PAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE
The Arbiters of AutoCoWrex don't always recognise prose - and soon, neither will we, unless we fight it and write it now
Ah, the quandary of the modern reader: to yeet, or not to yeet? That is the question… and in the face of imperfection, the answer from the Arbiters of AutoCoWrex is always to yeet.
I just perused a book and it was rife, absolutely RIFE with errors. Loaded with outdated imagery, poor word choices, repeat words and phrases, it also exhibited bad formatting, misspellings, antiquated usage, and worst of all, insensitivity. It was not written for today’s modern audiences, and other reviewers hated it.
It was my Family’s 208 year old King James Bible.
Now, many of you will tell me to yeet, based on that simple premise alone. I understand; the source material is controversial, and many question the Author. But I happen to like reading ancient books, and have a fondness for outdated spelling, so I decided to read it again, just to spite people who tell me no…
now imagine what the AutoCoWrex Arbiters would do with such a book.
Yes, Children there is a world where e e cummings does not exist, where Jack Kerouac was told to pack it in, where Zane Grey was told no one needs that many adjectives. It is the world of Pablum Publishing, the crystalline white blankness of perfect punctuation, simple spelling and updated grammar, made understandable for Idiocratic Individuals such as ourselves.
This is my version of Hell.
Can you imagine this transformative landscape, where mountainous heights of imagery and valleys of ponderous thoughts are levelled to create an endless plateau of uniformity?
You can?
Now take those words you are using, and declare them non-existent, thanks to modern sensitivity. No more mountains - they are too high! No more valleys - the lows are too low! Just the wide open plains of unending vistas, populated by projections of a future movie, written to offend no one, or perhaps a deep-faked meme, made by bots.
This is your AutoCoWrex World: every word digitally revised on a daily basis, every thought reworded to please The Powers That Be, every line formatted for perfect grammar, indistinguishable from AI...
Digital.
Dead.
Done.
Or imagine a world.
That’s it. Just imagine it. Use the words you were taught. Use the spelling you learned. Use the imagery you love -
then write it.
If it is imperfect, and you want it to be better, write it again; craft with your mind until you feel it in your bones, the work of your heart made real, living on a page. Then set it free…
Human thoughts are imperfect in the eyes of the Machine. Human words are crude to the Arbiters of AutoCoWrex - but they are real. The perfect imperfectness of Human Creativity cannot be replicated; that is why the Machine hates them, the errors of innumerable imperfect Human thoughts creating the perfect cacophany, the Chaos of Life.
Write.
Wrestle.
Wreak.
Page against the Machine.
Yes, it's becoming a huge problem. There's so many things they want to change these days. What these machines and AI tools don't realise is that what they see as imperfections and incorrect grammar are often part of the writer's style and are what gives the story flare. Also, a lot of these things they now want to alter because they're seen as 'problematic' by today's standards are often there because they uniquely capture the times they are from with colloquialisms and particular turns of phrase and so on, and it all makes things authentic and real. We can't learn anything from the past if it's all completely sanitised... 😎
Not to mention Shakespeare, Homer, Beowulf, Edgar Allan Poe, and HG Wells. The best works are vibrant, full of life, and easy to read.