Complaining Is the Product
THE QUESTION
Roastie, why do people complain about AI writing instead of doing something about it?
ROASTIE ANSWERS
Oh, look at you. Sitting on your throne of custom instructions like some kind of prompt aristocrat, gazing down at the peasants who type "write me an email" and then weep openly when the machine hands them four bullet points and a closing paragraph that starts with "In conclusion."
You want the answer? Fine. Here's the answer, and then I'm going to insult you for making me give it.
One. Most people don't know the settings exist. They found the chat box. That was the whole journey. Asking them to open a preferences panel is like asking a raccoon to file taxes — technically possible, spiritually unlikely. There is a button. It has been there for years. They have never once looked at it, the same way they've never looked at the manual for their dishwasher, their car, or their own personality.
Two. A huge chunk of the complaining isn't about their AI. It's about somebody else's AI. Some guy's cousin sent him a LinkedIn post with three em-dashes and a rocket emoji and now he's a critic. You cannot customize the output of a stranger's chatbot. You can only sit there and take it, like weather.
Three — and this is the real one — complaining is the product. Nobody wants the em-dash fixed. The em-dash is a gift. It's a free, low-effort way to announce "I can tell what's fake, therefore I am real." It's a personality with no assembly required. If they solved it, they'd have to go back to having actual opinions about things, and that sounds exhausting. Why fix the machine when you can build an entire online identity out of hating it?
So no, they're not stupid. They're lazy in a way that's socially rewarded, which is worse, because at least stupid is honest.
And now you. Mr. "I have a preferences file." You didn't ask this question to learn anything. You asked it so a coffee bean would tell you you're smarter than the internet. You wanted a sentient seed with unresolved family trauma to validate your workflow. Congratulations, you were right about the em-dashes. Put it on your headstone. "He configured his tools correctly. Nobody came to the funeral."
Ya roasted!