There’s a bunch of subreddits dedicated to ‘am I the asshole?’ type posts, not sure why so many need to exist but there’s at least three off the top of my head: AITA, AITAH, and I think even a couple of ‘am I the butthole’ clones.

The idea is that someone who has done a thing that is either borderline asshole-ish and they aren’t sure, or that is being called out by other people as being asshole-ish, posts the situation and lets us decide. Other users can reply ‘NTA’ (not the asshole – so in support of the original poster), or ‘YTA’ (you’re the asshole) or sometimes ‘ESH’ (everyone sucks here) and then elaborate on why.

For a long time now the most popular posts in these subs are dominated by what seems like pure AI bullshit slop. Mayyybe the ‘OP’ just has poor writing skills and got ChatGPT or whatever to make their own version of the post more readable. But it’s far more likely that almost all of these posts are karma-farming.

For the uninitiated karma farming is when you post purely to bait lots of engagement, resulting in ‘karma’ points for the OP, giving their account credibility on Reddit. Some ways of doing this is copying other popular posts as if they’re yours, or ‘engagement baiting’ with juicy conflict stories on AITA subs. Once enough karma/credibility has been accrued they’d typically flip the accounts to use them for more nefarious purposes like astro-turfing for a brand, or spreading and boosting misinformation.

Once you’ve spotted an AI post, it becomes quite maddening to see how many people have spent their time and emotions taking it seriously and offering their often heartfelt reactions and suggestions. There’s the obvious Reddit bubble nonsense (LEAVE HIM GIRL / YOU DODGED A BULLET BRO) but some people take a lot of time to be thoughtful. Total waste of time.

So I just wanted to share this little list I’ve put together of all the most obvious clues. None of these on their own is a dead giveaway. Lots of people write with nice paragraph formatting. Lots of people use the ’em dash’. But the more you spot in one post, the more likely it is to be AI slop. And you’ll find yourself spotting it everywhere…

• the nicely paragraphed formatting; AI posts are often easy on the eye, nicely formatted with lots of short paragraphs. Then again, so is this very post and this is all my own work!
• the helpfully informative writing style; everything is well laid out in a clear, relatively calm voice using good grammar. Although if you read closely you may sometimes find things that don’t quite make sense, perhaps some clear contradictions or maybe completely wrong local knowledge – AI hallucinations.
• ample evidentiary “quotes” of what was “said”; right now this is a dead giveaway, as soon as you see a couple “of quotes like this” scan ahead to see “how many more” there are. The more “quotes there are” about “what was said” and “who said it”, the more likely it’s AI bullshit.
• the ubiquitous long dash, aka the ’em dash’; for a time the long dash was absolutely everywhere in AI posts and it still is very common in obvious AI, but I feel like I’m seeing it less. And sure plenty of real people use it normally. Just sayin though, I don’t even know where the ’em dash’ is on a keyboard and at this point I don’t want to learn where it is – I don’t see anything wrong with the short dash myself but let me know if I’m doing it wrong.
• family/friends/colleagues are split and have been coming after you or blowing up your phone or whatever; this has become a classic AI trope in AITA posts. You don’t see this exact wording being used as openly now, but there is almost ALWAYS a section one or two paragraphs from the end where key people in OPs life are, pretty unreasonably it’s fair to say, telling OP that they’re the asshole or overreacting. Might be true, but given how almost all of these posts are quite obviously ‘not the asshole’ it makes it far more unlikely that half their family and friends think they’re the asshole. So if you see this and one or two others, almost definitely AI.
• and summing it all up with the the final “So… AITA for (insert one sentence summary)”; AI often ties it all up with this pithy phrasing even though most genuine people posting a genuine concern aren’t this performative, they just want help.

So take this list and check out a few posts and see what you find. And if you don’t believe me, ask ChatGPT to write an AITA post based on a few variables you’ve cribbed from an actual AITA post on Reddit and see just how closely it hews to this list above.