HN Explorer

Write Your Own Copy

33 points by operatingthetan ↗ HN
Every day I'm seeing people making websites for the sole purpose of posting to HN, and it's all AI. The site, the words, the ideas. Obviously that person had the idea to begin with, but the execution is slop.

These people are putting their names on this stuff, and everyone in the world right now is learning to recognize the tells of AI writing. The tone, the abstractness, the specific phrasing. We all know it. It's a turn off.

So my idea is simple: write your own copy. That's an advantage now. It's becoming scarce today. Be real. Whatever that means to you.

18 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 47.6 ms ] thread
verdverm
For those who want to get better at writing, the easiest way is to read judiciously. Of course you do have to practice what you want to become good at as well.

For marketing copy, have conversations with users. They will give you the perspectives, pitches, and parlance you seek.

andrei_says_
I’m genuinely impressed by the speed of mass slopification raising the toxicity of the whole internet.

And now poisoning human attention and the very ability to reason. At scale.

Makes me think of Kali Yuga, the age of ignorance.

Are we doing this to ourselves? Is it being done to us? Is it some kind of self destruct implanted by aliens in a dark forest scenario?

It’s just… really fascinating.

Also reminds me of this - story

https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/different-kinds-o...

yen223
This sounds AI haha
ostefani
This is a problem: some people, some companies... no one want to pay | give more effort if it can be done faster and cheaper.
rlitsetorp
But everyone—and I really mean everyone—in SEO right now favors AI-written content. Why? Because most of them are also selling AI. So you can forget about sitting there trying to churn out mediocre texts yourself if you want to be visible. Unfortunately, that’s just how it is.
nacozarina
People are trying. Good writing is difficult to produce. For the average Joe, the most cost-effective writing tutor/aid available is a free AI prompt. So that’s what they are using.

There are real ppl using AI to speak up that were previously silent. Yes, AI is the difference-maker for their engagement. Yes, their efforts are imperfect and have a ‘smell’. That’s not a defect, that’s a perfectly normal and expected condition.

Xiaoher-C
As a non-native English speaker this hits a nerve. AI writing is tempting because "good English" felt like a gatekeeping thing. But I've noticed when I just write in my own broken-but-real voice, people actually engage more. Polished AI copy reads like nobody home.
rwasimsk
Btw, I am a Vibe Coder. Still I must say- Although I use AI for my frontend development and more stuff, I believe originality is the best path. You can build outstanding web pages, platforms & articles via AI, but it comes at a cost- burial of your creativity. So you must learn to code, write and understand too. So imperfection is better than perfect copied stuff.

I agree to this- "Write Your Own Copy".

MarcelinoGMX3C
Totally agree with the sentiment here. While AI can certainly help get initial ideas down, the difference in quality and authenticity for anything critical is immediately obvious. For engineers building products, real thought and personal communication with users, which verdverm mentioned, builds trust and shapes truly useful copy.

I've seen teams struggle with adoption because their documentation or marketing felt sanitized and lacked a human touch. That "slopification" andrei_says_ pointed out actually makes unique, well-crafted human content stand out even more.

AnimalMuppet
More fundamentally, in writing it out, I have to clarify my own thoughts. The worst problem with AI writing isn't that, as Xiaoher-C said, "AI copy reads like nobody home" (beautifully said), and so nobody reads it. The worst problem is that you don't have to clarify your own thoughts and ideas. There is a cost to you in that.
jackycufe
"real" is the most important and the most precious thing
lyfeninja
I get what you're saying here and I agree if you're only using unedited AI content to just increase your post frequency, then yeah it's annoying and feels somewhat abusive.

I personally like to use AI to make a first draft and then edit from there. It's way faster at that first draft than I am, but I can still maintain my voice and ensure I'm making all my points.

I will say many people are also generally bad writers. Is it slop if it's actually a better writer than the engineer making the site or the owner of a small business without a marketing team? It just seems like a tool to write better.

lgq
You're right, and it's getting exhausting. - generated by GPT
dokdev
You are absolutely right! :)

I was heavily using AI for my blog/social media posts. Then I realized I lost my “voice”.

Also as a reader, I started having a habit of stopping halfway through an article if I realize that it was generated by AI.

Now I am only using to check my grammar, since I am a non-native speaker.