Post of Shame(lessness)

The other day I was on LinkedIn. 

I am about to be in San Francisco uninterrupted for the summer, and it’s my big season of reconnecting with friends and business development. I have an unexpected opening for a few months in late summer, and I'm hunting for a new fun project. (God forbid I not work for a few hours in my week.)

My friend Steve wrote a thoughtful post about being unengaged on LinkedIn for a while then coming back. Here was part of it that caught me up short: 

“The tone of it all has started to feel kind of…monotone. Like everyone’s talking and sharing, but not many people are really saying something true... it lacks… soul.

And yeah, I’ve used AI for a handful of my own posts...But the more I use it, the less of myself I see in the words.

...it’s hard not to see how much of what’s out there now reads like it was written by a machine. Perhaps the ideas originated in a brain, but they’ve been reduced to sameness. There’s a kind of emotional and creative flatness that’s hard to unsee.”

WAIT.. . . .You guys are using AI to write LinkedIn posts??? 

How naive am I??

Have you all being doing this!?

I realize that I get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to help people find their voice. But writing a book it hard. It's hard for professional writers. And it is on shelves forever. You can't edit it later on.

But LinkedIn posts are not that. Why aren’t you writing your own LinkedIn posts!?

Especially if you are using the platform to spread your brand, your thoughts, your ideas, your . . . content? 

Have you decided you aren't a core part of that? 

These are early days of AI. Let’s not go down without a fight, y’all. Your voice is the most important thing you have. It is utterly unique. I've bought three houses with nothing but my voice.

What's more: Social media is supposed to be social. It is supposed to be all “hey guys!” It is supposed to be talking to people you know. You are allowed not to capitalize things or know grammar.

You do not need ChatGPT for this. 

It's the thing ChatGPT should not be able to do better than you, or you are doing it very wrong.

But . . . should I be surprised? I've also heard that no one can distinguish themselves in job interviews anymore, because everyone is using ChatGPT to practice. Everyone sounds the same. And that college admissions is in a bind because everyone is writing the same essay via ChatGPT. 

What is next? ChatGPT Cyrano-whispering apps for first dates?

I am joking, but I am sure people are getting ChatGPT to write their wedding vows now if the above is happening.

I'm confused: How did we already start cheerily opt into the thing that we were all super worried about five seconds ago?

Hollywood just did a WHOLE strike to make sure machines didn’t take over human creativity, expression, and story telling!!

And now y’all are just like “Come on in, and be me! Being me is hard!"

I am all for lazy. But this is LAZY.

If you think there’s some secret sauce that will make LI work better for you, I'll clue you in: BEING YOU IS IT. That is the secret sauce. Being AI is not it, because at a minimum, you sound like everyone else using AI. 

I should be thrilled, professionally, by any widespread trend of people opting into a full Little Mermaid special. Similarly to how Google Maps means we can't find anything without directions and mobile phones mean we can't memorize phone numbers anymore, if AI atrophies the muscle for merely writing a social media post, you are really gonna need help writing a book going forward.

But I'm not. I am really sad that you don’t think you– the real you-- is worth selling. 

Let me make this point by talking about my favorite topic: ME. (Because I don't suffer from this problem.)

The other day I was telling Evie a story about a wild ride trying to get Eli to school on time so she didn’t get a fourth tardy in a row. It ended with me honking at a car that was driving way too slow and sitting at green lights too long and me worrying that they would think I was some “Unhinged Cruella De Vil Mother M-f’er!” 

Then, I was like “Screw it, this has gotta be the last snow bird in Palm Springs! I’ll never see them again!” And to my horror, it was another school parent who was also late to school who was now going to tell everyone Eli’s mom was a psycho, and I was going to have to see at school functions for the next year and a few months. But then also we were like. .. . WAIT! WHERE WAS YOUR URGENCY IF YOU ARE ALSO THIS LATE!!!??? 

Evie was absolutely dying laughing as I told her this story. It came to life with my embarrassed manic description. And it was the most her mom story told in a her mom way. ChatGPT would not ever say the phrase: “Unhinged Cruella De Vil mother M-f’er.”

ChatGPT wouldn't have had those years snuggled with Evie watching 101 Dalmatians, and then had the desperate human feeling of being Cruella De Vil in that moment trying not to let Eli down. And if it did, ChatGPT might have thought: “Wow, that’s an inappropriate thing to say to a 12 year old.”

ChatGPT didn't spend its adult life in newsrooms where swearing was just how you talk. ChatGPT didn't go through Covid lockdown and the moment when, we just accepted kids were going to hear us swear sometimes, and that was life.

But mostly, ChatGPT has never felt a morning of failing your kid and making her late to school for a fourth day in a row.

But let’s see if I'm wrong. Let's see if ChatGPT can come close. Because there’s decades of my daily writing online to pull from. And I have a very specific voice. If it can nail anyone it should be me.

ChatGPT: write a story in the style of Sarah Lacy where she is late dropping her teen daughter Eli at Catholic school and a truck in front of her is slow and she keeps honking her horn and is then humiliated when it's another parent at school. Make the story funny and irreverent in a way that would make another teen laugh

Here is what we got:

"The Horn of Shame" By Sarah Lacy

It’s 7:56 a.m. and my daughter Eli is already five minutes late for Catholic school — which is ironic, because the one thing I’ve prayed for today is a break from this week’s unrelenting string of disasters.

We’re flying down Dolores, still chewing bites of protein bars that may or may not be expired. I haven’t had coffee. Eli is silently scrolling TikTok in the passenger seat, earbuds in, expertly pretending I don’t exist — a skill I paid roughly $30,000 a year in tuition to perfect.

