Performative Silence Is The Only Good Response To AI Writing
A standout piece I read in 2025 was “Why Does A.I. Write Like … That?” by Sam Kriss in the New York Times. I think I screamed with happiness when I read this quote:
“I’m driven to the point of fury by any sentence following the pattern “It’s not X, it’s Y,” even though this totally normal construction appears in such generally well-received bodies of literature as the Bible and Shakespeare. “
This has bothered me for such a long time. I see the “it’s not X, it’s Y” sentence structure all over Substack, LinkedIn, YouTube, even in academic papers. The binary way of defining something by what it isn’t appears to be how AI models “think”.
I find it discouraging to see just how many trending posts are following this formulaic and dull pattern. This is the style of writing so many people have suddenly adopted online that subtly bears the hallmarks of AI generation:
“AI writing is not helping illiterate people to write better. It’s not automating boring work. It’s creating dull conformity. This matters.”
For more than twenty years, AI systems have heavily influenced whether or not a creator would gain an audience or find a home in the void. For example, after Anna’s Archive scraped Spotify’s database in December 2025, the group revealed that 70% of 256 million tracks on Spotify have less than 1,000 stream counts, while the top-two tracks on Spotify each have more than 3 billion stream counts. What is popular, trending, and conforming to norms and existing power structures is pushed by Spotify’s entertainment engine, while diversity and originality are essentially sacrificed to make platform owners and economic partners more money.
Before generative AI, standing out as a creator required talent and skill. But now that AI can help wannabe creators create content, everyone can theoretically do it. If you still think AI’s “democratization” of creativity and proficiency is good news for art, science, and the quality of the public conversation, think again.
The best analogy is Facebook. By giving a voice to everyone, Facebook gave a voice to people who shouldn’t be heard in the first place. The algorithms magnified edgy and uneducated voices without the burden of human shame, and turned people with pronounced mental health issues into superstars. Meanwhile, Facebook offered a piece of duct tape for people with educated and valuable opinions. In a parallel universe where Facebook and other American social media platforms were never invented, I bet that Trump’s audience would be limited to the staff of a retirement home.
By giving everyone a voice, Facebook magnified and glorified stupidity. By connecting people online, Facebook disconnected people from reality and promoted identity politics, division, hatred, and anger across the globe. By giving everyone access to ChatGPT, OpenAI and its competitors streamline the opinions, styles of writing, and worldviews we are exposed to, while silencing dissent even further than recommendation algorithms. You either are, or you aren’t. This is not what Shakespeare meant when he came up with the iconic phrase: “To be or not to be”.
What is the best way to respond to the flood of AI-generated content as an online creator? I believe the best way right now is to do NOTHING. I mean that in all seriousness. Like the +1,000 UK artists who released an album with silent tracks in protest against the government’s AI policy. AI can produce a lot of noise, but it cannot produce silence - like great art can do. A healing silence is what humans need right now.
On this note, I am pausing paid subscriptions to Futuristic Lawyer until March to cultivate my thoughts in silence and prepare to make much more creative work; the kind of work that requires a combination of genuine courage, professional skills and effort to make.
My attempt to take this conversation offline and go much deeper than the performative social media chatter is my new ebook Death To Algorithms.