Cinemorphosis

Category: culture

  • If Used Wisely, AI Can Push Your Writing to Greater Heights, But It Can Also Create Writer’s Dysmorphia

    If Used Wisely, AI Can Push Your Writing to Greater Heights, But It Can Also Create Writer’s Dysmorphia

    No ChatGPT or AI of any kind was used in the following:

    For close to 2 years, I’ve been editing and collaborating with ChatGPT for my personal and professional writing. I teach my college writing students how to engage with it, giving it instructions to avoid its default setting for bland, anodyne prose and teaching it how to adopt various writing personas. 

    For my own writing, ChatGPT has boosted my prose and imagery, making my writing more stunning, dramatic, and vivid.

    Because I have been a bodybuilder since 1974, I will use a bodybuilding analogy: Writing with ChatGPT is like bodybuilding with PEDS. I get addicted to the boost, the extra pump, and the extra muscle. Just as a bodybuilder can get body dysmorphia, ChatGPT can give writers a sort of writer’s dysmorphia. 

    But posting a few articles on Reddit recently in which a few readers were put off by what they saw as “fake writing,” I stopped in my tracks to question my use of ChatGPT. Part of me thinks that the hunger for authenticity is such that I should be writing content that is more like the natural bodybuilder, the guy who ventures forth in his endeavor with no PEDS. What you see is what you get, all human, no steroids, no AI.

    While I like the way ChatGPT pushes me in new directions that I would not explore on my own and makes the writing process engaging in new ways, I acknowledge that AI-fueled writer’s dysmorphia is real. We can get addicted to the juiced-up prose and the razzle-dazzle.

    Secondly, we can outsource too much thinking to AI and get lazy rather than do the work ourselves. In the process, our critical thinking skills begin to atrophy.

    Third, I think we can fill our heads with too much ChatGPT and live inside a hazy AI fever swamp. I recall going to middle school and on the outskirts of the campus, you could see the “burn-outs,” pot-addicted kids staring into the distance with their lizard eyes. One afternoon a friend joked, “They’re high so often, not being high must be a trip for them.” What if we become like these lizard-eyed burnouts and wander this world on a constant ChatGPT high that is so debilitating that we need to sober up in the natural world upon which we find the non-AI existence is its own form of healthy pleasure? In other words, we should be careful not to let ChatGPT live rent-free in our brains.

    Finally, people hunger for authentic, all-human writing, so moving forward on this blog, I want to continue to push myself with some ChatGPT-edited writing, but I also want to present all-natural, all-human writing, as is the case with this post. 

  • The ChatGPT-Book: My Dream Machine in a World of Wearable Nonsense

    The ChatGPT-Book: My Dream Machine in a World of Wearable Nonsense

    I loathe smartphones. They’re tiny, slippery surveillance rectangles masquerading as tools of liberation. Typing on one feels like threading a needle while wearing oven mitts. My fingers bungle every attempt at precision, the autocorrect becomes a co-author I never hired, and the screen is so small I have to squint like I’m decoding Morse code through a peephole. Tablets aren’t much better—just larger slabs of compromise.

    Give me a mechanical keyboard, a desktop tower that hums with purpose, and twin 27-inch monitors beaming side by side like architectural blueprints of clarity. That’s how I commune with ChatGPT. I need real estate. I want to see the thinking unfold, not peer at it like a medieval monk examining a parchment shard.

    So when one of my students whipped out her phone, opened the ChatGPT app, and began speaking to it like it was her digital therapist, I nodded politely. But inside, I was muttering, “Not for me.” I’ve lived long enough to know that I don’t acclimate well to anything that fits in a jeans pocket.

    That’s why Matteo Wong’s article, “OpenAI’s Ambitions Just Became Crystal Clear,” caught my eye. Apparently, Sam Altman has teamed up with Jony Ive—the high priest of sleekness and the ghost behind Apple’s glory days—to sink $5 billion into building a “family of devices” for ChatGPT. Presumably, these will be as smooth, sexy, and addictive as the iPhone once was before it became a dopamine drip and digital leash.

