Ero

It's Time to Write

Cover Image for It's Time to Write

Everything is polished. Writing has been perfected. Thusly, it's the best time to write.

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The internet started off as a place for amateur content—writing, photography, and videos.

The vines we remember fondly are the organic ones. Instagram, for example, started as place for (in hindsight) low-resolution iPhone photos with cool filters applied. These days, Instagram content has very high production value.

It makes me think about how artistic tastes become more abstract the higher the floor on art. We are always seeking meaning in the seemingly meaningless.

A friend shared a quote with me recently. “Truth is where you update it.” I interpreted it as "truth is found wherever there is feedback."

Art is created before there is polish. Lack of polish indicates strife, dilemmas, and open questions.1 It is relatable. You can only admire polished work, but you can contribute to a thing that feels incomplete.2

I suspect this is the real reason artists aren't fond of AI art.

In college, my friends and I would joke about microwaved songs. An artist is said to microwave a song when they very clearly made the song using a working formula. They drop a single and it's a hit. They drop another track and it doesn't do numbers. So they make their next song a slight variation of the earlier hit.

Everyone can now use the microwave...

Similarly, writing is now polished. People using AI to produce polished writing has made it such that well crafted writing now assumed to be AI.

Em dashes are now illegal.

Ultimately, writing is a good way to interrogate your own thinking. You're cooked the moment you start relying on scaffolding for your thinking.3

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If perfect writing is a sign of AI influence, then imperfect writing is proof of humanity. So write... until AI perfects that too.

Footnotes

  1. Visual artists chased realism, then impressionism, cubism, abstract, and so on. Aspiring to unlock something. This is a great read. ↩

  2. [05.06.2025 Update #1] I was at an event and got into conversation with someone. I asked about his interests and he mentioned he's into Strava Art (or GPS art). I've seen it before -- people try to run paths that make desired shapes when viewed on a map. But what really interested me was the amount of detail he went into about the planning and the techniques used to achieve the different paths. He's already made headlines for spending 36 days generating the alphabet and numbers and is now scheming to beat the Strava Art world record someday. It's a perfect example of how we continue to find creative ways to express ourselves. This only became possible after the invention of GPS, smart phones, social media, and running/cycling tracking apps. Strava Art is far from being complete. I wonder what's after it... ↩

  3. [05.06.2025 Update #2] After reading this, my friend made a good point with regard to relying on scaffolding for thinking. Plato thought writing was bad for memory; Great scribes probably thought printing was bad for handwriting; Autocorrect is definitely bad for spelling ability; and of course AI is bad for thinking. I'm paraphrasing as "the brush does not a great artist make". I agree with that. When used properly, AI helps you learn how YOU think instead of thinking for you. ↩