What’s all this fuss about AI-written content on Hacker News?
so I wrote AI wrote for me a blog post this week on Monday Nov 10th.
I didn’t submit it right away the same day, because I wanted a steady momentum from other social media platforms first.
The Unexpected Viral Moment
then on Thursday evening (my evening, EST/PST’s morning)
it got submitted and over the first half an hour of submission, it got a few upvotes and a few comments
it was a clear and early sign of going “viral” on HN
I say viral in quotes because I have never had a viral moments on HN, never before, not at this scale
Why This Matters to Small Creators
now you might be a content creator who gets these numbers for lunch but for me it’s a different story. for me these numbers matter
cause my normal numbers are usually around 200 impressions (from 15k linkedin followers), maybe 1-2 likes and zero comments (from my 150 X followers), and generally, I never got any more than 2 upvotes for my personal blog posts on HN before
so you can imagine this is a big deal for me. not for Elon Musk and others of course but I’m no billionaire, hell I’m not even a millionaire
now, you can go ahead and read the subsmission for yourself, it’s at the bottom of this page in the references section
but here’s my line of thoughts towards those folks who were calling me out, making me look like a villain
here’s the unfiltered, non-AI generated format of how I would like to speak to those individuals who were so blatantly against my submission
My raw, non-AI and unfiltered response to HN folks
The Moral High Ground Problem
what’s all this moral high ground everyone takes?
English is not my first language and HN is, let’s face it, primarily for US and English speaking folks
I, just like any other small creator, am just trying to submit my website, get a juicy backlink and increase my chance of survival over millions of billions of other webpages across the web, and hopefully get some discussions going, learn something and ideally I may even get some email subscribers to my newsletter
which I DID
The Numbers Don’t Lie
now, let’s talk numbers before I go deeper.
in less than 12hr from submission, I got nearly 1200+ unique visitors to my website, meysam.io, I even got 100% traffic increase to my other OSS project awesome-directories.com in the same timeframe
that is not prejudice or bias, that is just pure data-driven outcome, or decision making framework if I may; out of those 1.2k, 4m avg duration spent on the website and 93% bounce rate from all around the glob and not just the USA (48%)
I even got two new subscribers to my newsletter, which is the whole fucking point of writing and building in public in the first place
here’s the screenshot of my analytics page below
My Unapologetic Stance on Using AI
now I am not denying that I didn’t write the blog post entirely from AI
I use AI daily for everything, development or marketing
and I am not shy nor am I going to apologize to no-fucking-body
I mean, technology is here to make our lives easier, more efficient and faster
does anyone blame students for using calculator for performing their number churn?
how about business worlds where we use tech everyday to speed up the revenue?
I was using C++ back in the day, then python and then Go, and now AI. are you gonna cry about it? grow the fuck up.
The AI-Written Content Backlash
why is there so many backlashes? what’s the hate towards AI-written content?
do you not see AI blog post generator these days popping out like mushrooms? I know a handful few and I’m not gonna drop names here but do you go out dismissing their entire business model because you don’t like AI-fucking-writing-style?
It’s Well-Written, Period
I mean, the blog post is well-written, read it
it is punchy, very engaging, it is breathtaking and you almost do not blink while you’re reading it
it is a very well-focused, high-engagement piece of article; a great storytelling, a solid narrative
and it is not something that’s fake or anything
it’s coming from my own raw thoughts
I fed the AI with my thoughts and asked it to ask me questions, the answers of which will shape a high-engaging blog post with my tone, with my authenticitiy, with my own personal and emotional twist
The Time Reality Check
and I am darn happy with the result because it has been written in a way I couldn’t have done myself in a hundred years
ok, maybe that’s exaggeration and I could’ve written it better without AI slop in a more authentic manner
but how long would that take me? months? years? with AI it only took minutes
and I have personal life outside this fucking creator world that I need to manage
I’m not even an influencer
I just need a very well written piece of content that is engaging, brings in eyeballs, and makes sure to capture the essence of my thoughts and feelings and hopefully results in a few email subscribers at the end of the day
First Viral Moment Ever
I have NEVER EVER in my life had any viral HN moment before and this “AI written slop” everyone is complaining about has gained 1.2k unique visitors in just half a day and what’s wrong with that?
Don’t Like It? Don’t Read It
EVERYONE is entitled to their opinion
but frankly, if you don’t like the styling dude? don’t fucking read it.
I’m not here to please you or any other motherfucker.
I’m sharing this stuff publicly, free of charge, in a democratized internet out to the world where things are shared freely without any regard to gender, race, or any other discrimination factor
you don’t appreciate this style and this content? don’t fucking read it and stop fucking complaining about other people’s free contents you pay zero dollar to read
The Open Web and Real Struggles
it’s a fucking democratized internet, the open web, the place where no idiotic politician prick is allowed to withhold me from entering the borders of a country because of my place of birth; any Iraninan citizen in the audience!? yeah, fuck, I can’t even open a bank account (FATF, anyone?) in any part of the world without being slapped in the forehead that my country is sanctioned from all the eathly and non-earthly regions of this world.
This Is My Real Experience
this blog post, the earlier ones, and all the ones that will SURELY come is my real experience
real feelings
every line of the blog post is my own personal life
just written by AI in a high-engaging manner. not this one (for a reason).
and now all of a sudden everyone gets on a moral high ground that I am the villain? fuck you
The Experiment Begins
I could never had done such a punchy masterpiece if I had written in an “authentic and genuine manner with my own tone and voice”
nobody would’ve cared enough to fucking read it. are you reading this one? well, then I consider myself a fucking lucky bastard!
for just a simple experiment, and just to test the waters, I will write the next few blog posts in the same tone and style as the one you’re currently reading
let’s see if the aggregate of all the view counts in the sum of all those blog posts will match the one written by AI in my last blog post!
let’s see if any of those haters will come back to say “you did great, I love your authentic voice, keep going and I will keep coming back to read your unpolished bullshit”
The Experiment Begins