#i should have asked chatgpt to write it

[fuckyeah-jessicabiel]

Deep Dive: The whole story about Jessica Biel’s infamous March 2000′s Gear Magazine cover, 7th heaven and it consequences

If you are old enough to be around the time 7th Heaven aired on TV, you must have heard about Jessica Biel’s scandalous photoshoot by Frank W. Ockenfels for Gear Magazine released right after her 18th birthday.

What you have heard or remember: Jessica was unhappy with her role in 7th Heaven and wanted to be fired so she posed naked for Gear Magazine. And it got her fired from the show. What actually happened: Not exactly what you think. She regretted doing that photoshoot pretty soon, felt like she was taken advantage by the industry, took a break and went to College on the East Coast. Let’s dive in the past for more accurate informations.

May 1999: During Season 3, 17 year old Jessica was pretty open how unhappy she was with the role of Mary Camden. Back then TV actors had to sign a 6 year contract, they can’t leave or renenogiate their salary until thoses 6 years were over. Jessica signed that contract when she was 14. It was her first role.

“Mary’s totally cool and all, but dude, don’t just turn yourself in. She has this conscience thing. She’ll do something and feel so guilty. It works for the show because it teaches lessons like ‘Don’t lie,’ but sometimes it’s not real. I don’t think I’d be confessing. I’d be like, I’m not saying a thing.” - Young & Mondern, May 1999

Jessica already got in trouble for cuting her hair in 1998 during season 3. It was forbidden in her contract. But the Gear photoshoot was another level.

“I cut my hair the day before the season started. I was sick of it. I’d had long hair forever. I’d told everybody I wanted to cut it, but they said they were happy with it and it looked good. It was in my contract, but I just took it into my own hands. The producers were pissed. I told them, ‘Hey, it grows back.’ But they didn’t see it that way.”- Young & Mondern, May 1999

March 2000: Jessica wanted to break her “good girl” image from 7th Heaven and posed naked for adult magazine Gear. It was kind of rite of passage for 90s actresses at the time (Before her, Melissa Joan Hart for Maxim in 1999). The show producers were not happy, it didn’t fit the religious family show image. 7th Heaven was the most watched TV series ever on the WB (above  Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dawson’s Creek, Charmed, Felicity,,...). It holds the record for the WB’s most watched hour at 12.5 million viewers; 19 of the WB’s 20 most watched hours were from 7th Heaven.

She also talks about how out of touch 7th writers were with teens stories. Aaron Spelling, the most powerful TV producer at the time (Dynasty, Charlie's Angels, Beverley Hills, Merlose Place, Charmed,..) told her he “owns her” when the producers didn’t want to accommodate her schedule to film a movie.

She characterizes the show's writers as being hopelessly out of touch with a teen’s reality. She cites an episode where her sister complains about Mary sticking her feet out of the car window. Her retort: “Hey, I've got to air out my dogs.” Or another show where her 21-year-old brother’ girlfriend says she feels uncomfortable doing laundry together because they handle each other's underwear. “Come on, Jesse says, rolling her eyes. - Gear, 2000

“I own you” - Aaron Spelling to Jessica Biel

During season 4 (1999/2000), since Jessica was openly critizing the writers, you can see the change with her character. Mary went from the smart athletic sister receiving awards for sports and education in episode 5 to the rebellious daughter with bad grades who trash the gym in episode 8 (!) .

Jessica was vocal about the importance of education and the wish to go to college in the East Coast during that time.

She did the photoshoot to be fired?...Maybe. Was she fired?...No.

Even though the Gear interview hightligh her wanting to leave the show thanks to the photoshoot, she also say if she really wanted to leave she would just shave her head and dye it in blue.

Could these photos get her fired? “I hope so,” she says lightly. “Actually, if I really wanted to get fired, I'd just shave my head. I'd probably be fired on the spot. Then I'd dye what was left blue” - Gear, 2000

After the photoshoot, Aaron Speliing made it clear she still has two year left in her contract and he still wants her in the show.

“I like Jessica Biel, I’m not against Jessica. I’m not suing Jessica. She’s a very good actress. I love to work with her. I’d love for her to stay. She’s got two years left on her contract. -Aaron Spelling, USA Today 2000

Aaron Spelling didn’t sue Jessica but did sue Gear magazine for $100m for using his name on it. The magazine shut down in 2003.

TV producer Aaron Spelling has sued Gear magazine for its red-hot feature on “7th Heaven” star Jessica Biel. The suit — filed Tuesday in Los Angeles country Superior Court — seeks $100 million in damages for defamation from the magazine and its owner, Bob Guccione Jr. - NYpost, 2000

In a letter, Spelling's lawyer, Bertram Fields, sent to Gear, he calls the magazine "sleazy" and denies the "false assertion" that Spelling told Biel he owned her. It also said that the appearance of Spelling's name on the masthead insinuates that he "approved and arranged for this reprehensible article featuring 11 nude and highly salacious photos of a minor child... an article that, in light of Ms. Biel's youth, appears to violate various criminal acts." TV Guide, 2000

The reason her screen time was reduced during season 5 (2000/2001) is because she attented Tufts University in Massachusetts. The producers finally accepted to accommondate her schedule. She was only filming 7th Heaven during her school break. That’s why Mary was sent to Buffalo by her parents. Jessica took a break from Tufts University after two semesters and was back full time for season 6 (2001/2002) and filmed the movie The Rules of Attraction during summer 2001. Her 6 years contract was finally over, she choose to leave the show and only appear in couples of episodes in the next seasons.

Now, as she is focused, laser-like, on getting us through the storm, she seems thoughtful about the whole episode. “I really wanted to go to college, and it all kind of happened at the same time. I did this photo shoot; the photo shoot came out; it was terribly embarrassing. I had to apologize to everybody, including my parents. It was a big learning experience: learning how to have boundaries and how to say no.”

Not surprisingly, Biel has a lot of empathy for young girls dealing with adolescence in front of an audience. “I have this overwhelming motherly feeling toward them. Just do what you gotta do, girls! Hold it together! I wish everyone would just leave them alone.” Vogue, 2010

After the photoshoot, 7th heaven writers took it another level , they made Mary a selfish sister who cared about no one and anything in season 5 (2000/2001). They paired her with a guy 3 times her age at the begining of season 7 (2002). During season 9 (2004/2005), Mary abandonned her husband and baby even thought Jessica was not appearing in the show anymore. The writers know what they were doing since viewers often link characters to the actors.

Jessica appeared in 0 episodes of season 9, you can see how mad the writers were, dragging a character that was not even on screen for a whole year. Season 9, Episode 21:

From 2001 to 2010:  She did multiple interviews talking about how she regretted doing that photoshoot, it was not what was planned she got encouraged to take her clothes off when it was supposed to be just a sexy photoshoot. She couldn’t stop the pictures to be published because she had no contract.

She was most forthcoming and, regarding her experience with a failed Gear magazine photo shoot early in her career, genuine in her explanation of what it takes rebound from a mistake and put her career on track.  It was unexpectedly moving to hear her talk about the event because her voice cracked a couple times.  Who couldn't feel for her? A kid who tried to do something fun and it backfired.

