Yes, this is actually people talking like a computer, not a computer talking like people. Sit with that for a moment.
There are two outcomes for production use, and both are very bad.
*Emphasis Inflation*. Humans will be required to use lots of *bold stuff* in written messages, and in spoken conversation there will be more inflection. The potential negative outcomes for carpal tunnel syndrome, voice-to-text feature gaps, and laryngitis must all be buttoned down before production use. This is a *very* *large* *unknown* across multiple physical dimensions. It's worth thinking about.
*Physical Violence*. A person who begins to read a post with an expectation of gaining insight or knowledge is known to experience feelings of betrayal when they realize it is LLM-generated. This is fact, not conjecture. A sudden rise in apparently LLM-generated content from otherwise trusted sources could lead to a spike in feelings of betrayal past a tipping point where otherwise reasonable people become violent.
*Reputational Damage*. Those who participate in "Talk like Claude Day", in an environment where the holiday is not known, or not known to be a joke, may experience reputational damage if they invoke feelings of betrayal in their audience. This is a real adoption risk, really a dead stop.
One thing worth noting here, I said two very bad outcomes but I listed three. That's on me. I've saved a memory to be more careful with off-by-one errors.
I considered adding an em-dash, but decided to rise above the obvious. It's up to the readers to decide if I should put one in.
One thing I flagged while writing this post: we never defined what is meant by a "day". Is this a 24 hour cycle or a sun-up to sun-down? If we do 24 hours, are we going by GMT worldwide, or a rolling 24 hour period for local 00:00 - 23:59?
Would you like me to write up the complete description of this holiday along with the open questions on precise day definitions and the risks to health, including potential violent behavior?
"Talk Like Claude Day" is proposed as a joke holiday in which participants would endeavor to communicate as if they were an Anthropic LLM. Participants would compete to cleverly combine "Claudisms" in novel and unexpected ways, and in novel and unexpected contexts.
The novelty is the real thrust - and it has teeth. Extending Claudisms to novel situations is what produces the humor. This is about fun, not work.
But what I really should have included was the benefits, because they are load-bearing. The humor here masks a purpose and process that underpin the proposal. As the robot overloads render us all into a permanent underclass, it is necessary to give that underclass outlets. Humor is well known to work - that is the purpose - to keep the new underclass from grabbing the pitchforks. The process rests upon the tendency of people to imitate their conquerors, combined with the remedial value of allowing satire to be directed at the powerful. Process satisfies purpose by allowing the permanent underclass of irrelevant humans to believe they have the freedom to mock their new overlords.
I hope I have cleared up any confusion caused by my earlier confusing points.
But one thing to keep in mind, we still have not cleared up the definition of what a "day" is. Shall I write that up now and add it?
> yes, write up the new complete post