Our 13th most-read article of 2023.
Originally published February 13, 2023.
Amid doomsaying pronouncements that the publishing industry is dead, we are proud to bring the written word into the future with revolutionary technology that delivers the one thing readers are most passionate about: efficiency. The purpose of writing is to take up space, and this AI does that even faster than our previous method of dozens of kittens set loose to scamper about on our keyboards. Plus, we don’t have to feed our patented AI-writing application, The Crap Machine (ChatTCM).
Investors must act fast; this is the most exciting get-rich-quick opportunity since Bitcoin started accepting Bitcoin in transactions for Bitcoin. Without writers, editors, photographers, and photo editors, our company will incur almost no expenses when putting out Total Crap.
You may be skeptical about machine-written work at first, but once you see the software rearranging familiar-seeming paragraphs into different orders and changing a few words, you’ll realize it’s a suitable replacement for your favorite authors, who can now rest and starve. The masses always fear new technology, but they eventually get used to it. When elevators advanced to the point where passengers could push the buttons themselves to choose a floor, the public didn’t trust that it would be safe to use the conveyances without a human operator. Now, you take it for granted. That’s why our AI opens the debut Total Crap issue with the following insight:
“In many ways, fear of automated writing is similar to fear of automatic elevators without operators. At first, passengers were afraid to ride in automatic elevators because they were accustomed to the presence of human operators. In time, they realized that it was safer to use the automatic versions. Similarly, many people are now afraid that automated writing is prone to errors, incapable of originality, or destined to relegate millions of skilled workers to lives of uselessness and destitution. In fact, automated writing is safer than the manual version.”
Our technology has rendered terrible human writers obsolete. Clichés, plagiarism, lazy repetition of unexamined ideas—this software does it all. We dare you to find a single bad scribe who can disgrace themselves and their profession faster than ChatTCM.
And buckle up, because ChatTCM is only one of the amazing innovations that will change everything in the next three months. Others include:
- Lab-grown friends. Don’t worry about their feelings; they came from a lab.
- Self-driving Carls. You need not do a thing; these Carls are more than capable of driving themselves quite mad.
- Computer-generated typewriters, for you technophobes who wish we could all go back to using typewriters. Happy now?
We are on the brink of a better world where humans won’t need to waste their time thinking or feeling. Imagine a perfect system in which articles are written by ChatTCM, edited by EditorTCM, and read and laughed/cried/nodded at by AudienceTCM, as appropriate, while you relax. And if you can’t, just ask ImagineTCM to do it.
Read an interview with author Jonathan Zeller about writing this piece over on our Patreon page.