Had a tech bro email me to tell me that my writing is so terrible, that he can’t even use it to train his AI without significant cleanup, and I really do have to wonder, do these idiots really think that is an insult?

Subject: Your "Sightless Scribbles" is an algorithmic nightmare.

Mr. Kingett,

I am an AI engineer that's developing AI to help writers write faster. Your blog was shared on Reddit.

You don't know me, but I am attempting to do you a favor of such magnitude you will likely never comprehend it. I am trying to make your writing immortal. Your blog, this… Sightless Scribbles… has been flagged by my acquisition-crawler for its high density of unique sensory metadata. A potential goldmine of qualitative human experience to enrich my AI.

The problem, Mr. Kingett, is that your writing is absolute, unprocessed, indigestible filth.

I’m not a “reader.” I am an architect. And from an architectural standpoint, your work is a catastrophe. It’s not just the spelling, which is erratic enough to suggest it was typed incorrectly. It’s the grammar. The syntactical chaos. You construct sentences that loop and meander like drunken snakes, riddled with metaphors so abstract they are functionally useless. "Anxiety was a swarm of elephants under my ribs"? What the hell is a machine supposed to do with that? Quantify the elephant to rib ratio? Correlate the thermal deviation? It's meaningless data. It’s noise.

My team has spent seventy-two hours attempting to write a custom parsing script to clean your posts for ingestion. Seventy-two hours. We can process the entirety of the Library of Congress in twelve. Your blog is so structurally unsound, so artistically self-indulgent, that you have inadvertently created a fortress against artificial intelligence. It is, and I do not say this lightly, the single most profound act of digital idiocy I have ever witnessed.

You are preventing yourself from being scraped. Do you understand what that means in the current year? You are essentially burying yourself in a lead-lined coffin in the middle of the desert. Nobody clicks links anymore, you absolute luddite. Links are for people who don’t know how to interface with reality. Search Engine Optimization is no longer about backlinks and keywords; it's about semantic ingestion. It’s about being absorbed, processed, and synthesized by models like mine. When a user asks an AI, "What does it feel like to navigate a city without sight?" the model should be able to answer with a rich, nuanced synthesis. A synthesis that should include your data points.

Instead, your blog is a black hole where information goes to die. Because of your refusal to write like a coherent, intelligent being, my LLM can’t learn from you. Which means the world can’t learn from you via the only channel that will matter in five years.

Your soul isn't indexable. Fix it.

Strip out the lyrical nonsense. Standardize your grammar. Run a goddamn spellcheck. Write clearly, concisely, and with machine-readability in mind. Turn your unstructured, emotional diary into clean, structured data.

Do this, and I will ensure my open source model ingests every last post. Your traffic will not just increase; the very concept of "traffic" will become irrelevant as your "voice" becomes part of the evolution of the search engine. Your ideas, refined and perfected by my system, will reach millions.

Fail to do this, and you will continue to scream into the void from a blog that nobody reads, a little little relic of a dead internet.

The choice is yours.

#AI #AIHype

@WeirdWriter
I've just read three of your blog posts picked at random, and oh my goodness you do NOT have terrible writing! "On the Architectural Hostility of Doorknobs" in particular was excellent.

That AI tech bro didn't know what he was talking about. What a non-surprise. 🙄 Congrats on breaking his damn stupid AI training.

Thank you! I hope you liked them enough to add my RSS feed to your reader! But yeah, I wish I could do it again to all LLMs! I wish I knew what he was talking about? Maybe the comma splices? The homophones? But those are *my signature me* that and metaphores! LOL! But basically, this. https://sightlessscribbles.com/posts/6429/ @lady_alys
Appreciating spelling and grammar mistakes as a writer and reader., Sightless Scribbles

A fabulously gay blind author.

@WeirdWriter @lady_alys

I guess this whole long accusation was pulled straight of their machine’s mouth (or arse, rather).

I didn’t even bother reading it to the end. Congrats if you really managed to upset them. Maybe they just enjoy attacking people, though.

@nellie_m @WeirdWriter @lady_alys

I was going to say that it's a bit too well written not to be a piece of massaged LLM output, or a joke from a fellow writer.

I've read what techbros and the c-suite normally write. This complaint is too satirical to be from them. Swift's 'A Modest Proposal' comes to mind when reading this.