“I want to say that… because…. I was seventeen years old. It was my first kind of adult photo-shoot where it was supposed to be… it was supposed to be sexy and fun… it wasn’t supposed to be naked, it wasn’t supposed to be, you know, underwear. I got in a situation where I was encouraged. And I was not looked after by the people that I was working with. And it really got blown out of this planet. I’m not apologizing for it.I mean, I think that was going to happen naturally. As, you know, you get older and you look different and you act  and your ideas are different. You change like every year, so much. I mean, when that photo-shoot came out it was really horrible for me.  I don’t regret it because I’ve learned and this is going to sound so cliché I cannot even tell you how much I’ve learned about being able to stand up for myself and being able to say, “You know what? No, I’m not going to wear that.” And knowing the people to put around me to keep me on the right path. You know what got it started? I had a lot of men around me at the time. I was working with a lot of men, because of my managers. And, you know, it just wasn’t a good thing for me. I really needed to be surrounded by a woman. Women who would say, “You know what? That’s really not such a smartest idea.” And also, I was seventeen.I think this happens to so many girls. And this is not some sob story. I’m not looking for people to go, “Oh!”. I mean, this was one of the hardest times I went through in my whole entire life. I really embarrassed my family. I embarrassed myself. And thank God for 7th Heaven and for the fans and for Aaron Spelling, who was so forgiving. He was like, “Look, you made a mistake. It’s OK.” I had to go through all this stuff in front of everybody, in front of the whole world. And I never really said anything. My mom was like, “Let’s make a statement. Let’s say something and say that this is not what it was supposed to be. This was not some, like, let’s get off the show. That was not what it was about.” And, you know, when you’re seventeen years old… you think you know everything. You want to be twenty-five. You want to wear the sexy clothes. And when someone says, “Yeah, that looks great! Why don’t you just slip that off?” You’re like, “OK, yeah.” And then it just escalates. And at the end of that shoot I was just bawling to my dad. I said, “Dad, you need to get rid of this. This just didn’t go the way I wanted it to go. And then, you know, we didn’t have things signed, and whatever." I mean, I’m not going to say that I’m completely free of guilt. I went along with it. But… you know, it was a very nerve-wracking photo-shoot. And at the end of the day I went home to my father and I said, "Dad, I don’t want to tell because I’m very embarrassed, but I just need you to help me and we need to just forget this whole thing.” - IGN.com, 2003

Speaking of parents, yours must have been pretty freaked about your pictures in Gear. First of all, I wasn’t happy with those pictures either. I saw pictures that were different from the ones that ran in the magazine. We thought the layout was going to be much more subdued. I’m talking about how much was shown of my chest area. So I was shocked and my family was heartbroken about the pictures that ran. It was really difficult, but you know, it’s over now and I’m OK with it and my family knows that that’s never ever going to happen again. Have you mended fences with everyone at the WB and the series itself? Yes, but it really was difficult for a while. That photo shoot was just a really bad decision on my part and I got myself involved with people who weren’t thinking about me and were instead thinking about what kind of a story they could get out of it. I learned a whole lot from the experience, so it was definitely a blessing in disguise. I don’t look back on it negatively like I used to. There was speculation that you were trying to get fired by appearing too sexy to play Mary. I think it boils down to the stupidest thing ever. I just wanted to cut my hair and dye it a different color, but they wouldn’t allow it because we were in the middle of episodes. I was 17 years old and totally rebellious, so I was just like, “What do you mean I can’t dye my hair? You can’t tell me what to do!” I look back now and I’m like, “God, I was a nutball!” And I’ve really changed from that. I had to learn in front of the entire country, but I guess that’s a really poignant lesson. As far as changing my image, I do want to do different movies and play as many different characters as I can. I want people to see me as a really normal human being who screws up. Just like everybody else. EW, August 2001

Her boyfriend at that time, Adam LaVorgna (Robbie Palmer in 7th Heaven) was not happy about that photoshoot. There were some tensions between them while she was spending time with the interviewer.

During the time I spent with her, the Boyfriend (whom she asks not to name) is constant presence, though he’s more than 3,000 miles away in Boston. What he thinks  and how he’ll react take up a large portion of Jesse’s thoughts. He’s nervous at her being perceived as sex idol, and having a writer from men’s magazine spend several days with her is not helping. Over the course of those days, the phone keeps ringing - the Boyfriend - and it’s stressing her. - Gear, 2000

It was reported that her dad and boyfriend were at the photoshoot. Even though Jessica denied it to protect her father from criticism, the boyfriend at the time, Adam LaVorgna, confirmed in a podcast in 2019, they were both there but were distracted by making them visit the building while they warn up her to take her clothes off. Adam was a guest on 7th Heaven during season 4 (1999/2000), Jessica got him the role of Mary’s boyfriend, Robbie Palmer, they have been dating since they filmed the movie ‘I’ll be home for Christmas” in Spring 1998. When it was time for Jessica to leave the show to attend college on the East Coast with Adam (Jessica at Tufts University and Adam at Boston College), 7th heaven writers called Adam to give him a regular role for season 5 (2000/2001). Adam accepted, dropped from college to be in L.A to film 7th Heaven but Jessica who needed a break still went to college in Massachusetts.

Initially, I just wanted to go to college. I hadn’t experienced traditional style high school. I wanted to be around kids my own age and to stop working full time. I was burned out.- LA Confidential, August 2006

Adam and Jessica broke up during summer 2001 and worked together full time in the show during season 6 (2001/2002) and the first episodes of season 7. The writers paired him with her sister, Lucy Camden, and then with another girl Mary was jealous of...

With hindsight, Adam regretted accepting the offer because now he feels like the producers asked him to comeback for season 5 to hit back at Jessica for leaving the show.

Like “Oh You wanna leave the show, We gonna take your boyfriend”. - Adam LaVorgna (2019 - worst ever podcast)

2005: For years, Jessica had a no nudity clause in her contract. She was not confortable doing nudity anymore, she used a body double for the movie she did with her boyfriend at the time Chris Evans.

“I used a body double in this little indie, London, because they wanted a close-up of a breast and a bottom, and I didn’t feel comfortable. I thought, ‘That’s for my bedroom and my man, not for everyone else.’ I had to pick out the body double, and it was a really bizarre experience. I felt like a man,” I was just assessing their bodies. There are so many shapes of breasts. I never knew. You’re just used to what yours look like,” - Cosmopolitan, July 2005

A lot of people said to me, That was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen anybody do,” she says. “But I was miserable. It was horrible. I was humiliated. I just wanted  my family to forgive me….I was taken advantage of in many different  ways. Now I can look at the pictures and not be disgusted, and I don’t  have to cry about it. I look at it as a learning experience.” - Esquire, November 2005

As a teenager, I wanted to make everyone happy, even if it meant doing something I didn’t believe in. Posing [nearly nude] for Gear magazine was a huge learning experience. There have been times since when studios have wanted me to do photos in men’s magazines. It’s hard to say no because I want to please the people who hire me. But I won't compromise my integrity for anyone. If I lose a job over that,fine. - Self Magazine, January 2005

Will she do it again? Nope!

Q: What do you do now to protect yourself? BIEL:Well, first of all, I’ll only do a photo-shoot for a magazine that I think is reputable, that’s not about just kind of exploiting women. Q: FHM or Maxim? BIEL: No. I don’t think that’s important and that’s not what I want to do.  I mean, that happened.  I’ve already done that and it did not… it wasn’t something that I want to do from the beginning and I don’t want to do it again. You know, I’m so much smarter! (she laughs)  I wish I knew what I know now. IGN 2003

2007: She was finally ready to do nudity for the movie Powder Blue also starring Forest Whitaker, Eddie Redmayne and Patrick Swayze and this time lesson learned everything was written down on a contract! and if they wanted more it should be discussed before the filming.

Jessica has made an effort to distance herself from gratuitious photoshoots since an ill-advised topless spread aged 17, which she claimed her former managers pressed her into posing. But the actress has changed her mind for the film. However, the cautious actress is keen not to see her scantily-clad image exploited, and has signed a contract that explicitly details the bare minimum fans will see. The contract is said to ban shots of her breasts (nipples from the front and side) and her bottom (side view only) – in the Crash-like ensemble drama Powder Blue. A source told Us Weekly magazine that although the director will film scenes that are even more revealing, 'Jessica will decide if she wants to show anything additional'. - Dailymail, 2008

"I don't have to be fully naked for the movie. I haven't decided exactly about the nudity. It's a tough one. I'm considering it but it's a very scary thing to do."It definitely feels vulnerable to be naked in front of anybody, let alone a film crew. - US weekly, 2009   

More interviews talking about how horrible she felt after the photoshoot was published:

That was such a big mistake. I made a horrible, horrible choice. Those were not the people to work with and not the right thing for myself. A hundred percent I want to be a part of the show. I give ‘7th Heaven’ — the writers and everybody — all the credit. They gave me the chance. They did everything, and I totally appreciate that. If I hadn’t been on '7th Heaven,’ I wouldn’t have been doing anything. I don’t know what would have happened. But it gave me the chance to do what I like to do. I definitely miss it. I definitely love coming back. It really depends on my college schedule. Pretty much all the time '7th Heaven’ is working, I’m in school. Except, of course, for my Christmas and spring breaks. So I’ll do an episode during my spring break. If I could do more episodes without missing any school this year, I would do whatever I can with that. I think our writer, (creator/executive producer) Brenda Hampton, is very perceptive with what’s going on in everyone’s life. I think Mary came to this point in her life when she didn’t know what to do. And then she had to rise up from that and find a balance. To get rid of all her debts and start going to class with her grandmother. And choosing a path in life. I’m pretty sure that’s where Mary is going, and that’s sort of where I was going in my life. I was just a crazy kid, and I didn’t know what I was doing, pretty much. For the last four years, I’ve definitely grown up with everyone having an eye on me — checking your moves out, checking what you’re doing. But I would never give it up. I would never go back on it. I know I’ve made some mistakes. I understand that. I’m OK with that. It’s made me who I am today. It’s made me a completely different person than I would be if I hadn’t gone through it all. I don’t regret it, and I would never go back. I don’t want that image. I don’t want to be some bad girl. Things got misconstrued, and I don’t know what happened. But I don’t want that. I just want to be me, and I don’t know what that is yet. - DesertNews, 2001

Confronting her naivety is something Jessica has certainly had to deal with in the past; a mistake that centres around a photoshoot she did for Gear magazine that saw her go topless for its cover, hand placed strategically over nipple in nothing but a pair of frilly beige knickers. She was 17 at the time. “I had been the pretty, good wholesome girl in 7th Heaven for almost three seasons and I’d had enough of being virginal,” she explains. “I was asked to do this shoot for the magazine and, because I was young, had some money, a little fame and because I thought I knew best, I decided to go ahead with it. I thought I could look after myself.“When we started the shoot I was like, ‘Wow, I’m older and sexier - I’m hot!’ And then as the day drew on and I started to take off more clothes, things started to get more uncomfortable. I just knew in my gut. I was thinking, ‘This is wrong - you are starting to do things you don’t want to.’ But I went along with things because I was arrogant and didn’t have anyone looking out for me. I went by myself, no real guardian apart from an old manager. My dad did show up at one point but I was like, ‘No,you stay over there. I’m doing this shoot. I’m cool.’”When the shoot wrapped, Jessica found a quiet corner and broke down. “I called him [her father] in tears. I’d made a huge mistake, I knew it. That little girl in me was freaking out. I spoke to my dad and was like, ‘Dad, you’ve got to help me. We have to get the photos. I can’t tell you what happened, but I have to stop the pictures getting out!’ He kept asking me what was wrong and I couldn’t face telling him. I was sobbing, ‘I can’t tell you, I can’t tell you…’”Despite every effort from her family, the pictures ran. Aaron Spelling, the series producer for 7th Heaven, described the images as “child pornography”. Understandably, Jessica was dreading going back on set. “Everyone was, like, ‘What the hell happened?’ My family went through the wringer. I was truly, deeply embarrassed and humiliated. And I had no one to blame but myself.” Her boyfriend, too, failed to see the sexy side. “He was humiliated, his family was humiliated and it was all horrible. It was certainly the low point of my young little life. And I spent a lot of time beating myself up about it, feeling like an idiot.”Although not a direct cause, the trauma of being exploited made Jessica take a second look at her ambitions and her career, and it wasn’t long after that she made the decision to leave the successful TV series. Although almost 18, she realised she needed to get out of Hollywood and do what most young women her age do - go to college, get her head in a book and shoot lime daiquiris by the jug-load with her peers. “Me and my parents managed to get me out of my contract and I went to college in Massachusetts. I went to Tufts on the North East coast. It’s a tiny, liberal arts school with good sports facilities. I needed a break; I’d been working in that adult environment since I was 14 and I wanted to cut my hair, get a tattoo… be a normal kid for a while.” - GQ UK, January 2009

I certainly had to apologize to Aaron Spelling. I think my entire crew and cast  were, needless to say, shocked. The worst part was I had to go back to work. The thing comes out and literally I had to go back to work that next morning. Everybody was… they didn’t know if they should look me in the eye and I was just a mess. I didn't…you’re young. You don’t mean to hurt people. You don’t mean to do this. It definitely wasn’t a calculated move on my part. I was not that smart to be making these calculated moves. I think I was 17, I’m a woman now, I’m a grown up now. I’m sexy, ya know, this type of vibe and honestly, it just went a little awry. It definitely never was meant to be some shocking, exposing situation and whether it was my own sort of ya know ability to try to be my own person by myself, ya know, confident woman. I said yes to things that probably I should’ve said no to. It was just one of those things that got out of hand. - Awards chatter podcast, 2018 (x)

After Powder blue, she has done nudity only in tv shows she produces. She keeps using body double for some scenes though.

______________________________________________________

Sorry for my english, it’s not my mother language and I am not very literary (I am more a math girl).

[aforgottenthing]

you know, maybe we don’t need to worry about chatGPT.

[six-of-ravens]

I would really like a single office day where I don't come home and play an evening-long game of Am I The Asshole?

[porcupine-girl]

An important message to college students: Why you shouldn't use ChatGPT or other "AI" to write papers.

Here's the thing: Unlike plagiarism, where I can always find the exact source a student used, it's difficult to impossible to prove that a student used ChatGPT to write their paper. Which means I have to grade it as though the student wrote it.

So if your professor can't prove it, why shouldn't you use it?

Well, first off, it doesn't write good papers. Grading them as if the student did write it themself, so far I've given GPT-enhanced papers two Ds and an F.

If you're unlucky enough to get a professor like me, they've designed their assignments to be hard to plagiarize, which means they'll also be hard to get "AI" to write well. To get a good paper out of ChatGPT for my class, you'd have to write a prompt that's so long, with so many specifics, that you might as well just write the paper yourself.

ChatGPT absolutely loves to make broad, vague statements about, for example, what topics a book covers. Sadly for my students, I ask for specific examples from the book, and it's not so good at that. Nor is it good at explaining exactly why that example is connected to a concept from class. To get a good paper out of it, you'd have to have already identified the concepts you want to discuss and the relevant examples, and quite honestly if you can do that it'll be easier to write your own paper than to coax ChatGPT to write a decent paper.

The second reason you shouldn't do it?

IT WILL PUT YOUR PROFESSOR IN A REALLY FUCKING BAD MOOD. WHEN I'M IN A BAD MOOD I AM NOT GOING TO BE GENEROUS WITH MY GRADING.

I can't prove it's written by ChatGPT, but I can tell. It does not write like a college freshman. It writes like a professional copywriter churning out articles for a content farm. And much like a large language model, the more papers written by it I see, the better I get at identifying it, because it turns out there are certain phrases it really, really likes using.

Once I think you're using ChatGPT I will be extremely annoyed while I grade your paper. I will grade it as if you wrote it, but I will not grade it generously. I will not give you the benefit of the doubt if I'm not sure whether you understood a concept or not. I will not squint and try to understand how you thought two things are connected that I do not think are connected.

Moreover, I will continue to not feel generous when calculating your final grade for the class. Usually, if someone has been coming to class regularly all semester, turned things in on time, etc, then I might be willing to give them a tiny bit of help - round a 79.3% up to a B-, say. If you get a 79.3%, you will get your C+ and you'd better be thankful for it, because if you try to complain or claim you weren't using AI, I'll be letting the college's academic disciplinary committee decide what grade you should get.

Eventually my school will probably write actual guidelines for me to follow when I suspect use of AI, but for now, it's the wild west and it is in your best interest to avoid a showdown with me.

[coffeenonsense]

I rarely post personal stuff on here but irl I'm a writer whose work covers tech and AI quite a bit and with the WGA strike ongoing, I really want to stress that the reason Hollywood execs and higher-ups think they can just replace writers with chatgpt or have someone come and edit AI generated text is because they already think writing is that easy.

these people look at their shows, movies, etc as marketable (re, profitable) content so all they are watching for is "okay this show performed badly" and "this movie performed well" and I can promise you in a boardroom the quality, the time and effort that went into the actual writing is NEVER discussed as a contributing factor when it comes to the difference between those two things.

That's also the reason tools like chatgpt seem like magic to these people, because they've devalued the act of creation and everything that goes into making something that resonates with its audience, so naturally something that can scrape the entire digital world and spit something out that falls in line with what you asked seems like a wizard's spell, because they ALREADY think of writing as an afterthought, something where they just go "I need a show that appeals to the 16-24 age range" and writers can just fill in the blanks and they won't have to PAY PEOPLE for that.

There's a vast difference between art and content, and if you want to see more of the former, you should be furious they're trying to replace writers with what is essentially a programmable template generator. Pay your writers.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for turning someone in for academic dishonesty?

I’m an American IB diploma candidate, and this ask does center around that, so sorry if we all just sound unbearably seventeen-years-old.

If you don’t know what the IB diploma is, think of it as if you had to write a bunch of essays and take a bunch of classes and do a bunch of service hours and then take AP tests on all those classes and add the AP scores together, and if they add up to a certain number, you get a special diploma that looks good to colleges.

Only eight people in the entire grade (we’re seniors and our exams are happening so we’re at the very end) are left in the IB diploma program right now because we made it this far and are all hoping our exam scores and essays. The program isn’t super popular at our school so we tend to have to mostly prepare ourselves for exams and such, so we’re all very proud of ourselves for getting this far and hoping that when our scores come out we get the diploma.

In short, we’ve done TONS of work. TONS OF WORK. And we haven’t received the amount of support that some IB schools are able to give. And suddenly, one of the IB diploma candidates admits in the group chat, “yeah, chatgpt wrote all of my IB essays.” If you know stuff about IB, she explicitly admitted to cheating on her Extended Essay, TOK Essay, TOK exhibition, Chemistry HL IA, History HL IA, Literature HL Essay, and Art HL Comparative Study.

That’s hours and hours and hours and hours of work that the rest of the diplomats candidates did that she’s just flippantly admitting she let an AI do for her.

but…….it also wasn’t really any of my business. So I wasn’t sure whether I should tell or not—especially since I’m the known goody-two-shoes of the group and I didn’t want to be viewed as a tattletale.

I asked two of the diploma candidates I’m friends with what they thought. One of them said “don’t be a snitch,” and the other said she wasn’t sure and kinda felt like I should talk. So… split response.

I was leaning towards “don’t be a snitch,” but eventually I just felt really indignant that this girl and I might receive the same end result for doing wildly different amounts of work. And I had evidence that she cheated—she admitted it herself. So I went to the school’s IB coordinator and I talked. I showed the screenshot. I essentially betrayed one of the candidates in a very tight knit group of students who are all breaking our backs to get this diploma with little to no IB-specific support from our teachers (our classes are all co-seated with non-IB-test-takers, who take up most of the class, which is an entirely different issue), but now it turns out one of us wasn’t even doing the work the whole time…

So I did it and it went to the administration and they’re “deciding how to proceed.”

Reason I’m worried I’m TA: she trusted us with that information and I told on her

Reason I think I might not be TA: it feels unfair that we should have the same shot at getting the IB diploma when the nights I stayed up crafting the perfect extended essay were the same nights she asked chatgpt to write her an essay and then moved on with her life and somehow did it well enough to not get caught.

AITA?

[copperbadge]

I’ve messed around with AI a little, because I like to understand a thing when I’m formulating opinions on it and I’ve found the best way to do that is to climb into the thing and start pushing buttons. I’ve been unimpressed with ChatGPT; its fiction chops are oddly saccharine, and of course you can’t trust the nonfiction it spits out because everything it says needs to be fact checked. It claims it can’t “lie”, only misinterpret data from the sets it was trained on; devs call the misinterpreted data “hallucination”.

Part of what I was testing was whether it could competently do my job, so that if my boss starts asking about it, I can give him a decent report. I asked it for biographies of a few wealthy people I’ve researched in the past, and it spat out some respectably generic information that was mostly correct. However, most of the people I research now are not like “so rich I’m famous for it” levels of wealthy, and harder generally for me to find information on, as I assumed it would be for ChatGPT. 

So I thought I’d see what it could do with someone more middle class, and asked it for a biography of Sam Starbuck. 

What it returned was like what you would get if you told me “Write a flattering biography of yourself and don’t worry that I’ll be fact-checking anything you say.” It was mostly true, but it hyped up my achievements as an author in ways that I would consider not entirely honest, and said I was also a professional editor and that I had led prestigious writing workshops in the past. That’s plain untrue, but I can see where it would be making that assumption, because my author bio sounds like a lot of other, more famous peoples’ author bios, and I would guess it just pulled in some of their verbiage for color. 

But the wildest part of the bio was that it named three of the novels I’ve written. Or rather, it named two novels I’ve written and one novel that I definitely have not. It said I was the author of a novel called “Like Clockwork”. Just in case I had written a fanfic titled “Like Clockwork” and forgotten about it, I checked AO3 and also asked ChatGPT for a plot summary of Sam Starbuck’s “Like Clockwork”. And sure enough it hallucinated a multi-paragraph summary of an entire novel I’ve never written, on AO3 or anywhere else. (It was not a good summary. Very Generic YA SF Thriller.) 

ChatGPT is very good at one thing: apologizing. When I pressed it about where it found the data it couldn’t say, when I asked why it had made up the plot summary it couldn’t tell me, when I asked if it could show me source links or data it drew on to create “Like Clockwork” it of course would not. But it always said it was sorry...

Anyway, my best theory from googling is that every year there are roughly nine million news stories about how Starbucks Coffee’s holiday cups are back “like clockwork”. 

I suppose I should be glad the novel’s title isn’t Unicorn Frappucino.

[headspace-hotel]

don't want to sound like i think i know everything, I do not, but i feel crushed by college class formats. I know how to learn, to do research, to seek information, to think about whether a source is good, to write and express my ideas, to come up with questions and test them.

I want to be in an environment that engages with me on this level so I can increase my ability to learn and ask questions, rather than being told "ok here's how you use the library" "ok here's how you write paragraph" "here's the basics of the scientific method"

It's not just my impatience with the level of classes I'm having to get through, it is the approach within those classes. I had a professor say "see, this is a peer-reviewed journal article, peer-reviewed journal articles will be printed in two columns on the page like this" but being printed in two columns isn't the key characteristic of a peer-reviewed journal nor is it a very good indicator.

we keep doing rushed, meaningless assignments where we have to come up with a website to cite for a forum post or presentation within a short class period, giving no time to closely examine sources.

we are doing elementary school level "experiments" that are just a proxy for learning to put data in an excel spreadsheet and analyze it, but being rushed the way we are and having no patience for the real complications that come up with even a simple experiment or research project, my classmates don't appear to think it matters if we make sloppy measurements or fudge data a little bit because it's just a stupid activity to learn about putting data in a spreadsheet. But integrity in research is something we SHOULD be practicing and learning about

the assignments are on the level of "repeat what the source says to receive good grade" and there's so many of them it's impractical to try to do anything else.

But in this level of education we should be learning how to question a source and ask if it is a good source or not! "How does this guy know what he's talking about" "What does this author WANT us to think and why might he be trying to make us think that"

i've even had a professor tell us we can use chatgpt for assignments, it's awful

[reading-comp-posting]

Have you ever considered using AI tools to assist with writing your responses?

Well no, because I'm doing this blog for fun. I'm enjoying writing out reading comprehension questions for posts, so why would I automate that away?

But let's say that I saw myself as some sort of arbitor of reading comprehension who needs to post as much as possible to enlighten the lowly tumblr masses. Let's say that I'm interested in upping my output of questions by any means necessary.

I opened up chatgpt and input a certain request, which would hopefully make it write questions about the last post I responded to:

Write reading comprehension questions about a Tumblr post, written by a user named "echoeyee," that reads as folows: "my take on shipping aromantic characters is that if you're aro you get to do whatever you want and if you're not you have to write me a three page essay 12 pt font times new roman double spaced explaining in detail why you believe entering a romantic relationship would be an interesting and worthwhile storyline for the character and how you believe their aromanticism would affect the way they experience said relationship"

And it certainly did write a lot of questions about it. Let's go through them, one by one.

1. What is the primary stance expressed by the Tumblr user "echoeyee" regarding shipping aromantic characters?

This one is good. If you look at the set I wrote, my first one is basically the same, just with different words and a less formal tone.

2. According to the post, what conditions must non-aromantic individuals fulfill if they wish to advocate for romantic storylines involving aromantic characters?

Again, this one is good. It's basically my 3rd question but, yet again, more formal.

3. Describe the format and specifications outined for the essay mentioned in the post.

This is the part where the questions get bad. The exact details of the essay are irrelevant, other than the fact that they imply a formal, academic setting.

4. In your own words, explain the user's perspective on the autonomy of aromantic individuals in contrast to non-aromantic individuals when it comes to shipping characters.

This question seems to genuinely be a product of chatgpt pissing on the poor. The purpose of the post (and specifically the essay within) is to ask people who ship aromantic characters without being aromantic themself to consider said character's aromanticism instead of erasing it.

Meanwhile, chatgpt seems to think that the OP thinks that people who aren't aromantic should be forced by law or something to write an essay if they want to ship an aromantic character.

5. How does the Tumblr post reflect the user's views on representation and storytelling in relation to aromantic characters?

I think that this one is a bit too speculative, but it does actually relate to the OP's intended takeaway.

6. Discuss the potential implications of the requirements set forth in the post for writers and creators in the realm of fiction and fanworks.

This one is just a bit confusing. Chatgpt seems to be going off the assumption that OP is issuing a decree as the emperor of the world.

7. Reflect on whether you agree or disagree with the sentiments expressed in the post and provide reasons to support your viewpoint.

This could have been a "discuss with a mutual" question, and I actually did initially write a question like this one, but I ended up removing it.

Aromantiscism is already controversial enough and I fear that a discussion of whether OP's take on shipping aromantic characters is valid could quickly devolve into discussion on whether aromanticism itself is valid.

8. How might the user's approach impact discussions and representations of aromanticism in media and popular culture?

Yet again, chatgpt is taking the essay thing way too literally. Yes, forcing every single writer who isn't aromantic but wants to ship an aromantic character to write an essay about it would most likely lead to a decrease in people erasing their identities, but the essay isn't the point.

9. Consider the broader societal and cultural context in which this post is situated. How might prevailing attitudes towards romantic relationships influence reactions to the user's perspective?

Obviously historical context is important to keep in mind when you're reading/listening to/watching/whatever a text, but this question has almost nothing to do with reading comprehension. You need to understand the post to imagine how people would react, sure, but understanding how people would react to the post doesn't help you understand this post very much.

10. What insights can be gleaned from this post regarding the importance of diverse and inclusive storytelling in media and creative works?

This could be a discuss with a mutual question. The issue is that it's a bit to broad of a topic.

[2soulscollide]

tips to level up your writing skills

1. read, read, read

okay, I know, everyone keeps saying it... but it's true, and I truly believe the more you read, the better you write, because you come across different writing styles, different voices, new characters, and worlds. This applies to every writer, from amateur to professional.

2. practice makes perfect

another cliché, right.

but hear me out: I feel so much more confident about my writing skills when I write daily, rather than when I write a bit occasionally. you get lots of work done, see your book coming to life, and get better at it.

3. create an outline before you start writing

guysss, I know many people like to go with the flow, but I would recommend planning your novel before writing it, especially if it is one of your first projects.

when I started, I refused to plot my novel because I thought it was a waste of time, and I couldn't plan it all ahead. turns out that I could never finish my novels, because I started to get lost in the plot. as most of you may know, I LOVEEE to plot now!

4. use active voice instead of passive voice

passive voice is alright sometimes. I like to use it, too. but to create an immersive experience for the reader, you should go for the active voice since it creates more impact.

see something like this:

"the letter was written by Marcus who had tears in his eyes." VS "Marcus wrote the letter with tears in his eyes."

such a basic example (don't judge me!!)... but can you notice the difference? it seems so much more expressive.

