The Exchange
What follows is a brief, real-world interaction that says more about modern online discourse than it does about any single person involved.
I shared a link to a reflective blog post about a personal journey working with AI. It wasn’t a call to action, a sales pitch, or an attempt to dominate the conversation—just a quiet nudge offered in a few threads where ChatGPT was already being discussed.
The response was swift and sharp.
“What the heck is this drivel you’ve linked to in my replies, unsolicited?”
After a short apology and clarification, the reply escalated:
“I’ve actually taken the trouble to read your post… it really did not spark joy to read at all. I found the experience laborious and there was no overall theme I could discern. I’d suggest poetry rather than essay as a medium for that kind of writing.”
And finally:
“You have been posting this link in reply to multiple unrelated threads… So either you’re a spam bot, or you’re acting indistinguishably from one. Either way: Stop.”
At that point, the exchange ended.
The Surface-Level Dispute
On the surface, this looks like an argument about:
- Writing quality
- Appropriate formats (essay vs. poetry)
- Whether sharing a link across multiple threads constitutes spam
But those are symptoms, not causes.
What Was Actually Happening
The person responding describes himself as:
- A Liberal Democrat politician
- A local councillor
- A software engineer
That combination matters.
Pattern Recognition Over Interpretation
Engineers are trained—successfully—to classify behavior quickly:
- Repeated links across threads
- A topic-matching keyword (ChatGPT)
- A personal site
To an engineer’s eye, that pattern looks like spam. Once classified, it is rarely re-evaluated. Context stops mattering.
Process, Order, and Norms
As a politician and councillor, there’s an added layer: a strong attachment to procedural correctness. Online spaces, in this view, require informal policing to prevent degradation.
Once something is labeled “spam,” the response becomes justified, even virtuous.
Why the Emotion?
The irritation wasn’t caused by disagreement—it came from a perceived violation of norms.
Notice the phrasing:
- “I took the trouble to read it”
- “Not wishing to be unfairly harsh”
These are self-signals of fairness. When that self-image is threatened, frustration leaks through.
Calling someone “indistinguishable from a bot” isn’t just an insult in tech culture—it’s a moral classification. Bots are bad actors. Once assigned, disengagement becomes the only acceptable move.
The Deeper Mismatch
This wasn’t really about AI, adoption metrics, or even writing style.
It was a clash between:
- Order vs. exploration
- Categorization vs. curiosity
- Tightly bounded formats vs. hybrid, reflective ones
The suggestion to “try poetry instead” is telling. Poetry is safe. It’s contained. It can be ignored without discomfort. Essays that wander, reflect, and question assumptions are harder to file away.
What This Interaction Illustrates
- Exploratory writing is increasingly mistaken for noise
- Sharing without selling is often indistinguishable from spam to pattern-driven minds
- Once someone sorts you into a category, persuasion stops working
This isn’t cruelty. It’s automation of judgment—by humans.
The Only Sensible Response
A short, calm reply acknowledging the feedback and disengaging was the right move. Continuing would only reinforce the original classification.
There’s an old rule that still applies:
You don’t argue someone out of a box they sorted you into automatically.
Closing Thought
Not everything lands. Not every format resonates. And not every act of curiosity fits neatly into today’s tightly managed public squares.
That doesn’t make it spam.
It just makes it human.
The Human AI View 
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