Quiet: Silent. Unspoken. Devoid of Speech. Each of these used to be an accurate description of the word, Quiet. I'm becoming increasingly concerned at the rate I'm seeing videos and essays using this word.

You may have come across instances where you hear somebody engaging in discourse that could be best described as "Saying the quiet part, out loud." Unspoken realities, truths, injustices, and each thing that often has been unacknowledged in public forums is finally given voice.

You've likely seen dozens of articles, if not hundreds, that used the word 'quiet' or 'quietly' in the headline. Every time a company, or an object, is engaging in actions or behaviors that are occulted, hidden, out of sight, or likely unnoticed.

I've been reading Ray Bradbury's "Zen and the Art of Writing" which I've been thoroughly enjoying. In an early chapter, he begins discussing his opinion on a distinct lack of "zest" that he'd felt from the contemporary writers during its initial publication. "… if I were to name the most important tool in the writer's make-up, the things that shape his material and rush him along the road to where he wants to go, I could only warn him to look to his zest, see to his gusto." It is this 'zest' that I'll be tapping into today, though some might call it a screed or a rant. As a result, my language here may be that of a 'zesty' variety, so reader discretion is advised.

An unsettling trend has been growing in the last year, where many individuals in the video-sphere have begun titling their works using the word 'Quiet.' I'm going to be doing precisely the opposite.

Today I found nearly a dozen articles, from all manner of publications, of varied genres and points of view, each using the word "quiet," or "quietly," in the headlines. 'Why Costco is Quietly Goated' is the one that broke the proverbial Camel's Back for me. Goated is the new 'cool' or 'rad,' though I unironically use the latter regularly. The struggle is with the former. I've begun to see this word pop up everywhere, and I've seen everything from a Hobby, to a Business, to a brand, or even genres all being described as 'quiet.' I was further incensed, as this particular video title was actually used by the very same Channel that had spawned my previous Two-Parter about the Analogue-Bag.

Alas, I have found that the channel has since changed the title, which itself is endemic of of a far more grand problem with our culture of consumption, but that is neither here nor there.

I may sound a bit hypocritical, giving one word the pass as a part of our modern parlance, but I don't see this as a natural evolution. When language evolves and changes, it is due to social, political, economic, or environmental pressures. The Alliterative on YouTube goes into great detail exploring how words have complex etymologies that lead to very different outcomes, often only changing due to those very factors. What is happening with 'quietly' is a symptom of something much worse.

I'll take a bit more time to express the problem, which is less about the specific word quiet, and more about why it is being used. The constant use of the aforementioned word is endemic to a mode of speech that presumes superiority, a posture of "hidden" knowledge. "I know something you don't know!" or "Here's something unnoticed." It flatters the audience into feeling like insiders while saying nothing of substance, and that rhetorical trick is baked into the machine.

This is the first of at least three patterns I've noticed cropping up with alarming frequency, and each one traces back to the same source.

The second is the grand declarative formula. I'm sure if you've read any online periodicals lately, you've seen a sentence in this format: "It isn't x, it's y!" I feel like I'm going insane with how often this is showing up. To be honest, I don't even know what you'd call that sentence, but I hate them now with how often they're appearing. I have had to physically stop myself from writing them because they SCREAM of low effort writing. Generative A.I. does this at volume.

Take, for instance, a car. You might be writing an article about a Honda Civic, and the A.I. will say, "The Honda Civic isn't a car, it's a cockroach with a CVT." Evidently, it was simply calling it unkillable due to the quality of Honda Engineering (the less said about Aston Martin's F1 Team, the better). Apparently, a CVT is a modern Honda Transmission system, but the point stands. I asked it to tell me about a Honda Civic, and it drew that grand conclusion entirely on its own, without a shred of nuance or qualification. That is how Generative A.I. writes. It draws conclusions where there are none, and speaks in an authoritative tone while being utterly bereft of actual gumption.

The third pattern is the Em-Dash. Many would call it out as the telltale sign of A.I. generated text. Sorry, folks, they're actually a legitimate means of writing, and are technically what I should be using when making asides. I love doing it, directly laying on some subtext after making a point, often for comedic effect. I used to do this with parentheticals, but once I became aware of Em-Dashes, I started to use them. Where did I find them? In the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th Edition. Yes, I have a copy of the giant Orange and Blue Tome, and yes, it does describe the use of Em-Dashes. But do you know who else uses them, often to an overwhelming degree? A.I. I'm heartened that there is at least one other source that is fighting for the continued existence of the Em-dash, and I'll link the resource here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXN9gjJmLEA&t321s

I can understand why A.I.-generated text gravitates toward them; it is correct in a technical sense. The problem is the sheer volume of their use in a given piece. Now, the Em-Dash is seen as solely an artefact of A.I. "Slop" to use the parlance of our times. On a rather comical note, someone on Reddit made a humorous post reading an old science fiction book that used an Em-Dash and jokingly called it "A.I. Slop," even though it was clearly a 50+ year old paperback.

So: 'quietly' everywhere, the "it isn't x, it's y" formula ad nauseam, and Em-Dashes used to the point of self-parody. These are the sorts of patterns that are emerging, and it seems an increasing number of people have begun to speak out about the rapid spread of Generative A.I. Media. The current backlash of Nvidia's DLSS5 and the recent cancellation of a novel release due to concerns about A.I. are just a handful of news stories making the rounds this week.

Now, before I go further, I should be transparent about my own relationship with A.I., because I do have one.

I will go on record with my stance that A.I. has great capabilities as a tool. Collating large amounts of information, organising data, and giving general assistance. Generative A.I., be it written, visual, or auditory, will lead to genuinely negative outcomes.

I will also go on record that I regularly use Claude to go over my writing as a proofreader and editor. I've explicitly told it to be harsh and to check my work against similar works and my own writing. Ultimately, the words on the page are my own; they are my own thoughts, my own ideas, but the polishing process and the revisions are assisted. These are the things that can be useful for me as a writer: getting feedback on the tone, the overall structure, and comparing it to other works to stray away from derivative or tropey aspects. But I have not, and will not tell it an idea, have it write an article, and slap it onto my site. That work wouldn't be my own, but that isn't stopping others.

Many readers may unconsciously take in content, paying no mind to the author's voice. Reading an author's works widely will give you insight into their prose style, and the same can be said for A.I. There are tells. The three patterns above are tells. And everything is beginning to be formulaic because of it.

I see the overuse of the word 'quietly' as a particularly insidious instance. Titles are often difficult to determine. You want to have a clever, witty title for a Book, an Article, or a Video; something that takes advantage of the soul-sucking SEO black box that chooses who lives and dies on the vine of social media. I'll cop to it, I have used the same editing process to suggest some title ideas. And boy howdy, they all sound like the most bland thing ever! I've gotten some good nuggets here and there. I personally live for puns in my titles or two-parter jokes. I really like Neal Stephenson's Fall; or Dodge in Hell, because it's used as a title and a subtitle that both serve the narrative within. Mary Shelley and her Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, is yet another example I adore.

Here is an example of an upcoming article title I didn't go with: "Hackers" (01995) is a Cyberpunk Film, and Nobody Noticed. This is the shit I'm talking about here. Nobody Noticed. Mind you, I wrote this article, had it looked at what I wrote, and suggested a title. Not once did I make any grand gestures about "No one noticing," anything. Generative A.I. is SO confident that it will draw conclusions and make declarations based on soft points.

And there it is again, that same posture of hidden knowledge I mentioned earlier. "Nobody noticed."It frames whatever follows as a secret, something buried, something the audience needs to be let in on by the generous author who uncovered it. The implication is that everyone else was asleep at the wheel and only this piece of content has the insight to wake you up. This is a problem that extends well beyond headlines, too. I have an upcoming piece, A Testament to Nothing, that digs into how this same mode of false authority has hollowed out video game criticism specifically. The "quietly brilliant" and "nobody noticed" framing has become the default lens for discussing games, and it is rendering genuine critique almost invisible under a mountain of performative revelation.

Here, I'll take a crack at another one: "Generative A.I. is quietly reducing the quality of written work, and nobody noticed!" Good Lord, I just about threw up writing that… or maybe it was the M&Ms I just ate. Either way, you've probably seen slop like this.

I found a YouTube channel that brought up Metal Gear Solid, and titled itself Metal Gear Solid is Quietly Amazing… I'm sorry, but what the actual fuck does that mean? "Quietly amazing?" You cannot simply mash these adverbs with whatever the hell you want; it does not work that way. What if I said, "F1 is Quietly Incredible." The fuck it is! Yet I GUARANTEE YOU some "Sloptuber" out there will create EXACTLY that title.

I have to police my work for fear of being accused of not creating my own work or having my own thoughts; meanwhile, I'm bombarded by so-called news channels that simply ask for a data readout and then conclude on their own. Each one is reading things in the same format, or even a generative A.I. voice. Channels churning out Slop by the gallons. It is infecting and infesting everything.

This shit is everywhere, all over. I've seen it in videos about current events, book reviews, human interest pieces, and barely veiled attempts at native advertising. Generative A.I. is here, it is rampant, and we're not being quiet about it anymore.

Cover Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash