on writing (your target audience & ai talk)

13 May, 2026

Today, I went through my old posts in hopes of finding an inspiration for my next one. I realized it has entertained me to read my own work. Have you ever done that? From time to time? Don't you just go ahead and think: Wow, this is a good one. Oh, right, I wrote it. This is nice.

I don't mean to toot my own horn. My brain is only feeding itself. I think what this experience means is that I am my target audience. I may have forgotten the process of how I came up with that post or a line or a passage but the result is endearing to me. I don't know if this is a symptom of narcissism. But I love my blog. To be honest I think it is imperative for your blogging experience that you love your blog and what you share with the world. This is your own digital real estate.

I will now tell you I occassionally write fanfic and that it suffers the same phenomena.

Not divulging the fandom but it is here on the Internet somewhere and I have re-read what my younger me had itched to share with the world then and still, it did not bore me. It is a curious thing to read your old frozen thoughts. On topics or a trope you thought would be nice to subject your favorite characters with. This soothes me in a way because it still means I am writing for myself - my head's going to explode with how it's getting so big - but I am writing for myself.

And it is timeless - I will remember every version of me that has written down something because it is immortalized, transcending its initial purpose when it was posted or written down at that point in time. The interests will fade and the happenings will fragment into memory, but it will be there. To teach me, to make me remember or to even have me write something like this. Writing is powerful like that and we all know it.

However:

If you write with AI for a personal blog I think you will find it difficult to relate. That is not your thoughts that you have put out. It may have been your ideas, but these are not from you. You may use AI to explain something to you, to serve you as a dictionary or a thesaurus, but that is it. Anything beyond that is Slopppy slop slop.

There is a plethora of reasons why AI writing is bad. But I offer a genuine question about how will it fare in the future.

Will you find yourself able to feel what you felt? Will you be able to trust what you wrote a long time ago when your own humanity is riddled with AI? Will it still feel like yours?

This is under the assumption that anyone would use AI to write something personal like a diary or a journal or a blog. An AI journal <- Btw, this is an oxymoron.

For all I know it may be rare someone actually does this here, but it is a different story on Facebook. There, good-natured people share their lengthy, personal experiences with the signature robot tone¹. Many times I have been hooked by their irresistible titles! So it is such a shame being turned off to read those kind of posts. Most of the time they are meantto be inspirational. Nevermind that they garner a lot of attention and engagement. Sloppy slop slop.

I can think of two possible reasons people would do this:

• To follow a schedule / meet deadlines (constant creation, for what?) and;
• To improve their writing (they think it is bad without AI intervention)

If writing is hinged on your livelihood it is no longer entirely personal so let's cross the schedule/deadline reason out. But no writing is ever bad. I think writing can only improve if you do it a lot (like every other skill) - but if it is good to you, if it is true to you, now it will only depend on other people's tastes. Nevertheless I don't think any writing can be categorized as bad. So, now we circle back:

You must write as if you are your target audience.

And then it will never be horrible because at some point it was good, no matter if you are the only person that thinks that. It is good because you think it's good and that is more than enough <3

Back to fics: I recall the recent discourse on Twitter about fanfic prose and using AI to write fanfic. I will never read a fic written with the help of AI. Get that shit off of fandom right now. It is a digital plague.

Can you imagine this scenario?

Person A writes a story with AI.

Person B summarizes that story with AI.

Repeat after me: If you were not bothered to write it, why would you think anyone would be bothered to read it? There is no place for AI in art. I feel like the message has not yet reached the people enough. I will say this and share more messages about this until AI art ceases to exist.

As for fanfic prose, I think that anyone that puts up an opinion against it is coming from a place of condescension. Fanfic is free. People have fought tooth and nail in the legal world so that writers can write about their characters however they want - THEY ARE THEIR TARGET AUDIENCE - and you people are scrutinizing fics as if they are listed on the Goodreads Top 10. YOU ARE NOT THE TARGET AUDIENCE, obviously if this is not the writing you like, so let authors be the authors they want to be, keep your criticism to yourself and write your own thing if you are so inclined.

So this became a rant. It's okay I loved it and it exercised my brain. I don't mind that there is an AI hate bandwagon here on the blogosphere. I'm sure as hell seated and on it. I want everyone to realize how harmful this is and how it is a threat to civilization as we know it. In a perfect world, there is no up and coming culture that is hell-bent on making the usage of our brain underrated. It is important that we resist this or otherwise we find ourselves in every dystopian novel plot on its way to reality.

Take care of your brain, love your brain, use your brain ~

#2026 #ai #writing