Is That Writer Using AI -- or Are You Mediocre and Jealous? Writers Who Hate AI Usually Just Hate Competition

I am old hat at SEO writing. It is odd to me that platforms now frown upon writing processes intended to bring in Google search traffic. People are always asking, "Was this written to make money?" The answer is: of course. It's a monetized site. That's why we're publishing here. It's always been about money, but we are now expected to pretend that it's not, even though that tanks traffic. If you ask me, the only question anybody should be asking is, "Was this written well?"

It is a strange time to be a girl with an English degree who started writing around age 10, scored in the 99th percentile for reading and writing on the SAT, graduated in the top 10% of her high school class, rode the Dean's List almost every semester, gave a speech at her college graduation, and types over 100 wpm with 98% accuracy--much less one who loves emojis, makes lists about literally everything, and has an actual OCD diagnosis (maximum perfectionism). My whole personality--and thus my writing style--is a recipe for getting accused of AI generation, even if it only contributed a headline, a statistic, or a pixel art image to go with the article.

It's no different than when a teacher accused me of plagiarizing my poems from the internet in 1997 because she didn't believe a 12 year-old could have written them. I got the satisfaction of telling her that the poems were indeed online--at the webpage I had coded by hand in Notepad.

Was I cheating, or did a mediocre, insecure person feel threatened by my superior skill? I think more writers, especially the ones who aren't making a full-time living from their craft, should ask that question before taking up their pitchforks and embarking on an AI witchhunt.

Just because someone's content is better than yours doesn't mean it's AI. Just because someone writes faster or more than you doesn't mean they're using AI. And I'm gonna hold your hand when I say this: just because someone used AI doesn't mean they aren't a good writer or don't deserve to profit, so long as they act ethically and produce quality results.

AI detectors are a joke. They will flag a post because the writer has good grammar--or likes emojis and lists. Then they will give a clean pass to a fully generated essay because the user knew what prompts would make the AI sound most human. People will accuse writers of using ChatGPT over a long em dash, even though plenty of word processors automatically convert double dashes to the long one.

It’s not about who wrote it. It’s about whether the tone and cadence match the checker’s idea of what “human" sounds like. Both humans and machines get it wrong all the time. Any neurodivergent person can give you at least one reason why.

And let's be real. A lot of human-written content is garbage. Most people have awful grammar. Low-quality manmade content flooded Amazon years before the birth of AI. There are AI-generated pieces that read beautifully, and there are human-written stories that belong in the Recycle Bin. On one end of the crap spectrum, you've got soulless AI slop, and on the other end, typo-riddled, rambling, unreadable nonsense written by a living, breathing human. The origin doesn’t matter. The quality does.

AI users are not responsible for preserving anyone's place in a competitive market. If you aren't profiting from your writing, art, music, etc., it's your job to polish your technique and learn the skills needed to market yourself effectively. I chose to do this via an English degree, a graduate program in Digital Marketing, and ongoing trial and error.

Gatekeeping isn't the flex you think it is. AI is just a tool. Talent isn't threatened by tools. There's no need to fear AI when you're confident in your own voice and skill. The truth is, the writers who resent AI the most are the ones who already weren’t standing out. 

If your only strategy to stay relevant is to shame people for adapting faster than you, you weren’t built to last in this industry. Innovation isn’t cheating. It’s survival. 

And AI users don't owe anyone a commission, anymore than I owe it to you not to take commissions away from you. I don't even know you. It's your responsibility to find a path of your own to improvement and growth. The classy move is to do it without tearing anyone else down.

I don't even have time to fret over what tools other writers are using. I'm too busy writing. Shouldn't you be, too?

Bless your heart.