By skyforbes >"this isn't just a minor convenience; it's a paradigm shift."
that pattern is everywhere in ai-generated text, and it creates a predictable, formulaic, and often pretentious rhythm that's easy to spot and deeply annoying.
it's a default setting for the llm brain: take a concept, find a bland understatement for it ("not just x"), and then pivot to a grand, sweeping statement ("it's y!"). it's the writing equivalent of a movie trailer where every line is delivered with portentous gravity.
that specific pattern is a rhetorical device known as contrastive juxtaposition or a corrective contrast.
more broadly, it's a form of amplification where you clarify and intensify a point by first stating what something is not, before emphatically stating what it is.
the overuse stems from its effectiveness. it's a simple, reliable structure to create a false sense of depth, signal "importance" to the reader and fill word count by stating the same idea in two ways. but when you see it in every other paragraph, it loses all impact and just becomes noise. it's the hallmark of text that is structurally correct but fukking soulless.
*? It's [definition/explanation].
>revolutionary? that isn't a statement. it's an understatement.
it creates a false sense of pace and drama. it makes the text feel more engaging and conversational without actually requiring deeper thought.
it's an incredibly easy formula to apply. the AI identifies a key concept and then uses this template to frame its explanation. it overuses it. it is deeply annoying to me.
em dashes
>i'm tired of that shit—really.
human writers use dashes for asides, dramatic pauses, or to replicate the cadence of thought. the llm detects this pattern in its training data and learns that "dash = sophisticated, conversational, or emphatic." it then over-applies this shortcut in a bid to make its own text sound less robotic and more fluid, ironically achieving the opposite effect through overuse.