Then, right as we’re about to turn onto the school’s unnecessarily bougie drop-off loop, we’re stuck behind a white pickup truck. Not like, rugged pickup. Like, midlife crisis pickup. Like, probably-has-an-LLC-for-his-personal-brand pickup. And it is. not. moving.

We sit. We sit some more. The light is green. There is no one in front of this guy. There is only the sweet, sweet promise of forward motion.

“Seriously?” I mutter, gripping the wheel like it insulted my cooking.

Eli, oblivious, TikToking.

I give a polite honk. You know, the “hey, friend, just nudging your consciousness back into the driver’s seat” kind.

Nothing.

So I escalate. One full-on, Big City Honk. Not polite. Not friendly. This is the honk of a woman who has done too many years of preschool crafts and who can feel her Starbucks mobile order growing cold in spirit.

Eli finally takes out one earbud. “Jesus, Mom.”

“Exactly. Let’s go meet him. AT. YOUR. SCHOOL.”

The truck creeps forward like it’s apologizing for existing. We pull into the school lot. I am still mumbling about people who shouldn’t be allowed to drive or breed when the pickup stops. And out steps…

Father Dave.

The priest.

Of Eli’s Catholic school.

Holding a guitar case, wearing a hoodie that says “WWJD? Probably Not Cut Me Off”. He turns around slowly, with the same expression I once gave Eli when I found out she used my credit card to buy slime in bulk.

He gives me a look.

I honked at the priest.

I aggressively honked at Father Dave, who, by the way, runs the school Mass and literally writes the permission slips for Heaven.

Eli dissolves into full-body laughter. Her soul leaves her body. “Oh my God,” she says — which seems like a risky sentence at this exact moment. “You honked at Father Dave.”

“I didn’t know it was him!” I hiss, ducking behind the wheel like he’s going to sprinkle me with holy water and judgment.

Eli is wheezing now. “You’re going to Catholic hell. That’s like… five times worse than normal hell. There’s homework.”

I think about getting out and apologizing. Then I think about speeding away and raising Eli as a Unitarian.

Instead, I do what any mature adult would do. I hand Eli her lunch, blow a kiss, and whisper, “You saw nothing.”

She’s still laughing when she walks into school, leaving me alone with my guilt, my steering wheel, and the knowledge that I’m going to get passive-aggressively mentioned in next week’s homily.

Honestly? Still better than being late.

–

OK, I never use ChatGPT, so that was actually better than I expected. “Like, probably-has-an-LLC-for-his-personal-brand pickup” made me laugh out loud. 

As did: 

Eli finally takes out one earbud. “Jesus, Mom.”

“Exactly. Let’s go meet him. AT. YOUR. SCHOOL.”

(It is probably stolen from another writer; another reason not to do this.)

But other than that? Doesn’t sound like I wrote it. Isn’t my voice. And isn’t accurate in facts or logic or emotion.

We don’t drive down Dolores, or go to school in San Francisco. I pay $6,000 for her Catholic school, not $30k. Neither of my kids have phones or social media. "Literally" is misused. I laughed thinking of the middle aged head of Eli's actual school in a hoody. As the picture above (also by ChatGPT) shows a hoody and priest collar are an odd combo.

Eli’s fact check when I read it to her was more plain: “When do you ever have lunch made for me at drop off?” I usually figure it out mid-morning and drop it or DoorDash it later. See: ChatGPT also underestimates just what a mess I am. (And there's also a lot of evidence of that online too.)

But sure, you may be thinking, those things could be edited. AI is there to give you the bones of a post. A start.

The problem is there are no bones.

There was no plot beyond one honk. No arc to the story. In my story there were three or four inciting things before the truck turned out to be a parent. It also didn’t follow the instructions. I said a parent not a priest. (And did Father Dave . . .write that on his hoody?)

Worse: The story didn't have any emotional truth to it. I was this stressed because Eli was upset at getting a fourth tardy, and I was letting her down. In the story she's reduced to a sarcastic detached teen because that's all ChatGPT can imagine a teenage girl would be. So there are no stakes.

Because I had let her down and then worried I had embarrassed her trying to fix it, in that moment I would never have done something as flippant (and cheesy) as blow her a kiss and say “You saw nothing.” ChatGPT doesn't get the emotional state of a mom in that moment. It's like a dude writing a woman in a Hallmark Movie.

It just made us into a bunch of lazy cliches and took the path of “this is probably right enough.” 

In other words: It did the worst job of a worst intern. That's who you are outsourcing you too.

But here's maybe the biggest problem: While I actually thought a few parts of this were funny, and it did copy some outdated early 2000's "Sarah Lacy-isms" (like the. periods. for. emphasis.) the intention was "to make a teen laugh." I read it to Eli and Evie and they just stared. They thought it was boring and cringe. Paul and I laughed at it more. Not the reaction you want from your intended audience.

None of this is what you want your voice, your interview, or your college essay to be. It’s hiding. And you need to stand out. 

You are a lot better off being you. I promise. You are enough. And if you aren't, then the thing wasn't for you in the first place. Whatever is meant for you is not going to pass you by.

I am going to tell you the best writing advice I ever got in my early 20s at a writing conference. When you have writer’s block: Try to suck. Try to write the sh*ttiest lead you can. I bet it’s not that bad. I bet you cannot write anything as bad as you think you can. Because human beings are wired to communicate. 

The less you try to capital W write and the more you just write, the easier it is.