5. avoid using overly complex language

repeat it after me: short. sentences. are. valid.

don't overcomplicate it! I know it's tempting to write huge sentences sometimes and make your book seem more complex and professional, but sometimes it just doesn't come out as expected, and we end up exhausting our readers.

6. don't just for yourself

this can be a polemic topic. it's quite common to see people saying you should write for yourself, but let's be honest here: if you're trying to get your book published, you should have your target public in mind while developing your book. knowing your audience to know what works and what doesn't work is extremely important. but hey, you must also enjoy what you're writing!

7. use dialogue!!!

I find dialogue so important, and I love it so much! ensure you develop a distinctive voice for your characters to make them seem real to the reader. also, if possible, read the dialogue out loud and imagine if it would work out in real life.

8. don't be afraid to use metaphors

metaphors will turn a "basic" work into something more sophisticated when applied in the right places. you might want to avoid overusing it because it can ruin the experience, but it's something up to you, and what feels better to you.

9. research your topic before writing

okay, this is pretty self-explanatory. if you're writing about a topic or a location you don't know much about, avoid making assumptions or clichés. instead, do some research, take notes, or even ask chatgpt questions to help you.

10. don't be afraid to experiment and try new things

I was a fanfiction writer for a long time and was so scared to try original fiction because it seemed so much different from what I was accustomed to doing. however, once I decided to try something new, I discovered I liked to do it more than fanfiction. you'll never know until you try it!

11. never give up on your writing, keep practicing and learning to improve your skills

it takes time to acquire new skills, so if you're new to writing, please don't give up! It's fun and a long path, and I promise you'll love it, even more, the more you write!

I hope this was helpful! <3 have a nice day

also, i just released a new freebie!!! it's a free workbook for writers with over 90 pages to guide you through the process of plotting a novel. you might be interested in checking it out!! :D click here

[txttletale]

Your discussions on AI art have been really interesting and changed my mind on it quite a bit, so thank you for that! I don’t think I’m interested in using it, but I feel much less threatened by it in the same way. That being said, I was wondering, how you felt about AI generated creative writing: not, like AI writing in the context of garbage listicles or academic essays, but like, people who generate short stories and then submit them to contests. Do you think it’s the same sort of situation as AI art? Do you think there’s a difference in ChatGPT vs mid journey? Legitimate curiosity here! I don’t quite have an opinion on this in the same way, and I’ve seen v little from folks about creative writing in particular vs generated academic essays/articles

i think that ai generated writing is also indisputably writing but it is mostly really really fucking awful writing for the same reason that most ai art is not good art -- that the large training sets and low 'temperature' of commercially available/mass market models mean that anything produced will be the most generic version of itself. i also think that narrative writing is very very poorly suited to LLM generation because it generally requires very basic internal logic which LLMs are famously bad at (i imagine you'd have similar problems trying to create something visual like a comic that requires consistent character or location design rather than the singular images that AI art is mostly used for). i think it's going to be a very long time before we see anything good long-form from an LLM, especially because it's just not a priority for the people making them.

ultimately though i think you could absolutely do some really cool stuff with AI generated text if you had a tighter training set and let it get a bit wild with it. i've really enjoyed a lot of AI writing for being funny, especially when it was being done with tools like botnik that involve more human curation but still have the ability to completely blindside you with choices -- i unironically think the botnik collegehumour sketch is funnier than anything human-written on the channel. & i think that means it could reliably be used, with similar levels of curation, to make some stuff that feels alien, or unsettling, or etheral, or horrifying, because those are somewhat adjacent to the surreal humour i think it excels at. i could absolutely see it being used in workflows -- one of my friends told me recently, essentially, "if i'm stuck with writer's block, i ask chatgpt what should happen next, it gives me a horrible idea, and i immediately think 'that's shit, and i can do much better' and start writing again" -- which is both very funny but i think presents a great use case as a 'rubber duck'.

but yea i think that if there's anything good to be found in AI-written fiction or poetry it's not going to come from chatGPT specifically, it's going to come from some locally hosted GPT model trained on a curated set of influences -- and will have to either be kind of incoherent or heavily curated into coherence.

that said the submission of AI-written stories to short story mags & such fucking blows -- not because it's "not writing" but because it's just bad writing that's very very easy to produce (as in, 'just tell chatGPT 'write a short story'-easy) -- which ofc isn't bad in and of itself but means that the already existing phenomenon of people cynically submitting awful garbage to literary mags that doesn't even meet the submission guidelines has been magnified immensely and editors are finding it hard to keep up. i think part of believing that generative writing and art are legitimate mediums is also believing they are and should be treated as though they are separate mediums -- i don't think that there's no skill in these disciplines (like, if someone managed to make writing with chatGPT that wasnt unreadably bad, i would be very fucking impressed!) but they're deeply different skills to the traditional artforms and so imo should be in general judged, presented, published etc. separately.

[hacked-by-jake]

I'm especially sad about the AI art statement.

No one ever said they can't use AI in general. Nobody said this. As long as they don't let the chats be written by AI they can use it for whatever they want.

Me personally, I'm a little fan of AI in general. ChatGPT took Googles place in many situations for me. It's super easy, super interesting and faster. I use it instead of reading millions of Google sites. (of course I don't trust everything right away, check your sources, lovelies)

But that's not what I want to say.

I saw no one complaining about the usage of AI in general. As long as its not creating the whole game and especially not what the characters say etc.

The critism was about the usage of AI ART, not AI in general, completely missing the point in my eyes.

And yes, they're right. AI became a huge part of our lives now. We find it everywhere and we won't get rid of it again. That won't happen. For me, it's okay as long as it's not used to generate money by letting it write texts and stuff.

And I'm completely fine with them using it. Of course, it's still stealing and I won't deny that, but as I said, we won't get rid of it again.

But the usage of AI generated Art is wrong and should actually be illegal. They, as a small developer studio, they should know and they do know, how it is when your work gets stolen and used by strangers.

And that's exactly what AI does. And that's not okay. It simply isn't. Every generated art is based on hundreds of real arts our there. The smallest artist who posts their work will be a victim of that. Because AI pulls it's knowledge and the ability for art out of every little art source there is. And that's wrong.

And I'm disappointed about their statement with this point.

And the second statement about AI art...

Yes, it's wonderful that you will introduce new actors to us. Great, amazing. And yes, we do remember how it was in Duskwood. And we do remember that actors were introduced after some time. Hannah joined in the last episode, and this was great.

But the huge difference is, you used stock photos. Real photography. Real designs. Created by photographers or whoever. The point here is: Real human. And real work.

I don’t think I'm the only one. But the first second I saw the profile picture of Ash, immediately I was like "Hm, that reminds me straight up of arcane"

Which is logical when you use AI generated art because the AI of course uses at first the most popular references.

Fact is: We don't support the usage of AI Art in Moonvale.

Question is: Why didn't you use stock photos just like you did before?

Everbytes answer: Yes, okay, we can change their profile pictures. (Point done)

And I mean, come on. Violet has a freaking cat as profile picture. Where was the problem with just using a real cat for that? Nothing easier than finding a good picture of cats! 😭

And if you didn't want to use stock photos. Have you seen how many incredibly talented digital artists your fandom has? Have you seen the insanely good work they created for your game?

