The thing that has gotten me started isStorage’s story about a summer reading list that apparently was generated by some sort of AI, which is… well, a bitadaff about. (And actually,Storage is a(children’s) app with a lot of content, but perhaps that’s beyond me.) Okay, so here’s the thing: somehow, a group of writers created this list, and then it’s distributed to a bunch of newspapers. But here’s the kicker: none of the authors behind this list are real authors, and most of the time, they’re not even writers at all. The list is filled with made-up books by authors who supposedly know what they’re writing about—but sounds like fake news from Science or fact corporations.
So, the list, which supposedly says “summer reading” from the mid-2000s, made its way to 60+ papers around the country in 2023. But what it contained? Well, as the photo linked earlier suggests, it was a set of 15 titles, none of which were real authors’ works. Only a handful of the listed books were actually real; the rest are from Geniuses who just so happen to be pretending to write real stuff. The list also says “ summer reading” in all three languages, which is a bit of a stretch, but makes me think it’s just a;n that, I guess, they’ve made a version of “summer” that seems so farfetched that even the authors said they didn’t realize the creativity inside. (See X, A/A for a more in-depth look at one of the supposedly fake books.)
Okay, so the first step I took in writing this was to at least get the genre familiar so my first reactions, as I first heard about this list, are to dive in pretty hard. You know what? I’ll end things here because the damage is already done—making me a bit apologetic once more, but d.prince8 on personal blogs, I hope.
Wait, to be clear, sorry, but this is just me trying to wrap all of this up in 2000 words, but if you want some of the actual article, let me know. I can email you the appendix or… don’t have a lean line of 2000 real words… This is just the road to the moment.