I’m honestly exhausted, so I’m just going to say it exactly as it is. Note: I’m not a native English speaker, so I let ChatGPT review my grammar because I didn’t want to miss some nuances in this. I’ve been writing for about 12 years (professionally and more "freely" in my free time). I studied journalism, I work as a marketing specialist and copywriter, and I’ve been running multiple projects (a digital magazine about green/social startups, a bizarre news blog, and a personal blog). Writing is literally the one craft I’ve built my whole adult life on. And not only my adult life — I was one of those lucky people who knew what they wanted to do literally since childhood. I wanted to be some kind of writer. As I mentioned, I began by writing fanfiction/blogs in my teens. After that, I went to college to study journalism, and in my second year I picked PR as my major. During my studies, I switched more to copywriting and social media (focusing on managing companies’ social media like former Twitter, Facebook, and mostly LinkedIn). After a few years, I added employee advocacy, which I really like because it meant figuring out completely different styles, tones, and finding the “right” voice my colleagues wanted (it was always for the company I work for, never “some random client from the internet”). For approximately the last year and a half, every time I write something on Reddit (in my native language or comment some english posts) or even on LinkedIn/Facebook, I get the same comments: “AI garbage.” “Generated crap, not reading that.” “lol sure, another AI slope. Don’t care” I didn’t even know what “AI slope” meant until recently, but apparently that’s me. The thing is: I’m a total grammar nerd. My writing is clean, structured, and intentional — because that’s how my brain works, and I’ve studied this my whole f*cking life. I enjoy language. For a year, I’ve been working in the localization field, specifically for a global translation agency, so I’m even more pressured to write “perfectly.” Because of it, I’ve learned even more about typography than I already knew (since I run my own websites), and when we talk about English texts, I’ve learned more about the differences between British and American English, nuances in units, and so on. And somehow, that became a problem. People seem to have collectively decided that if your text is coherent and grammatical, it must be AI. Don’t get me wrong — I completely get it. A lot of people use AI for writing, but I just can’t understand why exactly it’s “bad.” Almost every time I see someone being accused of writing with AI, the person used it because they simply can’t write — meaning they’re not a writer and just wanted to express their thoughts, that’s all. The rest is irrelevant, because it’s mostly garbage like “10 prompts for…” or generic text aiming to go viral (typically EDHS — “Emotional Deep Human Story,” which is clearly a lie — think: “A year ago I slept on the floor in a freezing apartment, I was beaten up on the street, today I have my own business,” and nobody cares). Now, suddenly it’s like my entire identity as a writer is questioned over and over by strangers who don’t even read past the first line (and even by some who did). I tried everything — changing my tone, adding filler words, intentionally breaking structure (which felt physically painful), even adding typos, which I am sure you as writers understand how terrible that feels. I even mapped AI fingerprints and stopped using them even if they were correct and were my “fingerprint” (bullet points, formatting, em dashes, short sentences, phrases like “In today’s world,” “In conclusion”...). And still the accusations keep coming. At this point, I’m genuinely scared to post anything — I have this knot in my stomach every time I hit “publish.” That feeling is new for me and I don’t know how to deal with it. Writing is normally where I breathe. Honestly, my whole life I didn’t really care about people in the sense that I wrote simply because it brought joy to me, but now I’ve found out that people’s opinions on my writing actually matter to me A LOT. Also, I feel like I should add one important detail: I love AI, I enjoy working with it, learning with it, I’m completely tech-savvy. So of course I USE AI for writing, but the process is literally the same as before AI: I brainstorm with it using questions like “what’s new in [topic]” or “give me several trends in [desired niche].” Before, this meant googling. Then I read the sources and copy-paste the most interesting stuff. Sometimes I upload those notes to ChatGPT and ask it to “polish” them and make “new/better” notes so I can understand and search them effectively. Before, I did this step manually in Word — taking out paragraphs and rearranging them by intuition, marking important sentences with a yellow background, etc. Then I write the thing. Then I upload it to ChatGPT to review it and suggest improvement if there is some “bigger mistakes,” but without changing my tone or style (no rewriting!). Before, I was sending this to an editor/corrector, and it was normal to wait 2–3 weeks for my text to return. And as for grammar mistakes/typos, Word marked them mostly correctly. The only difference is: today, approximately one article (with the research) takes me 2 and a quarter hours to write instead of 4 hours. I guess I’m asking two things: Are other writers going through this? How do you deal with constant AI accusations? If there are people who are among those accusing others of writing with AI and being “allergic” to it, what should I/we as writers do (without dumbing myself down) to stop triggering it? Also, sidenote: I’m writing this in English, but in my native (slavic) language (Czech), it’s even worse — the community is much smaller, more cynical, and more… let’s say “trigger-happy” when it comes to policing other people’s texts. I just want to enjoy writing again without feeling like I’m on trial every time I post something. I want to get back into discussions that interest me without having to limit myself. If you’ve figured out a way to survive this era without destroying your own voice, please tell me. I miss being excited to write. It’s draining me.   submitted by   /u/Crejzi12 [link]   [comments]