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BLOG ENTRY : writing in this day and age

published : jul 30, 2026

As much as I dislike using the platform, I feel like I have managed to at least tame the beast that is my Instagram algorithm so that whenever I open it, the recommended posts do not immediately make me want to tear my hair out. Of course, things slip through the cracks, so sometimes I get reposted slop by meme accounts or the occasional terrible take, but for the most part I get recommended fandom videos, queer humour, Fall Out Boy memes, nice art, and insightful posts about various issues that are important to me. I recognize that I am not immune to mistaking generative AI content for real and original work, but I do believe that the kind of content that I see on my feed is simply not the kind to be particularly overrun with AI. With one exception.

What was that last one again ? The Instagram informational post, a text post in image carousel format, spiced up by graphic design and often accompanied by supplementary images or decorations. Ever since first joining Tumblr as a kid, I’ve always engaged with analyses related to culture and social justice, so it makes sense that this kind of content would also find its way to me on Instagram. I appreciate a well-made informational post. I’m sure you do too. But often you start to notice things. Lists of three, the constant emphasis on larger significance of every point, and of course that pesky « not x, but y » phrasing (see the Wikipedia list of conventions typical to chatbots for elaboration). You hate to have this thought, but you start to wonder…

I don’t like to assume AI writing. I don’t think most people do. I was at a youth event last winter that involved people performing speeches, and it felt bad to notice certain quirks across multiple speeches and speculate even just in my head about whether or not my peers had composed their pieces all by themselves. But many people have said it before, and I will say it again : it really feels like people are sounding more and more the same, and it’s sickening to notice. I find the ultimate irony in how I manage to avoid constant exposure to AI videos, but my most regular exposure to generated AI content is in my most preferred medium, being writing.

I rewatched Hbomberguy’s Plagiarism and You(tube) recently. In case you are unaware, Plagiarism and You(Tube) is a four hour-long video exploring different cases of plagiarism on the platform, all culminating into the last two hours dedicated to exposing the extent of mass plagiarism and other misdeeds of former YouTuber James Somerton. Former, because Hbomberguy (Harry Brewis)’s video was so thoroughly damning that Somerton deleted his entire channel shortly afterwards. Brewis’s video was widely acclaimed by the internet for his usual quality of research and writing as well as how he covered and urged the audience to join the conversation on online content theft and artistic recognition and compensation. It’s also an infinitely fun time to revisit every once and a while. I’ve rewatched it at least half a dozen times.

At the end of his video, Brewis mentioned how the new plagiarism tool that was already posing a threat to creatives was generative AI ; Plagiarism and You(Tube) was released in December of 2023. He was right to mention it then and he is only more justified today ; Brewis’s video remains rewatchable not only for its wit and warmth but for its relevance. During this most recent rewatch and with my frustrations with AI writing permeating almost every corner of the internet on the mind, I took note of the pitfalls of plagiarism that Brewis highlights through his case studies, and realized how they are only exacerbated with generative AI. In this current climate I’ve done a lot of reflection on my own writing. Of course, given the fact that I don’t plagiarize (duh) and I have never once used an LLM to write or edit my work, anything I create is much more human than any of the slop found on the internet, but still these topics offer much to think about in regards to what makes my writing my own.

There have been many controversies about AI use in creative writing, people highlighting how AI cannot think for itself, make creative decisions, or innovate. Any choices it makes are dependent solely on how likely its algorithm calculates each word follows the other. It doesn’t actually understand the words it’s spitting out. I think about how the plagiarists covered by Brewis would try to somewhat cover up their plagiarism by interchanging some words with synonyms and switching up the phrasing a tad, last minute amateur school essay style, and how it makes their theft obvious. These « creators » would end up with frankensteined-together sentences that no one would come up with organically—these words and ideas are not their own and when they try to manipulate them they cannot even do it in a way that feels right.

I also think about how Benson Boone said that the lyric « moonbeam ice cream » in his song Mystical Magical doesn’t mean anything at all. Don’t get me wrong, that’s not inherently a bad thing, and Boone has also shared the details of how the lyric came to his friend and co-writer Jack LaFrantz after a bout of writer’s block and an hour of the two just goofing off, and they had later decided it to be perfect for their melody. There is beauty and humanity in that, no matter how stupid. Still, the thought of it along with the rest of the state of writing on the internet has made me ponder my own choices in my words. Common writing advice is that good authors put thought into every word. You don’t choose a phrase for no reason. I went back multiple times while writing my most recent blog post, the Mika pride listicle, thinking : « The use of this word sounds like it has meaning, but what am I actually saying here ? What am I trying to convey ? »

The other pertinent issue is that of how plagiarism strips a piece of its author’s identity. In Somerton’s Disney video, he ripped off a piece about Mulan by James Thom (then known as Jes), who compared Mulan’s story to his own personal experience of being a queer and trans Asian American (see an archived version of the article here). Somerton dealt with such evident connections to the author he was stealing from by removing personal anecdotes and changing the phrasing to make them more « universal », replacing Thom’s « I » and « me » with « trans and nonbinary people » and « trans men ». Everything that came out of Somerton’s mouth here was true, technically, but he erased the humanity behind these observations by erasing the human author and his human touches. If Somerton wanted a more easily applicable writeup of Mulan for his video, he could have watched the movie and composed something himself. Hell, he could have cited Thom, or even just talked to another Asian trans person about their own thoughts, grounding his arguments in real lived experiences, but instead he chose the route of theft and erasure. Generative AI is the same way, having no identity of its own, an outsider taking from real human stories, stripping them from their context, and using them, twisting them, to piece together its own stories.

Sometimes it feels like I’m too much of an outsider of my own life. I feel a degree of separation from many experiences, and people. It’s hard to explain, but to illustrate a part of it, I don’t relate to the music I listen to very often. It feels like the extent of my life and the subjects of music I’ve heard are two circles hardly overlapping. And to be clear, I don’t always hate this little quirk of mine. Music and storytelling and art in general to me are usually vehicles to understanding the breadth of human experience that I have not known. Frequently you may hear me marvel at the variety of the human condition.

Throughout most of the Mika pride article, I found myself largely speaking in generalities about queer experiences. I haven’t experienced bullying for my sexuality, or religious trauma, or unrequited love (or romantic love in general), so I can only speak on such subjects as an observer. Not that I don’t consider myself any less gay or anything for not relating to some of these events, but sometimes it’s hard not to feel weird with James Somerton’s blank eyes and his blatant appropriation of other queer people’s experiences in the back of my head, while I try to talk about queer community, so much of which I haven’t even experienced yet. I guess for that one can only try their best. There are a few exceptions though. Stuck in the Middle is, without contest, the Mika song that is the most personal to me, so in my post, I pushed myself to get into what exactly makes it so special. It feels weird to be honest about these personal things, but it is something I want to work on. In academia, objectivity is key, and I love a good school essay, but in other contexts, I want to be more personal. I want to be known through my writing. Here’s a relevant, well-timed Tumblr post from user luna-azzurra.

And even if I can’t relate to things that doesn’t mean that I cannot understand them, especially when I know and talk to people who experience the world differently than me. Staying on the topic of Mika, a lot of my understanding of Mika’s music is influenced by my friend Leaf, and xyr perspective influenced how I talked about Popular Song in my article ! Earlier I mentioned how « Somerton’s » « work » could have benefitted from more connection to lived experiences to ground his points beyond general statements about « the LGBTQ community ». I think Somerton could have ended up somewhere much different if he actually had more friends in the community, instead of seeing other queer creators as competitors, or sources from which to steal. It’s fans talking about movies and music and fandom on social media, it’s Hbomberguy talking about how YouTubers help each other in figuring out how to make good videos, it’s me and my friend musing about shared experiences and deep questions over the phone, hell, it’s even Benson Boone and his friend reaching the end of a collective writer’s block by coming up with the fuckass moonbeam ice cream line. Something real, something human, something more than slop and stealing and whatever else Somerton and his co-writer Nick Hergott put together, and whatever AI writing can cobble together either.

You know those questions they would ask us in school to make sure we understood what we read? « Does the story remind you of something else, like something you have experienced or another story you read? » I appreciate those questions more and more by the day. Art doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and neither do you. In making connections between the creation, the world, and the self, everything feels more real.

I love writing. Once, in grade 12, my French teacher pushed me to find a reason, the motivation for improving my writing skills. The conclusion that I reached was that I just have so much to say and all I want is to be understood. Art and storytelling are vehicles to understand experiences that I don’t know, but they are also how I in turn can communicate my own experiences to the world. And so I write, and I write a lot, and I try to write it all well. I watched Cunk on Earth with a friend at the beginning of the month, and wrote a review on Letterboxd, and, with all this reflection in mind, I thought I’d talk about how my favourite part of the special, the nuclear arms bit, reminded me of a conversation I had with my brother. In my fanfic writing, I’ve been thinking more about my word choice, since in the past I feel guilty of choosing words that sound meaningful or pretty but are mostly hollow with no real thought behind them. I don’t think I’ll be mistaken for an AI anytime soon, but still, I’m always trying to write authentically. Write with more intentionality, and with more of myself.