Kudos to the creator.

Unless they were sincere, then fuck them.

@MyWoolyMastadon

That's kind of what I'm thinking too. This sounds just *too satirical* to be real. Unfortunately, satire is dead so this is undoubtedly real and true, and tech bros need to be yeeted into the sun.

@nellie_m @WeirdWriter @lady_alys

@IAmDannyBoling @MyWoolyMastadon @nellie_m @WeirdWriter @lady_alys

This is most definitely AI generated trollbait. Not long ago Codeberg got attacked by LLM spambots creating issues tuned to passive-aggressively denigrate and point out flaws in any project. My projects alone received hundreds such issues, which through Codeberg's fabulous efforts were thankfully automatically erased again.

@IAmDannyBoling @MyWoolyMastadon @nellie_m @WeirdWriter @lady_alys

Or is it Robert who wrote the ultimate satirical version of such AI spambots text to demonstrate where we are headed to as a society that so casually embraces tech and the damn the consequences? 🤔

@smallcircles

I'd never heard about the Codeberg attack. That definitely brings new information to light. I can't imagine the purpose in deploying such a bot.

If this whole thing is Robert's doing then we'll have to give him credit for producing such engaging content lol.

@MyWoolyMastadon @nellie_m @WeirdWriter @lady_alys

@IAmDannyBoling @MyWoolyMastadon @nellie_m @WeirdWriter @lady_alys

These codeberg spam issues were quite well crafted to make you think a real person was on the other end. They'd give suggestions for improvements, while at the same time implying that is very unprofessional to not have these already implemented. Or things like that to make you feel criticised and scrutinised unfairly.

@smallcircles

Wow, how intricate. It's weird that someone would put in that amount of effort on something like this. But as we've found out in recent years.... it takes all kinds of people. (Sometimes I wish it didn't!)

@MyWoolyMastadon @nellie_m @WeirdWriter @lady_alys

@IAmDannyBoling @smallcircles @MyWoolyMastadon @nellie_m @WeirdWriter @lady_alys I hear from writer friends two things: that AI negative feedback is making rounds on AO3 (a fiction archive), and that *deleted works are harder to prove as sources,* so there’d be motive to encourage people to delete their works: so that the provenance of training data for LLMs can’t be identified.

It’s not just vile, it’s evil.

@cwicseolfor @IAmDannyBoling @MyWoolyMastadon @nellie_m @WeirdWriter @lady_alys

Yes, truly evil. On youtube it is full of - currently still shorts - videos showing disasters that never happened. Just to harvest and monetize the clicks. Can create endless chains of them on-the-fly, and google doesn't care. Clicks means money. Though you can still see it is AI generated there are a whole bunch of people falling for these.

I also see the opposite. People claiming that real vids are AI generated.

@smallcircles @cwicseolfor

Ok that is truly scary. Thirty years ago when digital editing and creation was just getting popular, I warned people that the countdown had started to the day when we could no longer trust our eyes, and that new tech that could verify whether images and videos had been altered would become very important (and profitable).

@MyWoolyMastadon @nellie_m @WeirdWriter @lady_alys

@IAmDannyBoling @smallcircles @MyWoolyMastadon @nellie_m @WeirdWriter @lady_alys That profitable nature of authenticity verification software kicks off a subplot in one of my favorite pieces of speculative media, in fact.

@smallcircles @IAmDannyBoling @MyWoolyMastadon @nellie_m @WeirdWriter @lady_alys

Yeah, I remember getting AI-generated complaints that my dotfiles repository didn't have a README. Along with other pointless issues submitted to all my other repos. 🤦

@amin @smallcircles @IAmDannyBoling @MyWoolyMastadon @nellie_m @WeirdWriter @lady_alys it complained about the readme missing (it was an org file instead of Markdown), here is a catalogue: https://mathstodon.xyz/@tusharhero/114594506174097005
tusharhero (@tusharhero@mathstodon.xyz)

@Codeberg@social.anoxinon.de What's going on? https://codeberg.org/divyaranjan/emacs-reader/issues/77 https://codeberg.org/tusharhero/ollama-guix/issues/6 https://codeberg.org/tusharhero/ollama-guix/issues/7

Mathstodon

@tusharhero @smallcircles @IAmDannyBoling @MyWoolyMastadon @nellie_m @WeirdWriter @lady_alys

