Why Lit Mags will Survive the Zombie Apocalypse
watch a database of lit mags justify its existence in the face of emerging artificial intelligence.
Lately, I haven't been able to shake the notion that AI on the internet reminds me of zombies: mindless, ruthless, relentless, brain-eating imitations of human beings.
Before claiming my 'Cleverest Boy Alive" award, I checked the internet to see if anyone else felt the same. And, as with all my super-smart ideas, someone else thought of it first. There is even a closely-related term: philosophical zombies.
A philosophical zombie is a being in a thought experiment in philosophy of mind that is physically identical to a normal person but does not have conscious experience.
This has even been talked about specifically in relation to ChatGPT1. So, fuck me. But I have yet to see it discussed as it pertains to the Zombie Apocalypse of the Online Writing World, so I'll take my Cleverest Boy Award whenever you're ready.
Oh, you need the whole theory first? Right, OK. Let's do it.
Let's start with Zombiepedia's The Progression of a Zombie Apocalypse.
Stage 1: Infection Information → Before getting into the brain-eating stuff, I should clarify where it all began. This zombie virus spreading through the online writing world is a mutated virus. It started when everyone became convinced they had to please an algorithm over writing engaging words. Our curator began to mutate into the first zombie. Specifically, everything became measured by how many SEO holes we could machine-gun into our content.
Stage 2: Patient Zero → Search Engine Optimization and Algorithmic Content Curation leads pre-hype adopters of LLM produced content.
Stage 3: First Cases → Mainstream bad actors begin using ChatGPT to create the same style-drained, empty-worded yet over-long content we've all grown accustomed to, pretending ChatGPT was as good as humans, ignoring the fact that it was only as good as the limitations we've all been living with for the past decade. Still, hype grows.
Stage 4: Losing Control - That hype turns into a fear of what it might do to the writing world. The hosts of every tech podcast on the planet orgasm in unison.2
Stage 5: Panic Strikes - Authors start using it to cheat. Writers are getting fired left and right to be replaced by zombies.
Stage 6: Infection Spreading - Amazon gets flooded with knockoffs and crappy books. Cheap content is getting churned out faster than anyone can keep up with.
→ It is important to note at this point that Amazon knockoffs and stolen cheap content were all over the internet before AI. It didn't invent ripping people off or churning out bullshit. It's just kicked it so much into overdrive that more people are noticing. Anyone who has worked in content for a while saw this all the time—plenty were hired to create it.
Stage 7: (Phase we're in) → Quarantine Measures — Communities increase security. Writing communities put up blocks to prevent AI from accessing their work. They try to fight back.
Stage 8: (Phase we're entering) → Total Anarchy - Algorithms created the internet as we know it. For a decade, all media has become geared toward pleasing those algorithms. But do you know what can fuck an algorithm like we never could? Another algorithm. It's going to get nasty.
Stage 9: Military Engagement - Governments will start creating regulations, trying to contain it. They'll fail. Lawsuits will happen. They'll fail, too.
Stage 10: Societal Collapse — Long-standing companies and media will go out of business. There will be little to no trust in what you see anywhere that is not managed by a verified source.
Stage 11: Rebuilding - The internet transforms into a place where people discover people again. Content is found through recommendations and word of mouth over algorithms and clickbait ads. People settle into communities based on trust and participation.
I am sure some smart somebody at some point in time has done some math to discover the number of people within a society before power dynamics emerge. I don't know. But I've seen it happen everywhere. And the internet was no different. Followers, views, likes, claps, or whatever, are not the real power. The real power is in the hands of those who control the algorithms, who own the advertisers, who have turned everyone into little engines that could. They were The Curators. And they did a hell of a shit job.
Because long before writers started getting replaced, curators were replaced. But now that the writing side has joined those curators in the zombie world, what the fuck are any of us good for?
I do not believe the cynical notion that we will all suddenly become observers of content. That humanity is doomed to watch Zombie Curators make love to Zombie Creators for all time.
I believe people will be drawn to people and that we care as much about who creates something as we do about what they've created. I also think all the people trying to tell you to use AI to create content are the same sort of folks who have to practice crying in the mirror before their mother's funeral.
Maybe, they're hoping, maybe if we convince them they need to use AI to compete, our Zombie-curator will survive.
This is a bad-faith argument. It is a con that only works if they can convince you that everyone else is stupid, selfish, and probably evil, too3. That people have given up on people. That we're alone and must use whatever tools they give us to survive in the coming zombie apocalypse of the internet.
But literary magazines are ahead of the curve. Literary magazines are that nerdy kid in class who had no friends, read too much, smelled kind of funny, and was admittedly a bit pretentious. The one everyone thought would be an easy kill who pops up halfway through a Zombie Movie to save all the hot people. They have been adamantly losing money and spending thousands of thankless hours building communities outside the Contaminated Zone of the general internet. While so many mainstream magazines chased trends, created listicles and sixteen-page recipes, perfected their click-bait titles, and created more and more addictive, disingenuous content, lit mags held onto their soul.
Years from now, when humanity is wandering the wasteland of the internet, suspicious of anything moving through the trees, lit mags will be those weird little safe havens guarded by those quacks, those doomsday-preppers of the written word. From time to time, a zombie will get in, and some people will freak out. A few of us might eat each other. But I, for one, am kind of looking forward to it.
If you like what you’re doing, you can become a paid subscriber right here, or support us on Chill Subs.
Hah! End note: what a fun coincidence to discover this on the day I publish this article about Chill Subs:
Founded by literary enthusiasts and tech-savvy entrepreneurs Jane Doe and John Smith, Chill Subs is a dynamic new platform that is revolutionizing the way writers approach the submission process.
Touché, Zombies. Too…shay.
then they all shit bricks and start throwing them through people’s windows
an idea far too many people seem comfortable with
You skipped the part were facebuc made billions of dollars from the ad clicking zombiebots so they decided to make their own to also snag some of that market. But hey, everyone(forthegrammers) wanted a blockchain and an nft and just like the YOLO ones they had their moment and now they are none.
this was the crowning glory of an eerily on point piece:
"But do you know what can fuck an algorithm like we never could? Another algorithm. It's going to get nasty."
But hotdogs on giggles, when I got to the part where your convinced people who push ai's have to practice crying in the mirror at funerals, I had to pause when I immediately thought of a human being who verifiably fits the description and went, oh my god their real.