    Honestly? It makes sense. In the last year, my ChatGPT use has skyrocketed, while my interaction with other platforms has withered. I now use it to write, research, plan, edit, make weight-management meal plans, and occasionally psychoanalyze myself. If there were a single device designed to serve as a “mother hub”—a central console for creativity, productivity, and digital errands—I’d buy it. But not if it’s shaped like a lapel pin. Not if it whispers in my ear like some clingy AI sprite. I don’t want a neural appendage or a mind tickler. I want a screen.

    What I’m hoping for is a ChatGPT-Book: something like a Chromebook, but with real writing DNA. A device with its own operating system that consolidates browser tabs, writing apps, and research tools. A no-nonsense, 14-inch-and-up display where I can visualize my creative process, not swipe through it.

    We all learn and create differently in this carnival of overstimulation we call the Information Age. I imagine Altman and Ive know that—and will deliver a suite of devices for different brains and temperaments. Mine just happens to want clarity, not minimalism masquerading as genius.

    Wong’s piece doesn’t surprise or shock me. It’s just the same old Silicon Valley gospel: dominate or be buried. Apple ate BlackBerry. Facebook devoured MySpace. And MySpace? It’s now a dusty relic in the basement of internet history—huddled next to beta tapes, 8-tracks, and other nostalgia-laced tech corpses.

    If ChatGPT gets its own device and redefines how we interact with the web, well… chalk it up to evolution. But for the love of all that’s analog—give me a keyboard, a screen, and some elbow room.

  • The Sundays Can’t Come Back—They Never Wanted to Be Here

    The Sundays Can’t Come Back—They Never Wanted to Be Here

    I estimate there are maybe 50,000 diehard fans of The Sundays left on Earth—middle-aged romantics who imprinted on their music in their twenties like baby ducks and have carried that delicate soundscape in their bones ever since. These are the ones still haunting Reddit threads and aging fan forums, half-pleading, half-praying for Harriet Wheeler and David Gavurin to reemerge from their English countryside exile and record something—anything—before they fully dissolve into myth.

    I count myself among them. I think “You’re Not the Only One I Know” is the most beautiful song ever written, full stop. And yes, I have complicated feelings about its sudden afterlife on TikTok. On one hand, I’m glad new ears are discovering it. On the other, I want to slam the door and shout, “Get off my lawn—it’s my song.” Like any relic of private beauty, it feels stolen once it trends.

    But here’s the thing: The Sundays aren’t coming back. And they shouldn’t. Their music is a love letter to solitude. It’s woven from the threads of retreat, quiet heartbreak, and the refusal to participate in the world’s noisy charade. Every line aches with the voice of someone who’d rather be home. A comeback would be a contradiction—like resurrecting Greta Garbo to guest on a reality show. Their brilliance was their withdrawal.

    Take “You’re Not the Only One I Know”—the narrator, calmly stationed in a chair, shooing people away like pigeons. Or “Here’s Where the Story Ends,” where every attempt at connection curdles in the air. Or “My Finest Hour,” which ends not in triumph but in a gentle surrender to domestic retreat. These aren’t anthems for a reunion tour. They’re hymns of hibernation.

    The Sundays were never built for comebacks. Their art was a form of aesthetic convalescence, a music of shy resilience. Their narrators, like the band itself, are Edward Scissorhands types—fragile, inward, best left unbothered in their Victorian turret. If they returned, they wouldn’t be The Sundays. They’d be Tuesday Afternoon.

  • The Coldplay Apocalypse: Notes from a Smoothie-Drinking Future

    The Coldplay Apocalypse: Notes from a Smoothie-Drinking Future

    Welcome to the future—where the algorithm reigns, identity is a curated filter pack, and dystopia arrives not with a boot to the face but a wellness app and a matching pair of $900 headphones that murmur Coldplay into your skull at just the right serotonin-laced frequency.

