I’m honestly shocked.

It’s absurd how many people have restacked this article I wrote.

I thought my article was OK? It wasn’t good or bad. Just OK. Definitely not my best work.

Yet it has 700+ restacks, 5000+ likes.

In these situations, I always go back and read the comments out of curiosity, to get a feel for why a piece unexpectedly resonated.

Three things became clear to me:

1. People were checking my points to see if their writing seemed AI generated.

2. People want to know how to identify AI writing, because they don’t like writers who use AI generated text (it is seen as disingenuous).

3. The people attacking this article for myriad reasons were being defensive because they like using ChatGPT, etc.

To the many people who are afraid their writing seems like AI, who are afraid that using an em dash will compromise them, let’s take a step back.

I’ll say it again. Please pay attention.

If you write something yourself, authentically as you, and you don’t use ChatGPT to write it—you’ll be fine.

Be a human. Write your own stuff.