---

If there were an election for the most popular comment on Medium, the winner — by a landslide — will be:

Ready?
Drumroll…

“Thank you for sharing this!”

And the best part?
You don’t have to read the story. It still works.

If the story is good, “this” in this comment means the actual story.
Other times, it refers to the one from “what the f\** is **this**\?”* — and your comment turns into sarcasm gold.

Either way, you’re good.

Pro tip: Want bonus points? Pretend you read the story.
How? — Highlight the last sentence of the story and drop this comment as a response to that!

You may get a heartfelt reply from the author… I have replied, so it’s true.

By the way, in case you’re wondering, runner-up goes to “Insightful!”

---

Anyway, that’s not really what this story is about.

I started writing on Medium exactly five weeks ago — and in this probationary tenure, one thing stood out above all else:

With AI:
Writers became Editors.
Editors became Censors.
Readers became Detectives.

Writers used to stare at blank pages in Starbucks — spending more than their earnings. Now they’ve outsourced that to ChatGPT — which doesn’t ask for expensive coffee.

Instead of writing, writers now edit — scrubbing the AI’s DNA from the draft.

Not that they care much. Honestly, the draft was more readable.
But the editors made them do it.

Editors now geek out with ZeroGPT, NoGPT, F***GPT, and the tools only they know — to censor AI fingerprints.

Again, they wouldn’t care either (same reason as writers), but I heard someone started this anti-AI crusade here. And editors are now on hook apparently — or the algorithm gets vengeful.

These two were forced transformations — maybe unreasonable, maybe not, but understandable.

But what about readers?
They’ve voluntarily taken on the role of detectives as unpaid overtime.

“I don’t want to pay to read AI-generated content.”

This was the 11th commandment I believe.

Now they look for clues, armed with those 93 cursed words like Furthermore, Navigate, and of course — the infamous em dash.

They get a dopamine hit when they spot one — then rush to the nearest library to read “real” books, boycotting the internet for a full 3 hours!

---

Author’s Note

If you’re offended, I apologize — please know that it was ChatGPT who made me do this, I swear.

But if you enjoyed it, congratulations! You’re now eligible to become an early subscriber — hundreds have secured their spot, and registration closes in the next 2 hours!