WHY I GET ANGRY WHEN I FIND SOMETHING IS WRITTEN WITH AI… I’m not shouting. Just alt-caps.

The drill goes like this… I find something online (usually LinkedIn, Twitter or a newsletter) it starts with a good hook that grabs my attention. It follows with a probable hypothesis. Then the excitement dies as I find a misplaced emoji. 😋 (You feel the pain, the devaluing…) A subtle anger starts to emerge. I quickly scroll to the next post, it seems legit, no emojis. Same structure: good hook, promising hypothesis. I start reading and an “it’s not X, it’s Z” hits my dopamine-craving eyes. The resentment starts to build. I repeat the process one or two more times, only to close the app with a mix of anger and contempt.

That is my experience on LinkedIn, but this happens elsewhere too (newsletters, Twitter, comments, blogs, etc.). Those experiences are starting to degrade the written internet, following the dead-internet theory, but I’m not interested in going there.

I’m interested in WHY I feel that way…

I mean, AI is the future, no? Everything is going to be written by AI, right?

0K, so this means I have to get used to the feeling or downgrade my attention for slop consumerism? Not precisely. After some reflection, here’s my answer:

Fundamentally, what bothers me is not that people use AI to write. It’s the lack of respect for the audience. I mean, you can eliminate the emojis (with a simple prompt) or fix the AI classic writing artifacts. But you choose not to care. Why should I care to read? The lack of effort signals low quality. Cheapness. Even if it’s not. You’re tricking me into consuming something that looks like shit, and probably is. The tricking nature exacerbates the anger.

That explains the feeling itself, but lurking underneath is an interesting assumption: if something takes little effort, it must have little value.

I find that common assumption interesting because, from there, a deeper question emerges.

What is the relationship between effort and value?

Usually, we treat value as something connected to scarcity, difficulty, or uniqueness. What is rare feels valuable. A handmade chair costs more than an IKEA one. A unique personal belonging is invaluable. A so called “maestro” spends more than 10,000 hours perfecting its craft. Its rare ability and level of commitment make him precious.

That is why AI writing feels strange. Part of what we call “good writing” is not just the final work. It is also the implied human process behind it: the years of practice, the struggle to find the right words, the personal experience embedded in the sentence. In that sense, we often confuse value with effort, or at least treat effort as proof of value.

But maybe effort is only a shortcut.

Take a simple example: who is more valuable? Someone who delivers a high-quality result in four days, or someone who delivers the same quality in thirty minutes? Rationally, the second person seems more valuable. And yet many people instinctively trust the first more, because the longer process feels more “earned.” We almost never perceive value rationally.

Anyone who has worked in services knows this. My father was a dentist, and sometimes patients questioned the price when a procedure took a short time. But they were not paying for twenty minutes. They were paying for fifteen years of education, experience, judgment, failed attempts, discipline, and ethics. The speed of the result hid the depth of the investment.

That is what makes AI unsettling. If something good can be produced instantly, one of our oldest signals of value begins to collapse. We are used to linking value to scarcity, effort, and time. But what happens in a world of abundance? What happens when excellent work can be generated in seconds?

If the future promised by AI enthusiasts really arrives, then the question is not only whether machines can produce good work. The deeper question is this: how will humans asses value in a world where effort is invisible?