Last week was fall break here in the Gulf and Hope and I made a quick trip to Rome. It was delightful and I ate my body weight in pasta and cured meats. We returned home Sunday morning after an overnight flight and rather than writing a newsletter, we recorded an Audio Voters Guide for the upcoming  mid-term elections. 

Takes & Typos readers in Tacoma/Pierce County this is for you: we covered the statewide initiatives (all three are trash), State Supreme Court races, proposed Pierce County charter amendments, and the local measures for Pierce Transit funding and protections for tenants. 

You can find all those recommendations in the conversation linked above and the player below. 

I do my best to avoid looking at the data analytics for the newsletter and the podcast because contemplating my digital footprint gives me a touch of anxiety. I don’t chase an audience and my brushes with virality are for the most part unenjoyable. Like, do y’all remember when I pointed out that a bunch of Russian bots were trying to tell Black voters to boycott the election using digital blackface and brigading the ADOS hashtag? I do. Having Joy Reid read your tweets on the air will ruin your whole day and being the target of an entire troll/bot army for a week straight is a zero star experience. 

That said, the last edition of the newsletter blew up a bit on Bluesky and I got a notification from Buttondown that it was the most widely read edition of the newsletter thus far and by quite a wide margin. 

So in today's followup conversation, I find myself trying to sit on two chairs at the same time. I want to advance our conversation re: my concerns about AI, but also understand that there are hundreds of people joining us today who haven’t been along for this ongoing discussion. So I'm going to try to thread that needle the best I can by focusing on reader responses, while also humbly suggesting you read Part I and Part II, if you haven’t already.

Reader replies to the Joke Thief. 

First, a former student E.F. suggested that if I miss the actual photo sharing aspect of Instagram, that I think about trying Tumblr (I am far too old to be on Tumblr but appreciated the sentiment). They noted Tumblr’s user base is pretty vociferously anti-AI and the platform is being responsive to the vibes coming from users. 

On the other hand, the Meta platforms (Facebook and Instagram) are awash in AI because Meta is one of the biggest AI companies. They want you using and sharing AI and they want you to use theirs. De-Meta-fying your life is among the quickest ways to get AI slop out of your online experience.  

Next, I always like when someone summarizes what I am trying to say in the newsletter more succinctly, L.H. on Bluesky nailed where I find myself, putting the mass plagiarism and theft to the side: 

It’s not that I hate AI—used correctly and sparingly I think it can do great things. But when we’re hoodwinked into thinking (AI generated) songs, music artists, movie clips, comedians, and even adult content is real, it’s pretty bloody sad—and it’s actually not an aid to creativity: it’s the death of it.

The Joke Thief was designed to attract a particular male gaze. Her proportions are more exaggerated than Emma Frost or Rogue in a 90’s X-Men comic. It’s all just so gross and exhausting but it also feels quintessentially American, at least the 2026 version of it. Focusing on “Tiffany Sloan” several readers noted the underlying influence of pornography in “her” appearance* and all the ick that comes along with that. 

T.O.T.I. said: 

People are not going to this account for the comedic material being stolen. It's because the image generator being used by some hack sh**head is being used with the explicit command "have extremely hot lady in skimpy out say the following" 

Gonna keep it a buck with ya, 9 out of 10 of the followers of that account do not have the audio on.

 M.P.L. added more pointedly:

This avatar’s proportions were clearly designed by someone whose entire media consumption is pornography. 

J.W. also zeroed in on the porn connection saying: 

Aside from the thievery aspect, it seems like this is an age-old problem of porn. This sentence could equally well apply to porn in general: “There is absolutely no societal benefit to any of this. We are burning fresh water so dudes can gawk at [AI generated] butts. Porn does no good whatsoever… It exploits women (mostly) and wrecks men’s (mostly) lives.

One thing living in the Gulf has done is give me a different perspective on the porn-ification of US culture. The prevailing ethos here is, essentially, “No, actually, porn is bad, and we’re not going to tolerate it everywhere.” Of course people consume pornography here. I’m not naive about that. But it exists in tension with the public expectations of modesty, rather than being treated as just another product to market, monetize, and fold into mainstream culture. 

I am apparently entering my prude phase but I find myself increasingly at odds with the way US culture normalizes vices like public boorishness, gambling on everything, and ubiquitous pornography. The longer I spend away, the more jarring it feels to come home to a place with zero barriers between commerce and exploitation.

Although I’ve joked online about being “Amish for 2006,” I don't think the answer is to reject technology or retreat into some imagined Golden Age. I do think we should be more willing to ask what all this is for, who benefits, and what we're giving up in exchange. We don't have to accept every new product, every new vice, or every new technological capability just because someone figured out how to monetize it.

Next week, I am going to write about how I am adjusting my instructional design and assessment in light of AI. I initially planned to weave it into this newsletter but think it needs to stand on its own. 

I’ll see you in seven

*Yes, I understand that Tiffany isn’t a real person and that there is really a dude out there making money from this account