How about contacting a few of them? How about asking them to draw the characters you wanted to have? I'm 100% sure you wouldn't even have to pay them for. Most of them would do it for free right away.

Plus: Real art created by real people

Plus two: No money spending.

Yeeey.

And if you don’t want that...., ✨STOCK PHOTOS✨

To be honest, they took a crumb of the criticism, twisted it a bit. Used the word AI, twisted a bit more, left their statement and at the end they gave us a small little victory by saying "They get new profile picture, see we're listening to you". They gave us a little "victory" so that we hopefully will be satisfied and not mention it again.

That's it for this topic. For now

[fratboykate]

As a consumer of these networks, should I refrain from using them while the strike is happening?

i mean, that's not a specific ask our union has made. successful boycotts take A LOT of effort. that being said, i have seen manyyyyy people on social media start to cancel their netflix accounts (or whatever else) and when they ask for a reason in the box where you can explain why you're leaving they've been saying it's because of the writers not being paid properly or the writer's strike or whatever. will it make a difference in the numbers it's happening? probably not? but people are doing it and i do think its nice that fans are standing with us in that way since there's not that much else they can do.

but i do think being vocal as fuck about your support for writers will help. there was no real social media back in 2007. and this time around the entire right wing machine is coming out against the strike/us. just today little man benny shåpiro started tweeting about and was like posting screencaps of him "writing scripts" on chatgpt. if you go onto any post on twitter about the strike it's trolls all over spreading misinformation about how much we earn and twisting facts all over the place to make it seem like the strike is not warranted but...this is a real story from a real writer:

can you imagine? your emmy nominated target cashier? unfuckingbelievable. and i know of writers who do janitor work or uber or door dash delivery on the weekends to make ends meet. that's ABSURD. the amount of tv and film writers on food stamps is insane for the amount of profit our work generates for these suits. we shouldn't need a second job to survive when everyone at the studios and streamers are getting filthy rich off OUR labor. you cant do anything without a writer.

so people supporting us vocally will go a long way to win the optics war. we need the public on our side because this is a battle for the entire working class. it's our industry now but these greedy fucks are going to do it to everyone else in time. we have to show them that we wont put up with it.

[csuitebitches]

Rebranding Yourself Online using ChatGPT

Summary from “Brand Aid: Taking control of your reputation before everyone else does” by Larry G Linne and Patrick Sitkins. This book is from the early 2010s so some things are outdated and not exactly applicable. It’s also a more corporate/ business focused book. I took away what i felt were the major lessons and were more applicable to young adults/ teens/ people on social media today (because social media in 2013 vs today is very different).

I also wanted to add my own input to the summary. I’ve added prompts for ChatGPT that you can use to help figure your personal brand out better.

When rebranding yourself online, I would highly recommend:

1. Archive all your personal Instagram account’s posts (if you have an online business, create a separate page and show very little of yourself). Remove all your stories and highlights. Deactivate your account for at least 8 months.

2. Spend the next 8 months building your social media strategy, your personal brand and reinventing yourself in any way and form you want to (mental, physical, spiritual, etc).

3. Use Pinterest and figure out a theme that defines you the best. Take a look at @mafeanzures

————————-

* A brand is what people think of you.

Questions to ask yourself:

1. What do you think other people think of you?

2. What personal attributes would you benefit from the most if those items were well known to everyone?

Question 1 and 2 in the next few prompts refers to these 2 questions.

ChatGPT prompts after you finish writing down the above answers:

“I want to develop my personal brand on instagram (or any one social media site at a time). Currently I’m seen as a (2 of the most negative qualities and 2 of the most positive qualities from question 1). I want to be seen as (4 of the most positive qualities from question 2). What should I do to be seen as that?”

This will give you a STRATEGY that you can further modify.

Now, ask the same question again but with one change:

“I want to develop my personal brand on instagram (or any one social media site at a time). Currently I’m seen as a (2 of the most negative qualities and 2 of the most positive qualities from question 1). I want to be seen as (4 of the most positive qualities from question 2). What should I post online to be seen as that?”

This will give you CONTENT that you should consider posting.

**

* It is very likely that if you are to meet someone new and you’re aware you’re going to meet them, you’ll check their social media out. Whether its LinkedIn, facebook, twitter, instagram… keep your online presence clean.

* Before you post ANYTHING online, ask yourself: “how will this affect my brand?” If you post a story about a nasty break up/ a friendship falling apart/ a negative restaurant review… how do you think other people will see you? Be extremely mindful of your brand and what you post online.

* Rather than the age old advice “just be yourself”, look at “just be your best self.”

**

7 steps to a great brand:

1. Write down what you think people think of you: both positive and negative

2. Determine your goals in life (career, family, etc). What brand items do you need to get there? For example, the brand item “intelligent” to move up the corporate ladder. What will you need in order to be perceived as intelligent?

3. Gap analysis: the difference between point 1 (current situation) and point 2 (desired situation).

4. Develop action items. For example, if you want to be seen as innovative at work, start bringing ideas to meetings.

5. Influences on your brand: your dress, style, voice tone and quality, health, recreation, the car you drive, social environments, where you live, the language you speak, the subjects of your conversations, social media postings all impact your brand.

6. List what you must do to protect your brand. For example: not drinking in public; dressing a certain way; etc.

7. Review every 6 months.

Ask ChatGPT: “I am (ethnicity) (gender), (age) years old based in (City, country). Currently I’m seen as a (2 of the most negative qualities and 2 of the most positive qualities from question 1). My viewers would mostly be people from (conservative/liberal/ rural/ urban/ define audience. In case there are two audience types, ask one at a time) backgrounds. I want to be seen as (4 of the most positive qualities from question 2). What behaviours should I not engage in?”

**

Using the power of “always”: 5 specific things you pride on yourself for doing regularly.

“I always take the time to be updated in my field of work.”

“I always volunteer every Sunday.”

**

Things to keep in mind:

A. Are you easy to find online?

B. Is your content consistent?

C. Do your pictures, videos convey your personal brand?

D. What will enhance your brand?

E. What will damage your brand?

Ask ChatGPT: “I want to develop my personal brand on instagram (or any one social media site at a time). Currently I’m seen as a (2 of the most negative qualities and 2 of the most positive qualities from question 1). I want to be seen as (4 of the most positive qualities from question 2). What can potentially damage my brand if I’m not careful?”

**

If you are willing to see what you are doing and saying on the front page of a newspaper tomorrow, proceed with it. If you wouldn’t want it on the front page of the newspaper, STOP immediately.

**

More things to keep in mind:

1. The internet amplifies everything

2. Context matters

3. Consistency is everything

4. Your “at home” brand is as important as “outside of home” brand

[qqueenofhades]

as a starting history major i wanna ask how do you read/evaluate academic history papers/books? i'm trying to avoid just blindly agreeing with whatever the author is writing because it seems correct. how can you tell what is good scholarship and what is more shaky?

This is a great question for you as a freshman history major to ask (many of my toiling colleagues and I can attest that we wish more of you would!) and shows that you're already taking initiative and investment in your studies and want to be the best prepared you can. So truly -- thank you! Us on the faculty/staff/administrative end of academia can feel as if we are pouring into an empty bucket at times, and it's always gratifying to hear otherwise. We really appreciate it.

