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  "description": "Why content without effort feels like dishonesty, and why human messiness might matter more than ever online.",
  "path": "/blog/the-inefficiency-of-dishonesty/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-03-11T20:58:00.000Z",
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  "tags": [
    "AI",
    "CULTURE",
    "INTERNET",
    "TECHNOLOGY",
    "PERSPECTIVE",
    "REACTIVE"
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  "textContent": "Sometimes the dishonesty in the smell of bleach, is far worse than the smell it was trying to mask. The aggressively immaculate politeness, sufficiently shallow in its soothing, slightly sedated stream of sterile sanctuary, that says everything and means nothing. For there appears to be a perceived trade-off between character and optimisation, that somehow, the absence of character is a sign of efficiency, but I distrust the word “efficient.” It implies a kind of moral superiority, as though doing something quickly is inherently better than doing it slowly, thoughtfully, or at all. Efficiency removes all the interesting mistakes, and mistakes are where most things worth keeping tend to happen. A perfectly efficient day would leave no room for error, and therefore no evidence you’d lived through it. Which feels less like success, and more like a well-organised disappearance. I saw an article recently on Medium about why no one should be bothering with individual websites anymore. Obviously, me having a personal website, was admittedly approaching this in apprehension, as in, biasedly armed to be offended but in trepidation, like someone who hasn’t been punched yet but knows it’s coming. Yet I found myself aggravated further by a paywall the writer had placed halfway down the article. – Which is a lovely touch by the way, for someone questioning the relevance of your freedom of choice. But moving on, being someone who sees paywalls as a challenge, when the immersive reader trick didn’t work, I looked for his unimaginative username and found his personal website (yes, he had one, although by personal, I mean, he’d taken the time to choose a theme for his domain, I made mine from scratch, just sayin’… sorry, anyway), and after navigating through a swamp of articles that all suspiciously orbited products he conveniently had affiliate links for, I finally found the article, free, unlocked, – still not worth it. (I’m not bitter, just putting that on the table next to the salt). Anyway, to cut this long story to the same length. I never bothered to finish the article in the end, because between all the adverts and affiliate links was text produced by AI. I recognised it, could just tell. Not the obvious stuff like em dashes, but the almost soothing yet soulless flow narrative, with sentences that start with what something is not before it becomes what it is, and the obsessive use of full stops in place of commas. None of these things necessarily a sign of AI, – I do it sometimes and I’m 80% sure I’m not AI. But when scattered so generously throughout such pointless dribble, I found myself certain, and offended, and certainly offended. At first, I considered that perhaps it was envy that bothered me, as it appears he was making a living out of this without any effort except for that of a prompt, whilst I’m over here talking to myself. But I noticed it didn’t feel like envy, and I should know – it’s my eye colour. It felt like dishonesty. Part of me was annoyed that I almost wasted my doomscrolling time reading it, when it would have been far more quicker to have just read the one or two sentences he used as prompt, instead of making me rent the answer. But – the lack of effort, is I think, the main cause of irritation. Because I don’t think my issue is AI. It is a tool after all, and I’ve always seen it as like how the invention of cameras was a threat to artists. I think my issue is the performance of effort, for I bet he hasn’t even read it. Just dumped it online and walked away, like someone farting in a room and leaving others to admire the atmosphere of their art. It would almost be amusing, ignoring the environmental footprint of it all, that AI was meant to change the world, instead we just generate vast amounts of text, – only for someone on the other end to have the same AI summarise it again. Essentially, AI has become a kind of modern day Enigma machine – not encrypting messages, but burying them beneath so many words that the cost in time achieves much the same effect. If you used AI to help you write, fine. If you used it to generate the whole thing, also fine. Tools don’t undermine originality. A cameraman doesn’t pretend to wield the paintbrush. What matters is transparency, don’t sell me a human handshake, and then pass me a printed receipt. I use AI too, for SEO, and grammar checking, but I’ll never allow it to replace the only thing I actually have – a voice, a point of view, and the decency to spend my time before I ask for yours. Because the moment you publish something you haven’t even bothered to read, you’re not writing anymore – you’re just littering, but digitally, and I’m the one stepping in it. But then, maybe that’s why AI guy is making a living out of it, and I’m here writing for no one except a minor distraction for the Google bot. Maybe personal websites are dying, or maybe they’re about to matter more than ever, because they’re one of the last places still messy, inconsistent, and human. Because if the facts are free now, and explanations are instant, then the only real currency left online, is your voice.",
  "title": "THE INEFFICIENCY OF DISHONESTY",
  "updatedAt": "2026-04-28T18:06:38.000Z"
}