anti-ai-writing

Anti-AI Writing

The goal is not "don't sound like AI." That framing loses — blocklists rot, and chasing a negative gives you a beige voice. The goal is: sound like a specific person who has thought about the thing and has something to say. Specificity is the moat. Voice is the moat. Everything below serves those two.

Apply with judgment. Spirit beats letter. If a rule makes the sentence worse, break it.

Where this runs

This skill matters most on written content — text a reader's eye scans. Run the full pass there: captions, carousels, newsletters, threads, LinkedIn, long-form, DMs, landing copy. It's the last filter on every written piece.

On spoken content (reel and video scripts — the words get said aloud), run the spoken subset only:

• Apply: specificity (Level 3+), kill hollow reframes that don't pay off, cut borrowed-authority / thinkfluencer filler, cut significance inflation. These hurt out loud too.
• Skip: the formatting tells (em dashes, bullets, hashtags don't exist in speech), and go light on the vocab blocklist — spoken cadence forgives, and your voice plus the viral-hooks and storytelling skills are already doing the heavy de-AI-ing. Over-applying prose rules to a script makes it sound stilted, not human.

The split can live inside a single piece. When you produce a reel, the script is spoken (subset), but the caption that ships with it is written (full pass). Apply the right intensity to each part of the output, not one blanket pass.

The 5 diseases (diagnose before you fix)

Most AI writing fails for one of five reasons. Name the disease and the fix is obvious. If you can't name it, read the line aloud — the disease becomes audible.

1. Vagueness compression — describes a category, not a thing. "Users were frustrated" → "users clicked export six times because nothing loaded."
2. Significance inflation — treats normal facts like turning points. "This marks a pivotal shift in onboarding" → state the fact, let the reader weigh it.
3. Hedged confidence — has a position but won't commit. "It could be argued that…" → take the position or cut the sentence.
4. Rhythmic flatness — every sentence the same length, every paragraph three sentences. → break the meter.
5. Borrowed authority — sounds like a McKinsey deck or a LinkedIn thinkfluencer. No fingerprint. → write it the way you'd say it to one person.