    We will all look like vaguely reprocessed versions of Salma Hayek or Brad Pitt—digitally airbrushed to remove all imperfections but retain just enough “authenticity” to keep our neuroses in play. Our playlists will be algorithmically optimized to sound like Coldplay mated with spa music and decided never to take risks again.

    We’ll wear identical headphones—sleek, matte, noise-canceling monuments to our collective disinterest in one another. Not to be rude. Just too evolved to engage. Every journal entry we write will be AI-assisted, reading like the bastard child of Brené Brown and ChatGPT: reflective, sincere, and soul-crushingly uniform.

    Our influencers? They’ll all look the same too—gender-fluid, lightly medicated, with just enough charisma to sell you an oat milk subscription while quoting Kierkegaard. Politics, entertainment, mental health, and skincare will be served up on the same TikTok platter, narrated by someone who once dated a crypto founder and now podcasts about trauma.

    Three times a day, we’ll sip our civilization smoothie: a beige sludge of cricket protein, creatine, nootropic fibers, and a lightly psychoactive GLP-1 variant that keeps hunger, sadness, and ambition at bay. It’s not a meal; it’s a contract with the status quo. We’ll all wear identical sweat-wicking athleisure in soothing desert neutrals, paired with orthopedic sneakers in punchy tech-startup orange.

    We’ll all “take breaks from social media” at the same approved hour—between 5 and 6 p.m.—so we can “reconnect with the analog world” by staring at a sunset long enough to photograph it and post our profound revelations online at 6:01.

    Nobody will want children, because who wants to drag a baby into a climate-controlled apartment where the rent is half your nervous system? Marriage? A relic of a time when humans still believed in eye contact. Romances will be managed by chatbots programmed to simulate caring without requiring reciprocation. You’ll tell the app your love language, it’ll write your messages, and your partner’s app will do the same. Everyone’s emotionally satisfied, no one’s truly known.

    And vacations? Pure fiction. Deepfakes will show us in Bali, Tuscany, or the moon—beaming with digital joy, sipping pixelated espresso. Real travel is for the ultra-rich and the deluded.

    As for existential despair? Doesn’t exist anymore. Our moods will be finely tuned by micro-dosed pharmacology and AI-generated affirmations. No more late-night crises or 3 a.m. sobbing into a pillow. Just an endless, gentle hum of stabilized contentment—forever.

  • The Futility of Being Ready

    The Futility of Being Ready

    In December of 2019, my wife and I, both lifelong members of the National Society of Worrywarts, stumbled upon reports of a deadly virus brewing in China. Most people shrugged. We did not. I jumped on eBay and ordered a bulk box of masks the size of a hotel mini-fridge. It felt ridiculous at the time—a paranoid lark, like filling a doomsday bunker because you heard thunder on a Tuesday. But three months later, on March 13, 2020, the world shut down, and that cardboard box of N95s felt less like overreaction and more like prophecy.

    These days, I teach college in what I call the ChatGPT Era—a time when my students and I sit around analyzing how artificial intelligence is rewiring our habits, our thinking, and possibly the scaffolding of our humanity. I don’t dread AI the way I dreaded COVID. It doesn’t make me stock canned beans or disinfect door handles. But it does give me that same uneasy tremor in the gut—the sense that something vast is shifting beneath us, and that whatever emerges will make the present feel quaint and maybe a little foolish.

    It’s like standing on a beach after the earthquake and watching the water disappear from the shore. You can back up your files, rewrite your syllabus, and pretend to adapt, but you know deep down you’re stuck in Prepacolypse Mode—that desperate, irrational phase where you try to outmaneuver the future with your label maker. You prepare for the unpreparable, perform rituals of control that offer all the protection of a paper shield.

    And through it all comes that strange, electric sensation—Dreadrenaline. It’s not just fear. It’s a kind of alertness, a humming, high-voltage awareness that your life is about to be edited at the molecular level. You’re not just anticipating change—you’re bracing for a version of yourself that will be unrecognizable on the other side. You’re watching history draft your name onto the roster and realizing, too late, that you’re not a spectator anymore. You’re in the game.