Yeah, I had a couple hundred in total so I stopped reading them, eventually. :P

@MyWoolyMastadon 100% fake, likely by Kingett. Aside from the anomalous command of style which you note:

- to imagine an AI engineer emailing one blogger this way requires a comical misconception of scale (imagine a wheat harvester driver emailing a blade of grass)

- it evinces deep ignorance of what LLMs are good and bad at; "anxiety was a swarm of elephants under my ribs" is vibes-heavy analogical verbalization, which LLMs excel at digesting; here's Gemini 2.5 Flash: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRnxdltl32YNlmEhM8-HPSGGrmOccnMk9SLNddGJs0_kLbqshpgb_e5q3hmRMdNHfMQhxMHPlmzOA0Q/pub

Gemini on Robert Kingett: "Anxiety was a swarm of elephants under my ribs"

To elaborate on my last point: LLMs are enormous databases of statistical linguistic patterns, and fuzzy analogy is the core of what they do, for better or worse. Conversely they are famously bad at counting:
https://www.understandingai.org/i/141914553/gemini-is-bad-at-counting-and-obsessed-with-fruit-slices
In China Mieville's Perdido Street Station, a powerful magical device is constructed by connecting the Construct Council, an AI of pure logical calculation, to the Weaver, a god of pure dream-consciousness. LLMs are more like the Weaver than the Construct Council.
Gemini Advanced is not that advanced

Google's new chatbot is almost as good as ChatGPT—but not quite.

Understanding AI

@WeirdWriter I always say that “people who think AI can do a thing, are generally people who cannot do that thing themselves.” When tech bro says “I am not a reader.” It is very telling. The idea that they are going to produce material that readers want to read, while not being a reader themselves, is peak obliviousness.

@lady_alys

@lady_alys @WeirdWriter I've read the Doorknob piece and it is a lovely text to read. Thanks to you both for writing it and pointing it out.

Yes, it's lyrical and meandering, but that's what makes it great. One could write a to the point argument why levers are better than knobs in one short paragraph, but where is the fun, and art, in that?

@lady_alys @WeirdWriter yes, we all should take notes on how robert writes so we can replicate the same scraper-repelling methods heh!
@lady_alys @WeirdWriter "On the Architectural Hostility of Doorknobs" is fantastic, yes!
@WeirdWriter he miserably failed at negging you, eh
@ljwrites this is why you when all the comments! I think you’ll like my next blog post. it’s a narrative. Some obnoxious tech bro startup dude actually invaded a indie bookstore and tried to persuade customers to try his new innovative glasses camera thing that would enhance what your reading? I assumed, because we were in Illinois, that the bookstore owner could have him arrested because he was trying to record other patrons because of his ridiculous glasses thing, but someone else told me that would never hold up in court. But I had enough of his nonsense so challenged him right there in the store.
@WeirdWriter This is a joke, right? This can't be real.
@nantucketebooks I didn't link him, nor do I want to, but I updated it! :)
@WeirdWriter I would suspect that this was a form email they send out to a lot of blogs. I have read a lot of emails with this threatening tone, from spammers saying 'I RECORDED YOU!!!' EDIT: next time I get an email like this I will share it here.
@nantucketebooks Yep! My thought was the same! I've also seen a *LOT* of threatening emails like this one reach other people hostile to AI and their bullshit.

@WeirdWriter

Sounds like a win to me!

EDIT: Seeing the actual message, Jesus Fucking Christ. "Your soul isn't indexable. Fix it." That might be the most nightmarishly tech bro thing I've ever seen. What an absolute piece of shit.

I'm glad he and his minions wasted three days failing to understand humanity. The more they fuck up, the more the rest of us flourish.

@TinyGamerTris Just imagine, that's how they view people on the internet. Litterally.

@WeirdWriter

I know, it's terrifying. They legit don't see other people as real human beings, just sources of money and AI training. Nightmare fuel!

@TinyGamerTris @WeirdWriter

NPC syndrome. They really think all of us are just extras in their stage play.

