I am, quite frankly, a far superior writer than anyone else. In fact, I am the only real writer. The rest of you, dabbling with your laptops, pecking away at your keyboards, or, dog forbid, using AI, are pretenders, charlatans, and impostors.
Real writing, as everyone knows, can only be done by those who embark on the sacred pilgrimage to the Himalayas, where they must strip the bark off the rare Himalayan birch with their own hands, using nothing but the sheer force of their literary determination. This bark must then be carried downstream along the Indus, where the prospective writer will cleanse and process it into sheets of paper.
But that is merely the beginning. Real ink cannot be purchased from a stationer. No, no. It must be sourced from oysters found in the Arabian Sea, painstakingly extracted, purified, and rendered into the perfect shade of deep indigo. And what of the writing instrument? A mere pen will not suffice. A true writer must journey to Rajasthan, locate the finest peacock, and humbly request one of his feathers. Forcibly plucking it is unacceptable. This is a test of patience and negotiation. Only then can one fashion a quill worthy of real writing.
Ah, but wait. Your work is still incomplete. A real writer does not degrade their words by distributing them through digital mediums, social media, or, heaven forbid, print. No, each piece must be handwritten, one painstaking copy at a time, and personally delivered to each reader. No photocopies, no printing presses, no shortcuts.
Now, some may scoff. “This is ridiculous,” they might say. But is it, really? Because this is precisely the kind of logic I encounter when people declare that AI-generated & assisted writing is not real writing. Apparently, if one does not suffer sufficiently for their craft, if one dares to use the tools at their disposal, then the result is not writing, but some inferior, counterfeit version of it.
A Brief History of “Not-Real Writers”
The same argument was made when the typewriter was invented. A proper writer, they said, must write with a fountain pen, their fingers stained with ink, their paper marked with smudges of true effort. Then came the word processor. “A real writer,” the purists scoffed, “uses a typewriter, just like Hemingway.” Then Microsoft Word arrived with its spellcheck and grammar tools. “This is cheating,” they cried. “A real writer does not rely on a machine to catch their mistakes.”
And now, we find ourselves in the age of AI. “This was written with AI,” they sneer, as though the mere presence of a tool somehow nullifies the value of the work itself. But tell me, if an artist uses Photoshop, are they no longer an artist? If a filmmaker uses CGI, are they no longer a filmmaker? If a chef uses a food processor, are they no longer a chef?
The Great Travel Fallacy
Imagine, for a moment, a world in which people declared, “You are not a real traveller unless you walk everywhere.” Absurd, right? And yet, this is the same logic. Over time, we moved from walking to horseback, to bicycles, to motorcycles, to cars, to steamships, to aircraft. Each mode of transport provides a different experience, but none is inherently superior. If someone today declared that real riders are those who still ride horses, they would be laughed out of the conversation. And yet, in my own motorcycle club, I have seen people scoff at electric motorcycles. “You are not a real rider,” they aver, as if the absence of an internal combustion engine somehow disqualifies them from the experience of riding.
The Selective Gatekeeping of Creativity
Not long ago, I came across a LinkedIn post by a senior creative professional proposing a design competition in which only those armed with pen and paper could participate. “No Banva or Anva”, a thinly veiled reference to the now AI-enhanced Canva. The implication? That real designers do not use modern tools. But by that logic, why allow pencils and pens? Why allow paintbrushes, tables, or even chairs? Why allow access to prior knowledge or market research? True creativity, according to this logic, should emerge from an absolute void, untainted by tools, resources, or even the most basic conveniences.
But this is nonsense. Creativity is not defined by the absence of tools, but by the way those tools are used. After all, Microsoft Word has been around for decades. Where, then, are the thousands of Salman Rushdies it should have produced? The mere presence of a tool does not generate brilliance. A chisel in my hand does not make me Michelangelo, just as a camera in my hands does not make me Ansel Adams.
The Grand Cooking Delusion
And if we are to reject AI tools as inauthentic, why stop at writing and design? Let us extend this philosophy to cooking. A true chef, of course, does not purchase their ingredients from the market. They must plant their own crops, harvest them without machinery, and mill their own flour. Meat must be butchered by hand, and all cooking must be done over a fire started with flint and steel. Measuring cups? Blasphemy. Recipes? Unacceptable. You must rely only on the inherited instincts of your ancestors. Anything less is not real cooking.
The Ultimate Gatekeeping
But perhaps I have still been too lenient. After all, I am still writing on paper, albeit one processed by my own hands from Himalayan birch. But paper is a modern invention, is it not? A real writer, a true writer, knows that the only acceptable medium is stone tablets. With a chisel. And not just any chisel. It must be one that the writer has crafted themselves, from a rock they quarried with their bare hands.
And so, as I stand here, sweat dripping from my brow, my parchment and quill discarded, trying to hammer out each individual letter into my self-hewn slab of granite, I look upon the rest of you, your laptops, your AI tools, your fancy printed books. And I shake my head. What a bunch of fakers!
You are not real writers. Not a single one of you.
But then, neither am I.