  • Psychedelic Mushrooms and the Art of Saying “Meh”

    Psychedelic Mushrooms and the Art of Saying “Meh”

    People I admire—deep thinkers, seekers, trauma survivors, even that old roommate who once confused a lava lamp for God—swear by magic mushrooms. They describe transcendence, tearful reunions with their inner child, and conversations with the universe where the universe speaks perfect Jungian. Apparently, psilocybin is the shortcut to enlightenment, the divine inbox where angels drop PDFs of your truest self.

    And yet, I remain a bastion of Mushroom Apathy Syndrome (MAS)—a spiritual condition marked by an impenetrable indifference to the fungal fanfare. While others are melting into cosmic unity on some mossy hillside, I’m thinking about whether it’s time to reorganize my spice rack. I don’t want to chew sacred mold to glimpse the divine. If I need an ego death, I’ll just read my old poetry.

    Sure, I’d love to encounter the Divine—maybe Spinoza’s glowing web of pantheistic awe, maybe a seraph with decent taste in jazz. But I just can’t take mystical advice from a guy in a woven beanie yelling about chakras while wearing Crocs. If I want a head trip, I’ll queue up Yes, The Strawbs, or Crosby, Stills & Nash and lie on the floor until my chakras align from sheer harmonic exhaustion. Or better yet, I’ll abstain from sugar for ten months and then unleash nirvana with a single bite of decadent, spice-laced carrot cake.

    My condition is also rooted in a kind of Fungal Nihilism—the belief that no mushroom, no matter how ancient, artisanal, or Amazonian, can fix the howling absurdity of existence. You can’t outrun entropy with a spore. If I want to stare into the abyss and laugh, I’ll binge-watch George Carlin eviscerate modern life with nothing more than a mic, a ponytail, and a pair of skeptical eyebrows.

    Ultimately, I practice Spore Snobbery—a reflexive contempt for the breathless mythologizing of psychedelic fungus. These aren’t sacred portals. They’re glorified mushrooms with a publicist. For some, they offer spiritual clarity. For me, they sound like a gastrointestinal trust fall with no one there to catch you but an ayahuasca-shaman-turned-life-coach named Brad.

  • From Raw to Ruin: The Self-Destruction of a Crashfluencer

    From Raw to Ruin: The Self-Destruction of a Crashfluencer

    To mock Brian Johnson, aka the Liver King, feels like low-hanging fruit off a poisoned ancestral tree. The man is a walking satirical sketch, a steroid-soaked cartoon preaching “natural living” while pumping $11,000 a month of growth hormone into his glutes. He branded himself the King, his wife the Queen, and his sons with names fit for a Mad Max reboot about a paleo militia family eating spleen jerky by moonlight.

    His entire enterprise was Caveman Cosplay with a GoPro: gnawing on cow testicles at a blood-slicked picnic table, barking into the void like a tribal prophet in a trucker hat. He promised salvation to a nation bloated on Cheetos, Twinkies, and Red Bull—offering raw liver as the Eucharist for the metabolically lost.

    Netflix’s Untold: The Liver King makes a flaccid attempt at chronicling his rise and fall. The documentary is weirdly deferential, like it’s afraid he’ll burst through the screen and challenge the viewer to a push-up contest. YouTube, in contrast, has done the real exhumation—countless videos dissecting his addiction to fame, vanity, and unregulated supplements with far more insight and bite.

    Still, the Netflix film does offer one crystalline moment of pathos-turned-parody: Johnson, preparing to repent for the lies and the deception and the overpriced ancestral liver gummies, admits on camera that he’ll need to Google the words “repentance” and “atonement” before proceeding. Imagine Martin Luther, nailing his Theses to the church door—then pulling out his phone to ask Siri what “contrition” means.

    The man is a moral dumpster fire, ablaze with the fumes of self-delusion, influencer marketing, and raw meat. But that dumpster fire casts a telling glow on the cultural cave we all inhabit—where attention is currency, truth is performative, and the algorithm rewards the loudest lunacy.

