Casey Moeckel

You know how you combat AI content slop? With your humanity. And, I hate to tell you, but that means getting vulnerable. (Stay with me here…)

You don’t have to spill your guts or reveal your deepest secrets publicly. And telling the truth about your humanity doesn’t mean you have to be a raging dick, either. But it does mean asking “what is really going on, how do I really feel about it, and what do I really want to say?”

When I was an actor and training at NYU Tisch, we used to talk about something called “indicating.” 

Indicating is bad.Bad, bad, bad in acting. It’s when an actor is showing the audience what a character is feeling rather than just actually experiencing it. 

Why would they do that? Because it means sidestepping vulnerability. Vulnerability is scary.

Acting is telling the truth under imaginary circumstances. So when a performer is indicating, they aren’t telling the truth about what is really going on. Instead, they are giving the other person what they think they (or the audience) wants, regardless of how they are actually feeling in that moment. When that happens, they bland out. It’s no longer compelling because nothing is being risked.

And as an audience member, you can see it from a mile away. It makes for sh*t acting. Same goes for AI content slop.

LLMs indicate because they can’t actually be emotionally vulnerable. And sometimes humans indicate because it’s easier and less scary than actually admitting our vulnerability. 

But, as Brené Brown said in her book The Power of Vulnerability; Teachings of Authenticity, Connections and Courage:

Vulnerability is our most accurate measure of courage.

So I guess I want to ask myself and everyone here: how much are you indicating?