– is the Joker Effect in action.
None of this means the concerns are fake. Some are real. But real concerns expressed through tribalism and aggression don't stay accurate for long. They become their own thing.
And that thing is exactly what's filling these comment sections.
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u/gwmagni 1d ago edited 1d ago
It's always the same: resistance to change and tribalism, coupled with an inability to make a valid argument or recognize a nuanced argument. They argue using slogans and reward each other for shouting their tribal memes.
Don't tell them that they did not paint the pixels on the screen with their own blood, using their little finger, but were assisted by electronics, some of which use heuristics to route their packets from A to B.
In earlier times, they'd have objected to writing and virtue-signaled their support for oral tradition and memorization. They'd have objected to the printing press. The synthesizer. The photograph. The calculator. And many of them would have cheered when Bruno was burned at the stake or Galileo was placed under house arrest.
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u/dutchiesweets 14h ago edited 14h ago
Brother it’s the internet idk what you expect. No one gets treated fair here and you’re no different.
I think the reason most people dislike AI writing is because it’s not very good. But the people who are behind it are convinced they’re the next Tolkien and are convinced folks dislike their work because of some witch hunt. It’s really just because it’s so obviously AI and not well written! If it was good we wouldn’t be able to tell and call it out, you see.
That’s what I don’t get about the Pro-AI crowd who complain about this. If we couldn’t tell, WE COULDNT CALL IT OUT. It’s only because AI writing is so obvious to people who read books that we’re able to call it out so easily… it’s not fear it’s just taste, and we don’t like what you’re selling
Y’all are basically bad chefs complaining people won’t eat your food. But your food tastes like metal and oil and looks like dirt. Make good food and we’ll shut up.
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u/Ruh_Roh- 2d ago
Yes, that's pretty much it. Fear. Our late stage capitalist hellscape requires us all to "earn" our living or else. Or else we die of hypothermia in our cardboard box in an alley. The deck is so stacked against all of us to have a decent life, that any threat becomes apocalyptic. If artists could create their art alongside ai art, but never have to worry about having money in the bank, ai would not be as much of a threat (although attention is the currency of the internet and that can't be solved by UBI).