How to Manage Your Emotions When You Read ChatGPT Notes on Substack

"This post isn't just illuminating, it's PHOSPHORESCENT!"

Illustrated by Stephanie Vee

Disclaimer: This is a tongue-in-cheek guide written in the immediate aftermath of blocking yet another suspected GenAI co-author from my home feed. For a rather more serious take on how to recognize some of the regularly irregular rhythms of LLMs like ChatGPT, please see my earlier post on this subject.

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Do you find your blood pressure rising as you scroll through what feels like an infinite amount of AI-generated writing here on Substack? Do you occasionally find yourself questioning your sanity after muttering things that sound certifiable to you, such as “surely they can’t all be bots?” Do you furiously barge into your husband’s office at times, yelling “HOLY SHIT, SHE’S POSTED ANOTHER ONE! HOW DO ALL THESE PEOPLE COMMENTING NOT REALIZE THIS IS CHATGPT?! ARE THEY BOTS?!”

If so, this handy guide is for you!

1. Imagine Moira Rose reading the author’s note out loud.

Specifically, using her comically clipped, precise tone of voice and delivery found at the 8:22 mark in the above video. I can guarantee you that if you imagine that voice reading ChatGPT-authored sentences in that way, your Substack experience will be improved immeasurably.

Try it: “Raw. Human. Real. You’re not just growing, David, you’re becoming.” <insert dramatic head tilt here>

(Catherine O’Hara, in the infinitesimally small chance you’re reading this, I will give you fifty of our country’s finest toonies¹ to narrate a note or two from Substack’s Personal Growth category.)

2. Now imagine Gilbert Gottfried reading the author’s note out loud.

Picture it: you’re scrolling aimlessly through Substack’s Philosophy category (as one does), and you come across something “profound” that ChatGPT wrote, like this:

Pain is not the enemy.

Our judgments about pain are.

A Stoic does not reject emotion, but reclaims authorship over it.

Control what you can—your thoughts, your actions, your character.

Everything else is weather: to be observed, not possessed.

The world will shift and shake.

Still, your inner citadel remains.

Virtue is the only true good.

And peace is not found in ease, but in alignment with reason.

This is not indifference—it is clarity.

To live well is to live wisely, and to suffer well, too.

And now, in your head, Gilbert Gottfried is the one reading this utterly brilliant nugget of artificially-generated wisdom. Focus on the sharp, grating edge of his voice while he shrieks in bold italics (as only Gilbert Gottfried can shriek) “everything else is WEATHER: to be OBSERVED, NOT POSSESSED.”

Instantly better, right? You’re welcome.

3. Resist the urge to play a round of ChatGPT Mad Libs with the author.

Whatever you do, don’t paste the author’s note into ChatGPT and ask it to rewrite the note with nonsensical substitutions, like “fluffy slipper addiction” instead of “screen addiction” and “death metal growling” instead of “gentle living.” If you decide to ignore what I just said, for your own amusement, definitely don’t post the resulting note into a comment on the author’s original note. Trust me, I understand that the urge to do this feels a bit overwhelming at times, because … I mean, come on, this is gold:

Screenshot by Stephanie Vee

No, if you insist upon playing ChatGPT Mad Libs, don’t play them with the author.² I recommend posting your Mad Libs in a separate note of your own, with a disclaimer stating that you’re deliberately using ChatGPT in a ridiculous way to raise awareness of how predictable and grating all of these AI-generated Substack notes sound. Just remember to do this in moderation if you’re worried about things like potable water reserves and whatnot.

Taking an unhealthy and unproductive feeling like unbridled anger over reading yet another empty string of “not just X, but also Y” correlatives and transforming that emotion into something amusing and constructive feels pretty good!

4. Stretch and get ready to click.

… because you, dear reader, are going to do an awful lot of clicking now.

Focus on the offending ChatGPT-authored note of your choice. Find the ellipsis in the upper right corner of the note. Click on it. A drop-down list will appear. Click on “Hide note,” then click on “Show fewer notes like this.”

Screenshot by Stephanie Vee

Now repeat the above process hundreds of times, in the off-chance that your request might actually be honoured by this platform some day. Think of it like weeding your digital garden with just a dash of wishful thinking. Every time you hide a note that is almost certainly ChatGPT-authored, you’ll feel a little more at peace … and perhaps next spring, you’ll no longer receive all those unsolicited invitations to grow!

5. Touch Grass

I was recently instructed to “touch grass” by someone on Reddit, after I pointed out that an OP’s thinly-veiled advertisement for their vibe-coded productivity app was absolutely riddled with ChatGPT clichés (on a subreddit that does not permit self-promotion or AI spambots).

“Touch grass” is usually delivered as an insult—and you could certainly interpret it as such—but it’s actually a pretty helpful reminder to put down your phone or turn off your PC monitor for a bit. Getting worked up over the proliferation of AI-assisted writing on Substack is understandable, but speaking as someone who has experienced this a lot over the last several weeks, it just isn’t worth it.

Yes, it sucks that we have obvious grifters here who are preying on certain audiences who are vulnerable and looking for answers. Yes, it’s annoying to scroll past the same sort of note over and over again. If it’s starting to get to you, though, you could just try touching some grass. Until ChatGPT prose starts adorning billboards,³ it can’t reach you out there.

So if my first four suggestions fail to settle your frustration … go outside, find a patch of grass to sit on, pull out a good human-authored book,⁴ and do your best to forget that somewhere here on Substack, a bot with an AI-generated image of Aristotle as its profile pic is almost certainly encouraging oblivious readers to “reflect quietly on the irrefutable humanity of disconnecting.”

1. That is all I can spare, alas, as I have not yet mastered the art of monetizing ChatGPT’s oh-so deep reflections on philosophy and gentle living.

2. After all, there’s a chance the author may have just been inspired by all the ChatGPT dross on Substack and came up with those empty parallelisms all by themselves. Or perhaps the author has been writing dross here for years, and ChatGPT is merely ripping off their tone of voice. Either way, directly accusing writers of posting ChatGPT notes in their comments sections isn’t cool, because you might be wrong (and it’s just kind of bitchy).

3. Please don’t get any funny ideas, Sam.

4. Novel recommendation time! I’ve been re-reading Pyramids by Terry Pratchett lately, and had forgotten how laugh-out-loud hilarious it is. Apropos of absolutely nothing related to this post, I’m going to quote one of my favourite sentences written by any author, ever:

“And behind them, tormented beyond measure by the inexorable tide of geometry, unable to discharge its burden of Time, the Great Pyramid screamed, lifted itself off its base and, its bulk swishing through the air as unstoppably as something completely unstoppable, ground around precisely ninety degrees and did something perverted to the fabric of time and space.”