We Can't Have Nice Things
My time at Substack has mostly been wonderful. I adore connecting with so many of you. Unfortunately, it seems like the moment any of us feels joy the overlords have to come in and ruin it.
I’m not one of those people who is ever going to clutch her pearls and moan about anything. Or, as my kids say, we don’t yuck on anyone else’s yum. I don’t really understand AI or want to look at it too closely and am very annoyed it came to life on the back of human authors without their consent or knowledge, but otherwise I have a similar philosophy towards it that I do to other things I don’t like or want in my life but can’t control. Mainly kale and sharks. I was happily staying in my own lane until it came for this platform.
Last week I wrote a post on this platform. I made a human error in it as humans do. I will always make sure YOUR work is perfect, but even editors need editors. But when I tried to fix my one mistake my work went from 100% fully human to mostly AI.
Now it feels like my typos are a badge of honor.
Like AI, I learned to be human on the back of authors. If you’ve been with me for a bit, you know that I am autistic. As a kid, I was basically mute. I didn’t make eye contact. I didn’t want anyone to speak to me. It felt like everyone had a manual on how to exist in a very confusing, loud world I didn’t want to be a part of. But books showed me the way.
I started with Nancy Drew. Then Kinsey Milhone. Then I found Sharon McCone and V.I. Warshawski. Women trying to exist in a world that often felt dark and unfriendly and not necessarily made for them . Exactly how I felt. But they are all brave and live their lives on their own terms and eventually I learned how to do that too.
I’ve always kept a very professional appearance online though, until I found Substack. Substack gives me room to play and explore and share my observations about the publishing world that has been my home for the past too many decades to count with so many more people than I normally have the chance to. And I’m not going to give that up. My only concern is that this is all going to turn into an AI witch hunt. And in the end the authors not doing anything wrong will censor themselves out of fear and the ones who are using AI questionably will double down. And the only loss will be, once again, for us genuine humans. This is just another way to keep us too scared to share our voices, But I’m going to keep plugging away and I hope you all will too.
So please know that I’ll be here, making sure I keep the gate as wide open as possible, for all of you messy and gorgeous humans doing real work to march through. I just can’t promise there won’t be any typos.
Warmly,
P.S. This newsletter is a true labor of love. I write it in the cracks of my daily life with two high need kids, one high need dog, and all of the paid work I do for my clients, making sure I am 100% present and ready for all of the beautiful words they trust me with. I couldn’t do this without the support of my paid subscribers. If you’re enjoying my newsletters and they’re helping you feel less alone, please consider upgrading. I record an exclusive weekly voice memo for my paid subscribers along with other fun perks. But the most important thing is that you’re making this newsletter possible for everyone.
It's so ironic that before AI people would lower ratings on book reviews for too many typos, but now it feels like people just see it as evidence that it was written by a human. I honestly hope that at some point the law catches up and makes it so people have to disclose when a product for sale was generated with AI. It might be starting to since NY passed a bill recently that advertising or sales listings that use "artificial performers" (aka human looking AI models) MUST disclose this fact or face heavy fines. I only know this because I have an Etsy shop, but since I live in and sell to the US, even though I'm not in NY state, the law applies to me because a NY shopper could very well see my listings. (I don't use any AI in my shop at all, just FYI. I do 100% handmade. But I still have to be aware of the law as a seller.)
I don't like AI and I don't use it, but if someone wants to use it, I want people to quit LYING about it, y'know? The witch hunts are wrong too, but they're happening because of the deception that's going on. The fact that I'm legally obligated to disclose in a review if I received a free ARC copy of a book, but no one has to disclose that a machine wrote the book they slapped their name on is kind of nuts. The consumer should have the final say in what we consume, which means we need information to make the decision. It kind of makes me think of a historical fiction book I read that was set in the days before the US had laws that made food companies disclose their ingredients, so some companies were making (as just one example) "applesauce" with pumpkin and formaldehyde and nobody knew. In the case of food, it's our physical health at stake, but I'd argue in the case of AI use and consumption, it's our mental health at stake. In 2026 I HOPE that people realize that's important...
I was horrified when I saw a typo in my headline last week (after publication, of course). I corrected it and wonder if it made the post AI. I’m the typo queen, so think I’ll just leave them all now. My apologies in advance.