I hate that AI has stolen my emdashes and I can't use them without looking like slop. But I will die defending markdown as my preferred note taking format. They're not taking that away from me.
I felt like this with the word delve. Seemed like nobody had ever heard the word before, and that the only possible way it’d be written was if an llm did it - but it’s just a nice word.
Delve was used a lot in corporate writing. A lot of the so-called "whitepapers" that businesses like to publish to show how smart they are were ingested in training models.
Unfortunately, in a place like this, if a bunch of people falsely accuse you of being a slop spreader your karma drops like a rock.
Can you imagine how hard it is to start up a new Reddit account lately? Even in a small and isolated community of niche enthusiasts just getting to the point where your posts aren't auto-modded takes serious effort. One stray emdash and you can lose it.
Ask me how I know.
Oh yay, I'm in HN jail again. "You're posting too fast." Faster than once per 30 minutes? Sigh.
Just on HN alone I think I've seen roughly 3948538902748750897520938 mentions of emdashes when others were complaining about slop in the past 2 months. It might as well be the unofficial slop logo. Folks are treating it like a dead giveaway.
I feel like a school friend of mine has been taken from me.