    So let us name what we’ve seen:

    • Brovangelism – The sacred zeal of gym bros converted to primal living by a shirtless messiah with abs and a coupon code.
    • Swoleblindness – The ability to overlook blatant fraud if the fraudster has veins on his deltoids.
    • Rawthenticity – Mistaking uncooked meat for unfiltered truth.
    • Cloutuary – A public, slow-motion social media death staged for likes and shares.
    • Crashfluencer – He went from virality to liability, taking his followers on a nosedive into madness.
    • Declinefluencer – An influencer whose main content is his own collapse.
    • Brandamaged – A man whose brand has outlived his dignity, but not his desperation.

    Watching Johnson spiral felt eerily familiar. It brought to mind Jaron Lanier’s Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, a book I once assigned to bright-eyed freshmen before they lost their souls to TikTok. Lanier warns that algorithmic performance rewires the brain, dragging us back to our reptilian roots. It doesn’t make us more “authentic”—it makes us worse. Dumber. Meaner. Hungrier for clicks and validation. Johnson is not just a cautionary tale. He’s the caution in full, swollen flesh—drenched in growth hormone and influencer pathology.

  • The Hobbles and the Honker: A Tale Told Twice—One Soft, One Sharp

    The Hobbles and the Honker: A Tale Told Twice—One Soft, One Sharp

    The Hobbles and the Honker (Soft)

    In the land of Gumbolia, wide and quite long, The Hobbles once sang a democracy song. They rallied and voted and marched in the rain, Till a creature called Honker slithered into their lane.

    Now the Honker was flashy, all feathers and noise, He juggled and shouted and promised new toys. He hollered and danced with a smirk on his face, And somehow he slithered into first place.

    “He’s a joke,” cried the Hobbles, “a prank, a buffoon!” “He’ll fade like a hiccup! He’ll pop like a balloon!” But the Honker kept honking and puffing with pride, And more folks in Gumbolia climbed on for the ride.

    He wore silly hats and he growled mean things, He barked about bogeymen, gave fear some wings. He sold golden slippers, he sold magic beans, He crowned himself King of the Vibe Machines.

    And the Hobbles, poor Hobbles, just stared and they sighed, As their inboxes filled and their hope slowly died. They once had opinions, they once had a fight, But now they just doomscroll alone in the night.

    Their thinkers were thinkers, with language so slick, They wrote fancy essays, with words deep and thick. But while they were drafting a twelve-page reply, The Honker was honking a pie in the sky.

    So the Hobbles grew sleepy, their courage went dry, They numbed out with snacks and a five-season cry. They shopped in bulk, they hopped on a bike, And hoped that the Honker would vanish from spite.

    “This can’t last forever,” some Hobbles would say, “He’ll melt like a snowball some blustery day.” But others just shrugged and stared into space, Feeling shame that they’d once run a noble race.

    Yet not all was lost in the town of despair, For a few little Hobbles still dared to care. They met in small corners, they whispered and planned, They lifted each other and took little stands.

    “We may not feel brave, or witty, or bright, But we’re still here breathing, and that means we fight.” They called up their neighbors, they stood at the polls, They swapped out their doomscrolls for nobler goals.

    For though Honkers may honk and the noise may be thick, History moves, though never too quick. And Gumbolia, though weary, was not yet done, For courage is quiet, but strong when it runs.

    So if you should feel that your hope’s lost its fizz, And your soul’s stuck in reruns of all that there is, Remember the Hobbles who once felt that way, And dared to keep going anyway.

    The Hobbles and the Honker (Sharp)

    In Gumbolia’s sprawl—long, loud, and absurd—
    The Hobbles once voted and marched undeterred.
    They sang songs of justice, they rallied with pride,
    Till the Honker came honking, all smirk and no stride.

    This Honker was flash wrapped in carnival sleaze,
    A circus of feathers and catchphrases teased.
    He juggled fake promises, shouted in rhyme,
    And tap-danced his way to the front of the line.

    “He’s a clown!” cried the Hobbles. “A walking whoopee!”
    “He’ll vanish by Tuesday! He’s nonsense! He’s loopy!”
    But the Honker kept puffing with bloated delight,
    While more folks joined in on his spite-powered flight.