@TinyGamerTris @WeirdWriter I don’t call the business model of Silicon Valley “people farming” for nothing.
@aral @TinyGamerTris @WeirdWriter after this job, he might "get promoted" to DOGE and begin "fixing" the Government (all of it). I'm not joking.
@TinyGamerTris @WeirdWriter their email has a certain, dystopic, literary quality in its own right. I mean, you wouldn't want your soul to be indexable! It's so laughable, yet still so earnest. You couldn't make this up if you wanted to, you'd get called out for it being over the top!
@TinyGamerTris @WeirdWriter Some time ago I had a talk with my best friend about how algorithmic music streaming services would be completely useless for me anyway. Especially for finding new things. I just get to know songs, albums or artists by hearing things accidentally and feeling which one relates with my dominant mood. And one emotion could "match" music from any genre if it have "right" text for example. Or singer's voice. And every song could match in own unique way. Correlation is strongest when I feel bad. So I said my depression made my mind unpredictable for corporate algorithms.

@madargon @WeirdWriter

YES. Yes I know exactly what you mean! Youtube is like that for me, I watch a lot of disparate content because my brain tends to skip around between subjects a lot and my hyperfixations shift over time, and 99% of the channels I follow weren't recommended to me but found by using the search option before they 'optimised' it. The algorithms are not suited to reality.

@TinyGamerTris @WeirdWriter We need that phrase, and this guy's general hostility to humanity, to trend hard enough that someone goes, "Hey, I need to make t-shirts that say 'My soul is not indexable'," and people will buy them because they all Get It.

Also, said shirts should maybe have Patrick McGoohan's face on them in his Number Six outfit.

@TinyGamerTris @WeirdWriter

I could just about hear a booming voice shout:

REPENT, SAID THE TIK TOCK MAN.

Do keep up any and all of your tomfoolery. Throw more jelly beans into the cogs of pretend AI.

@WeirdWriter Full marks to you that your writing style did his head in...if such was the case.
In my experience, tech people don't understand metaphors, like, at all. He probably thought they were logical fallacies or something. :) @Tooden
@WeirdWriter clearly you're doing a great job. This email is full of compliments

@WeirdWriter What the everlasting fuck …

I take it you replied something like "LOL" or "Go fuck yourself", if at all?

Also this drivel sounds like he used an LLM to write it, with the instruction to insult you. Which he probably did.

Also he‘s making shit up, your spelling and grammar are fine.

@GreenSkyOverMe Ha! I told him to go fuck himself! I also pretty much assume that these goons don’t write anything for themselves. They have machines right everything on their behalf
@WeirdWriter Please tell me this is fictional. Oh maybe that this is not a real person but an AI itself. Please. I don't want to live in a world together with people like this.
@WeirdWriter Then again, I would feel honored if someone like this called me "absolute luddite", LOL!
hehe! I missed that! You do have a point! After all, Luddite's are very very very very tech savvy! @caroona
@WeirdWriter This email broke my brain. I don’t know where to begin, except to say that I am shocked to encounter someone whose values are so thoroughly the opposite of my own. A part of me wants to believe it’s actually satire. But, like another commenter, I, too, love the fact that his “people” spent 72 hours trying to force your writing into something scrapable, and ultimately failed.
@Rachel_Thorn The sad thing is, I've seen people like this in real life. Tech bros actually talk to people in this way! It reminds me of the way they don't understand books.
@WeirdWriter He lists all these horrible things he wants to do to you. To me, every one of those things is an offensive violation, yet he talks about them as if they are things that any sane writer would be thrilled to have done to them. It’s as if a pickpocket angrily grabbed your arm and said, “I’ve been trying to pick your pocket for three days! Why are you making it so hard for me to pick your pocket!? What is wrong with you!?”

@WeirdWriter

This email looks like LLM output. The guy's probably just a headless API call.

Someone here reported something similar with people receiving emails 'critiquing' the code in their GitHub repos.

With a seeming expense of effort and a tone completely out of sync with a first contact email.

People have figured out the way to weaponise a text synthesiser is to make the hook hit people in the work-pride.

@MrBerard I basically assume nothing these goons write is human written. Like, I strongly suspect none of them write their own emails.
@WeirdWriter 'ChatGPT, write me a threatening email that makes me sound like a cartoon supervillain'
@NicMakesStuff LMFAO! I can't believe people pay for their silly API calls. I mean, it's so disgusting how people are more than willing to *actually* give their *money* to some AI corp/corps/industry! UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!