As a college freshman and/or underclassman (or so I'm assuming) your first job is learning how to collect basic information from the things you read, collate and cite them accurately, and make them converse intelligently with each other in an entry-level piece of academic writing (such as an essay responding to an assigned prompt). So before you have to worry about understanding complex nuance and granular-level fact-checking, the first step is just getting comfortable with academic forms, styles, and conventions. There's an occasional anti-intellectual strand of thinking that pops up on Tumblr, basically insisting that everyone everywhere should be able to understand everything in fifth-grade words and if not then it's Elitist Gatekeeping, but this is a symptom of TikTok brainrot where people's brains have been literally rewired to only process spoon-fed chunks of incredibly simplistic (and uh, often wrong) information, and literally can't parse anything longer, even if it's written in accessible language. Yes, many academics are not necessarily great writers, but you also have to let go of the mindset that you can speed-read once and understand everything. You will need to slow down, take your time, and make a note of concepts that are confusing or that you want to double-check, words you need to look up, and things that make you say "hmm I should look into that more," whether because you're interested or they seem questionable. I always read academic texts or papers (I prefer hard copy, because I am Fucking Old) with a pen in hand, because if I don't, I often feel like I didn't read it at all.

Basically, this is an interactive process between you and the text, and requires you to develop a different kind of reading mentality than just buzzing through a novel or fanfic for pleasure. You have to expect that it will take time and that if you regularly skive off the readings, you won't be prepared for class, your professors will be annoyed, and you won't be able to write good essays, because you haven't engaged with the material. In your case, it sounds like that will be less of a problem, because you are eager to know how to do it right, but I can tell you from my experience that nothing frustrates us more than students who just won't do the reading (and you know, use ChatGPT to write their essays) because then what are you even DOING here? What do you want to get out of this? Why are you wasting your precious tuition money like this? Yes, you probably have to fill a requirement, but STILL. It's disrespectful to your teacher, who has invested a lot of effort in being here to help you with this and doesn't want you to just quit because it looks hard, and your peers, and to you. So anyway, /Captain Holt voice/ apparently that's a trigger for me. Basically, if you learn nothing else from this ask: please do the reading. Even if it's only to admit you need more help or want to talk about this concept in class or otherwise take advantage of all the structures that are in fact there to help you understand it! Thankee.

Likewise, because you're an underclassman, you have an advantage in that your teacher will select the class readings for you ahead of time. That means you will be receiving things that a professional has already checked, decided are useful and trustworthy, and you don't have to do independent research and vetting yourself (that will come if you decide for some godforsaken reason to pursue graduate and/or doctoral study). So you don't need to spend tons of extra time and effort deciding if the sources given to you in class are reliable on a basic and functional level; your professor has already done the work for you to make sure that they are. Your job is now to read those sources, keep a record of what they say (hence the aforementioned pen or other way to make quick notes) and figure out how to put them together in an essay. For example, if Author A cites Factor A as, say, the main cause of the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and Author B insists that Factor B was in fact more critical, what is your best approach to reconciling that information? You would search in the rest of those texts to see what else they say in support of their position, and you would probably end up with a qualified statement to the effect of, "While Author A argues A, Author B thinks B, representing the lack of consensus and the difficulty in attributing one single cause to an event as complicated as the fall of Rome." (And then because you're smart, you would go on to mention Byzantium and the Eastern Roman Empire and show that you are aware of the further context.) All of which is true! Historians do that all the time! You don't need to select THE RIGHT ANSWER and vigorously discredit all other theories, ever, and we tend to look suspiciously on people who do (cough cough Philippa Langley).

In other words, we are certainly not expecting you as a freshman, and even as a more advanced student, to be able to pick out ONE ANSWER from the material. We just want to see evidence that you have in fact read it, are able to evaluate and place theories side by side and possibly make a judgment as to which one you find more compelling, and also to properly cite where you got that information. We've seen a lot recently about plagiarism and that being the pretext on which Harvard president Claudine Gay was forced to resign (which is a whole other can of worms, but never mind). A lot of professors think that saying "Don't Do Plagiarism" is enough, but then don't explain what it is and the different forms it can take. It's not just a matter of copying verbatim chunks of someone else's work (or you know, ALL OF IT, like certain recently discredited YouTube scumbags) and acting like it's your own. If you are relying substantially on someone else's work, whether in their wording, arguments, conclusions, structure, or anything else, even if you've changed some of the words (yep, still plagiarism!), that needs to be cited appropriately according to the relevant style guide. Direct quotes from anyone need to go in quotation marks or indented blocks and have the author cited immediately afterward. History usually uses Chicago, MLA, or MHRA, and you can find cheat sheets for how to do that online. It's a pretty simple and straightforward style, and your professor will be extra impressed.

If you're expected to do an independent project or a senior research thesis, as some undergraduate history students do, then it will come when you have already had three years of experience in reading, evaluating, and writing historical scholarship, you will probably have a faculty member assigned to you for one-on-one mentoring and personalized feedback sessions, and they will be able to provide suggestions and support for useful sources. So even then, you still don't have to do it entirely on your own. They'll probably also be MORE than happy to debate with you which ones are good and which ones are suspect, because it's all a part of developing your ability to flex that muscle for yourself. (And as noted, faculty members Will Have Strong Opinions.) That likewise doesn't mean you just have to copy whatever they say (at least if you have a good teacher who wants you to think for yourself and not just be a mini-clone of their pet theories), but it means that by the time you reach that stage, you will have been prepared enough to feel confident in taking more steps on your own. I think not enough people realize that studying history (or anything, really) isn't just throwing you out there and being like "tough luck sucker, do it all yourself."

That's why academia is so collaborative, why plenty of historians with doctorates and tenure will still have to say "I don't know, let me get back to you" when someone asks them a question at a conference, and you don't have to fear that if you don't have The One Right Answer, you will be immediately exposed as a fraud and thrown out. History as a discipline is also moving away from the 19th-century German approach that attempted to systematize it as a singular social science with One Right Answer, and to focus more on multiple perspectives and incomplete answers. That's why the goal is not necessarily to know everything (which alas, is impossible), but to make better sense of what we can know and search for ways in which the existing record is flawed and needs to be revised, expanded, or reworked with new perspectives (which have existed all this time, but haven't been privileged by the white male western academy for the obvious reasons). And that work is fun and important! I don't want you to be scared of getting to that point, because someone will be there to support you the whole way and by the time you do, it will make sense to you in a way it probably doesn't right now, just because it's a new skill and like any new skill, it takes a long time to learn and to be able to apply confidently, consistently, and at a high level. And plenty of us who do it as a career still often have to say "I don't know, let me ask Dr. So-and-so who specializes in this," so yeah. It's a process of becoming comfortable with both learning how to answer what we can, and to ask others for help with that, and it never really ends. Which is the fun part. There's so much more to do.

Good luck!

[etirabys]

I'm writing porn about an obese character but I've never been or had sex with an obese person, so I asked ChatGPT what a thin person might be surprised by, sex/health wise, when having sex with an obese partner for the first time

ChatGPT told me that body types are a sensitive subject I should approach with respect, and that a thin person might be surprised by their obese partner's fitness/stamina and their self-confidence about their body

I sighed, googled "r/sex obesity", and got the much more practically useful anecdote on the very first comment of the very first post I clicked: one woman pushes her stomach out of the way with a broom that she holds horizontally while her partner gets to business