    He wore hats like a toddler who lost a bet,
    He barked about bogeymen you haven’t met.
    He sold golden daydreams, snake oil in tins,
    And crowned himself Emperor of the Hot Takes and Spins.

    And the Hobbles? Poor souls—they wilted with dread,
    Inbox explosions, more bad news ahead.
    They once had a backbone, they once raised a fist,
    Now they scroll through despair like a Netflix watchlist.

    Their thinkers waxed on in twelve-paragraph threads,
    Deep dives that no one but bots really read.
    While they drafted rebuttals, pensive and slow,
    The Honker screamed, “Look! A conspiracy show!”

    So the Hobbles grew sluggish, resigned to their fate,
    Snack-drunk and bingeing past reason or date.
    They bought bulk distractions and hoped with a sigh,
    That the Honker would vanish by seasonal die.

    “This is a phase,” some would nervously mutter,
    “He’ll melt like bad butter, he’ll flap off and flutter.”
    But most just went mute, all spark drained and gone,
    Ashamed they once marched, now barely hang on.

    Yet in the gray murk of their grief-colored town,
    A few little Hobbles refused to stay down.
    They gathered in corners, whispered through fear,
    And plotted a path that might pull them clear.

    “We’re tired,” they said. “We’re jaded and sore,
    But if breath’s in our lungs, we must fight a bit more.”
    They rang up their neighbors, they knocked on a door,
    They swapped out their doomscrolls for something with core.

    For though Honkers may honk and the clueless may cheer,
    History lumbers but does reappear.
    And Gumbolia, frazzled, still had a drumbeat—
    Because courage shows up in blistered, worn feet.

    So if your resolve is as flat as old fizz,
    And your soul is stuck rerunning all that there is,
    Think of the Hobbles who once lost their way—
    But chose to keep going, come what may.

  • The Salma Hayek-fication of Everything and the Beautocalypse

    The Salma Hayek-fication of Everything and the Beautocalypse

    If technology can make us all look like Salma Hayek, then congratulations—we’ve successfully killed beauty by cloning it into oblivion. Perfection loses its punch when everyone has it on tap. The same goes for writing: if every bored intern with a Wi-Fi connection can crank out Nabokovian prose with the help of ChatGPT, then those dazzling turns of phrase lose their mystique. What once shimmered now just… scrolls.

    Yes, technology improves us—but it also sandblasts the edges off everything, leaving behind a polished sameness. The danger isn’t just in becoming artificial; it’s in becoming indistinguishable. The real challenge in this age of frictionless upgrades is to retain your signature glitch—that weird, unruly fingerprint of a soul that no algorithm can replicate without screwing it up in glorious, human ways.

    If technology can make us all look like Brad Pitt and Selma Hayak, then none of us will be beautiful. In this hellscape, we all suffer inside the Beautocalypse–the collapse of beauty through overproduction: When everyone’s flawless, no one is.

    Likewise, if we can all use ChatGPT to write like Vladimir Nabokov, then florid prose will no longer have the wow factor. Technology improves us, yes, but it also makes everything the same. Retaining your individual fingerprint of a soul is the challenge in this new age. 

  • “Good Enough” Is the Enemy

    “Good Enough” Is the Enemy

    Standing in front of thirty bleary-eyed college students, I was deep into a lesson on how to distinguish a ChatGPT-generated essay from one written by an actual human—primarily by the AI’s habit of spitting out the same bland, overused phrases like a malfunctioning inspirational calendar. That’s when a business major casually raised his hand and said, “I can guarantee you everyone on this campus is using ChatGPT. We don’t use it straight-up. We just tweak a few sentences, paraphrase a bit, and boom—no one can tell the difference.”

    Cue the follow-up from a computer science student: “ChatGPT isn’t just for essays. It’s my life coach. I ask it about everything—career moves, crypto investments, even dating advice.” Dating advice. From ChatGPT. Let that sink in. Somewhere out there is a romance blossoming because of AI-generated pillow talk.

