Saw an RSS feed entry replying to someone's blog post who decided to never use em dashes again because they saw people on Reddit claiming it's what makes AI easy to spot. Never used ChatGPT or any of the myriad chatbot trash offshoots of it, but I was curious about something.

Looking up on YouTube, the first result on "how to spot AI" leads into the video in which the first point used is the em dash. Going over to Twitter and Reddit and searching for em dash and sure enough people are pointing out any usage and accusing the poster of AI like it's an own.

And this point I'm convinced these people don't think, let alone pay attention. They watch five minutes of the first video they find (or more likely a TikTok or something), learn "em dash bad", see a — and they immediately indulge in their self-inflicted brain damage because they get a dopamine kick out of being trendy "hating on AI" or whatever the fuck.

We're surrounded by zombies.

Or maybe they've used it and saw it's true.

That character isn't even on your keyboard, you can't use it unless you're AI

> That character isn't even on your keyboard, you can't use it unless you're AI

It may not exist on a keyboard but there is software that can write it.

See compose keys.

the ultimate trick you can pull on people now is to just start typing in a respectful manner ^_^