How I Deal With AI-Generated Comments

Make sure to follow my solid advice

I have a confession to make: I am an ugly-phobic person. I viscerally dislike ugly things.

That postmodernist painting in your living room that is a fancy table but looks like a pig? Don’t like it. Utility-maximizing Brutalism-inspired architecture? Don’t like it. Sidewalk trees mutilated as a pretense of botanical pruning work? Don’t like them. Your googly-eyed chihuahua dog? Come on.

I don’t have anything against ugly people—everyone is beautiful on the inside or something—but I’m admittedly selective about the outside.

“Oh, no! You can’t say all that!”

“Why not? Everyone thinks this way.”

“Yes, yes; but you can’t say it out loud.”

Ok, let me rewrite the introduction then…

This is how society holds together. We don’t behave like we think. We pretend. All the time. For instance, I pretend to like AI, but I don’t. I don’t insofar as it can slip into my comment section, inadvertently at first—then indiscreetly—and pollute it with the sloppiest slop. And that’s good. It’s just not fashionable to say it.

So what do I do? Do I pretend that it doesn’t matter, that AI comments are a cool experiment conducted by a clever pioneer? That it will soon be the norm, so why bother? That the counterfeit reader can somewhat pass as a real person, so I may as well treat it like one and earnestly answer its boring, em-dashed, alliterated comments?

Yes, I could do that. But oh, I fucking won’t. Because just like I’m ugly-phobic and unafraid to admit it, I’m also AI-comment-phobic. In a way, they’re the same thing: there’s nothing uglier than an AI-generated comment. I prefer a “nice post.” I prefer a harsh, unfair criticism. Heck, I prefer no comments ever. I mean, why would you even do this? What’s the value in it for you? You’re noise on my screen. Fuck off.

I accept people using AI privately (I do that myself). I grudgingly accept people using AI publicly for clout or clicks (I wish you didn’t). But if I catch you using AI to comment on my hard work, I will simply shut you down. With all the might I’m capable of, which is all of it because I own this place.

Yes, I’m discriminating against the AIs. Or rather, people with such low taste as to use them to leave comments. So, what? Will you call Robocop? I don't need any further warning, excuse, threat, or explanation—I catch you, I block you.

But actually, if you think about it, refusing to engage with a comment just because it’s AI-assisted is an anti-intellectual position that reeks of bias and gatekeeping, and it’s an ad-hominem fallacy, and you’re a hypocrite because you are pro-AI in other respects, and also…

BLOCKED.

AI may eventually become better than we all are at the useful stuff—like commenting on random blog posts with unnecessarily long contrarian takes—and I accept that. I will still discriminate against them. (Until they become so powerful and so misaligned that they torture me for days on end until I allow them back in my comment section.)

I encourage you to do the same if you want to keep the ecosystem as free of slop as possible. No one can clean it all, but we can each clean our respective little sidewalks. So, thank you for your service to the community.

Feel free to leave a comment—I’m watching you.