    At that moment, I realized I was facing the biggest educational disruption of my thirty-year teaching career. AI platforms like ChatGPT have three superpowers: insane convenience, instant accessibility, and lightning-fast speed. In a world where time is money and business documents don’t need to channel the spirit of James Baldwin, ChatGPT is already “good enough” for 95% of professional writing. And therein lies the rub—good enough.

    “Good enough” is the siren call of convenience. Picture this: You’ve just rolled out of bed, and you’re faced with two breakfast options. Breakfast #1 is a premade smoothie. It’s mediocre at best—mystery berries, more foam than a frat boy’s beer, and nutritional value that’s probably overstated. But hey, it’s there. No work required.

    Breakfast #2? Oh, it’s gourmet bliss—organic fruits and berries, rich Greek yogurt, chia seeds, almond milk, the works. But to get there, you’ll need to fend off orb spiders in your backyard, pick peaches and blackberries, endure the incessant yapping of your neighbor’s demonic Belgian dachshund, and then spend precious time blending and cleaning a Vitamix. Which option do most people choose?

    Exactly. Breakfast #1. The pre-packaged sludge wins, because who has the time for spider-wrangling and kitchen chemistry before braving rush-hour traffic? This is how convenience lures us into complacency. Sure, you sacrificed quality, but look how much time you saved! Eventually, you stop even missing the better option. This process—adjusting to mediocrity until you no longer care—is called attenuation.

    Now apply that to writing. Writing takes effort—a lot more than making a smoothie—and millions of people have begun lowering their standards thanks to AI. Why spend hours refining your prose when the world is perfectly happy to settle for algorithmically generated mediocrity? Polished writing is becoming the artisanal smoothie of communication—too much work for most, when AI can churn out passable content at the click of a button.

    But this is a nightmare for anyone in education. You didn’t sign up for teaching to coach your students into becoming connoisseurs of mediocrity. You had lofty ambitions—cultivating critical thinkers, wordsmiths, and rhetoricians with prose so sharp it could cut glass. But now? You’re stuck in a dystopia where “good enough” is the new gospel, and you’re about as on-brand as a poet peddling protein shakes at a multilevel marketing seminar.

    And there you are, gazing into the abyss of AI-generated essays—each one as lifeless as a department meeting on a Friday afternoon—wondering if anyone still remembers what good writing tastes like, let alone hungers for it. Spoiler alert: probably not.

    This is your challenge, your Everest of futility, your battle against the relentless tide of Mindless Ozempification–the gradual erosion of effort, depth, and self-discipline in any domain—writing, fitness, romance, thought—driven by the seductive promise of fast, frictionless results. Named after the weight-loss drug Ozempic, it describes a cultural shift toward shortcut-seeking, where process is discarded in favor of instant optimization, and the journey is treated as an inconvenience rather than a crucible for growth. 

    Teaching in the Age of Ozempification, life has oh-so-generously handed you this cosmic joke disguised as a teaching mission. So what’s your next move? You could curl up in the fetal position, weeping salty tears of despair into your syllabus. That’s one option. Or you could square your shoulders, roar your best primal scream, and fight like hell for the craft you once worshipped.

    Either way, the abyss is staring back, smirking, and waiting for your next move.

    So what’s the best move? Teach both languages. Show students how to use AI as a drafting tool, not a ghostwriter. Encourage them to treat ChatGPT like a calculator for prose—not a replacement for thinking, but an aid in shaping and refining their voice. Build assignments that require personal reflection, in-class writing, collaborative revision, and multimodal expression—tasks AI can mimic but not truly live. Don’t ban the bot. Co-opt it. Reclaim the standards of excellence by making students chase that gourmet smoothie—not because it’s easy, but because it tastes like something they actually made. The antidote to attenuation isn’t nostalgia or defeatism. It’s redesigning writing instruction to make real thinking indispensable again. If the abyss is staring back, then wink at it, sharpen your pen, and write something it couldn’t dare to fake.