There's an AI flyer hanging in the shop window of a store that sells stickers, saying "AI will steal your soul." There's a beloved family-owned restaurant down the block who has finally stopped asking their best server to run their social media and now all of their marketing materials are AI-generated and while eating their food, you can only picture the fake images of fake food on their instagram page.
You try to ignore it, but the menu has been redone in that AI font that makes your skin crawl. Well, they're old, your friend says, and money is tight and they don't know any better.
Your mom posts stories to her instagram account of cats holding coffee cups and smoking cigarettes, followed by an anti-AI sentiment, followed by a picture of Hayden Panettiere embracing Dolly Parton in heaven. Matt LeBlanc posts a loving tribute to his former costar Matthew Perry on what would have been his 57th birthday, and wait, no, he didn't. It's not real, and when you tell people that, they say the sentiment is still nice.
You gently reach out to an artist to ask them how they decided to land on the use of AI imagery in their branding and they get pissed off that you accused them of using AI and explain that they bought a random pack of western font and imagery and would never use AI and instead of explaining to her that she purchased AI graphics, you close the laptop and walk away.
You scroll your neighborhood community page, and there are AI flyers for garage sales, dance classes, realtors who want your business buying houses. There are AI flyers promoting open house nights at the new preschool and at the African community center. There are AI flyers about prayer and clothing swaps and elections and yard sales. There are AI flyers everywhere.
You are reading a book and something feels a little off in the dialogue so you check the publication date. It was released in 2026 so you don't finish it because you're pretty sure it was written by AI. You consider only reading books written before 2020. Maybe 2019. You stop following artists online because that one artist you swore would never use AI admits they've been using AI. You stop looking at etsy and amazon and pinterest because nothing is real and they are all bad companies anyway.
You start drawing, even though you're a terrible draw-er, and have never considered yourself an artist. You yell encouragingly at friends who tell you they're thinking of writing a book even though they're not writers. You pull out the sewing machine and try to put a patch on an old t-shirt because instagram won't stop promoting AI replicas of screen tees. You pick up the phone to talk to your friend instead of texting her back because your messages keep being forced through an AI summary machine. You want to hear her voice, not have it summarized for you.
You start taking long walks because you have more time, now that the internet feels unusable. You used to spend hours scrolling on reddit and instagram, but now, every other post is an ad, and the ad is for AI, and you hate AI and you hate ads, and you hate the internet.
You start to journal again and read physical books again, though you never stopped doing that, but even picking up your e-reader feels like a threat these days. It's harder to borrow a library book on your kindle because you have to interact directly with Amazon and its AI to do so. You stop going to events even hosted by good friends because they've started inviting you via chat gpt. You're sick of being invited to "help ring in [whatever event] right!" with a beer emoji next to it. You cannot spend your time with people who cannot spend the time to properly invite you to a social gathering. You don't want to be trapped in a room with people who cannot interact with each other because they only know how to interact with Claude.
You don't want to be the annoying friend who cannot and will not adjust to the times, but you can't help it. Not when "the times" mean wasting water and creating a hotter, dirtier planet, all to be a little dumber than we already are. You don't know how to say, "I'm not reading what AI thinks about your relationship problems," or "I don't believe AI has any idea what it's talking about," when someone is sharing their life with you. You don't want to be the debbie downer, but you are desperately trying to hold onto your sanity, and your clean water and sense of equality and justice and love of art and creativity and originality.
Your friends don't have jobs because AI is a tool that we should embrace. Your friends are being asked to quit critical thinking and creativity and train AI. Your friends are texting you asking you about social work, and teaching, and nursing, and EMT training. They are copywriters and screenplay writers and news writers and writers and writers. Your friends are getting left behind by AI.
