You just got an unread message notification.

Maybe it’s on Slack (or Teams), a text message, or an email. Maybe you were tagged in Notion or an Office doc.

You open it to find several paragraphs of text - or perhaps a listicle - with all the hallmarks of AI-generated writing: headings, heavy formatting, and “it’s not X it’s Y”, with em-dashes sprinkled gratuitously throughout.

The person who sent it probably spent about ten seconds on it. They asked a chatbot and forwarded its response to you verbatim without validation or critical review.

But now you’re expected to read, vet, and act on this wall of text. When someone forwards text they themselves have not considered, they are asking you to do work they chose not to do. The asymmetric effort makes it rude.

Read in full here: