I am a journalist and a writer. So it is of no surprise that I am always on a writing assignment, no matter what the topic is, no matter what the deadline is, and no matter whether I like the topic or not.
But that is work. This blog is for the writing I enjoy. Here, I write about whatever I fancy. Sometimes I reflect on social issues, sometimes I write about movies and TV series, sometimes on travel and sometimes I am sarcastic.
There is no structure to this blog, no style guide, no deadlines, and I don’t care how long it takes for me to get to the point. Neither should you.
To be honest, I keep this blog because sometimes I just want to blabber on without worrying about making sense to the people listening to me. I wonder if, subconsiously, I created this blog because I wanted to talk to myself.
Anyway, I used to come here and write whatever it is that I wanted to and forget about it. There are some articles on this blog that I pitched to editors, but in the end had to publish them here on my own website. This arrangement with myself worked great for me for many years.
But now I have a new challenge.
I find myself running out of words to put on my own site. I sit for hours wondering what to put on here. I browse other people’s blogs for inspiration. I try to tease a fictional story out of my mind with no luck. I look at my old articles to see if a new idea springs up in my head. I even take a look at my bookshelf to see if any title will stimulate my mind.
But there’s nothing. Zero, zip, zilch, nada. I think by now even you, dear reader, would have realised how much I’ve written in this article without saying much.
Naming the culprit
However, I may have figured out why this is happening to me and I would like to blame social media, particularly Twitter (I still refuse to call it X).
Perhaps the reason I struggle to write longer pieces is because I am able to put out my opinions in 280 characters in a single post. And I can do it multiple times a day on multiple topics.
Then there are threads. They are so wonderfully short even when they run into dozens of tweets, thanks to links, quote tweets, and other attached media. While I hate to admit it, I love a good Twitter thread, and have written a few myself.
It’s almost as if my thirst for putting out an opinion is done and dusted within a few minutes. It doesn’t even need nuance and one can be as unhinged as possible when tweeting.
And then there is the villain of all social media apps: reactions. If you can read all the comments and all the sides of a story, then what space is left for you to tease out your own opinion?
Every time there is a story unfolding, you have hundrends and thousands of comments, video reactions, reels, TikToks, and what nots. I find it pretty overwhelming and then I begin to wonder: what is there for me to say that has not already been said before?
Social media’s most harmful aspect is that it has allowed all kinds of opinion to flood our timelines at a rate at which our brains cannot comprehend. At the same time, many feel compelled to comment on issues they are not well-equipped to speak about.
Every day we log into some social app and deal with dozens, if not hundreds of opinions. We comment on people’s posts and pictures. We send WhatsApp messages, DM people, use chatbots, send group messages, and primarily use email at work.
We perform these tasks multiple times an hour. We may not realise it, but we are constantly engaging in some form of writing.
We know this anecdotally, but research has also proven that people (especially the younger generations) now want to converse primarily via texts and emails. They do not like picking up phones to verbally speak to people.
How does a writer navigate this world where everything is written? In a world where almost every fiction and non-fiction idea has been attempted at and published in various formats, and easily searchable using a few keywords? What is there for us to write about?
All the GPTs in the world
I don’t even know where to begin with this one. But I will try.
Many people nowadays are simply prompting these GenAIs to draft emails, marketing copies, write advertisements, and create lots of different types of content.
With the success of ChatGPT and the likes, there is real fear among writers that they will lose their jobs.
We already saw in Hollywood in 2023, when writers went on strikes to protest the use of AI in scripts. They won. According to California legislation, AI cannot be used write or rewrite literary material, and AI-generated text cannot be used to undermine a writer’s credit.
Moreover, a manager at a job I worked at kept insinuating that one day he would replace the writers with AI. After I left, I never saw any articles posted to that website. So, I like to think that for the time being, our jobs are safe.
BUT. The problem with GenAI is that it heavily limits creativity and forces you to think in a specific manner. Once you start generating content using AI, you lose your ability write material from scratch.
The other problem with AI now is that it is also forcing writers to change the way they write. Because these Language Learning Models (LLMs) are trained using millions of writing samples, a writer’s original work can get flagged as AI-generated. When I uploaded some of my articles on an AI detection software, upto 40% of my text turned up as AI-generated, when in fact I had not used any LLM.
How and what am I supposed to write now? I have no answers to any of the questions I posed in the article at this moment. All I know is writers are resilient folks and that minds more genius than mine will find fantastic ways to stay relevant in this heavily digital age.
Untamed Reflections 