Almost every piece of text you can consume online is now having this syntactically-shiny, perfectly-spelled package with a rather shallow and unoriginal semantic core. You probably wanted to read something about a place or a culture you've never encountered, and it reads like something you've read hundreds of times before. You probably watched a YT video about a hobby you practise, and it follows a very formulaic presentation and vocabulary. Averaged conventional experiences and conventional wisdom, regurgitated in a non-offensive, plausible-looking package. Where's the subjective lived human experience, the personal judgement, the slightly odd and difficult sentence structure, the touch of originality?
It's not only about LLM-generated content. Even interactions with real people online produce a very narrow and predictable set of reactions. The ideas and concepts we operate with are shockingly limited. You probably don't like a product for some valid particular reasons, and you get the prefabricated "it's not about you, it's what the market dictates". You probably have a personal issue in a very particular personal situation, but you get prefabricated advice that it's a "you issue".
How can one stay sharp in such an environment? Detach from the online world and read old-fashioned books from the pre-LLM era. Have dinner conversations with honest, morally-integral, intellectually deeper people from diverse backgrounds. Do not trade your inner self for a "popular profile" in the property of the techno-feudal landlords.
