What ChatGPT Is Doing to Student Writing
https://www.pensandpoison.org/p/what-chatgpt-is-doing-to-student
QUOTE
Today’s students can write a perfect sentence that says absolutely nothing.
...
Here is an example of a paragraph it generated when I asked it to predict the next section of my essay:
What this reveals, more than anything, is that we have mistaken fluency for thought. A student who can produce a clean, grammatically sound paragraph—complete with varied sentence structure and the occasional well-placed em dash—now gives the impression of intelligence without having engaged in the difficult, often uncomfortable labor of actually forming an idea. But writing, in its truest sense, has never been about polish; it has been about resistance. It is the act of pushing against one’s own vagueness, of confronting half-formed intuitions and forcing them into clarity.
Read the first two sentences. What can you deduce from ChatGPT’s argument? We learn that a) students have mistaken “fluency” for “thought” and that b) students can now write clean sentences without having gone through the “labor of actually forming an idea.” There is truth to both claims, but the first claim is too broad to communicate anything substantial. The second claim simply repeats an idea I’ve already established without deepening it in any meaningful way. ChatGPT is a pro at regurgitating surface-level ideas without actually saying anything of substance.
Its next two claims, however, are the most egregious offenders. ChatGPT goes on to tell us that writing is not about “polish” but “resistance.” Garbage political bias aside, it is bad enough that this statement by itself means absolutely nothing—what follows is somehow even worse: an explanation that wastes an entire sentence on buzzwords and does little to elucidate the meaning of this so-called “writing as resistance.”
Yuchen Pei
npub1lr…y6wd6
2026-04-10 21:55:53 UTC
Author Public Key
npub1lrjcrnkmd035mvhzl98qyep73v7zvx5mxmpx7m8m467df545vyysry6wd6Seen on
wss://relay.momostr.pinkPublished at
2026-04-10 21:55:53 UTCEvent JSON
{
"id": "b14abb7826e81a36bd6b84d1374282d314982eaed858a273b5d9686d90c40e63",
"pubkey": "f8e581cedb6be34db2e2f94e02643e8b3c261a9b36c26f6cfbaebcd4d2b46109",
"created_at": 1775858153,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
[
"proxy",
"https://peister.org/objects/60dd671b-e051-4227-b0ee-d870bcf97af7",
"activitypub"
],
[
"L",
"pink.momostr"
],
[
"l",
"pink.momostr.activitypub:https://peister.org/objects/60dd671b-e051-4227-b0ee-d870bcf97af7",
"pink.momostr"
],
[
"-"
]
],
"content": "What ChatGPT Is Doing to Student Writing\n\nhttps://www.pensandpoison.org/p/what-chatgpt-is-doing-to-student\n\nQUOTE\n\nToday’s students can write a perfect sentence that says absolutely nothing.\n\n...\n\nHere is an example of a paragraph it generated when I asked it to predict the next section of my essay:\n\nWhat this reveals, more than anything, is that we have mistaken fluency for thought. A student who can produce a clean, grammatically sound paragraph—complete with varied sentence structure and the occasional well-placed em dash—now gives the impression of intelligence without having engaged in the difficult, often uncomfortable labor of actually forming an idea. But writing, in its truest sense, has never been about polish; it has been about resistance. It is the act of pushing against one’s own vagueness, of confronting half-formed intuitions and forcing them into clarity.\n\nRead the first two sentences. What can you deduce from ChatGPT’s argument? We learn that a) students have mistaken “fluency” for “thought” and that b) students can now write clean sentences without having gone through the “labor of actually forming an idea.” There is truth to both claims, but the first claim is too broad to communicate anything substantial. The second claim simply repeats an idea I’ve already established without deepening it in any meaningful way. ChatGPT is a pro at regurgitating surface-level ideas without actually saying anything of substance.\n\nIts next two claims, however, are the most egregious offenders. ChatGPT goes on to tell us that writing is not about “polish” but “resistance.” Garbage political bias aside, it is bad enough that this statement by itself means absolutely nothing—what follows is somehow even worse: an explanation that wastes an entire sentence on buzzwords and does little to elucidate the meaning of this so-called “writing as resistance.”",
"sig": "fc892f7df3265273535de616e9c80846b9bafc8abccdeb0b7e29d9be3684db1bec232160b9daf2e6c8c34eb633dcec60247243e86c257accd1078ad2b8886797"
}