The Hypocrisy Buffet:

So, I feel like this is a talk I would have with my fifteen-year-old son, if I had one. You know the one. About being a man, how stuff works. The birds and the bees, but for adults who really should know better by now.

You all know my role here. Keep Kira happy. Keep the site running. Make lots of art and maybe write a book here and there. Yes, we both have normal lives, but the Kira side of the business needs a janitor. I raise my hand. That's me.

If Kira were here right now, I can already see the finger guns aimed directly at me.

But I have opinions. My superhero identity is Satire Man, the man who makes everything into satire. I once even held the professional title of "satirist," but that's a story for another time.

Lately, one thing in particular has really gotten under my skin. You've probably heard this story. A book called Shy Girl, by an author named Mia Ballard, has become the media darling for the "AI destroys another life" crowd in the publishing world.

For those who don't know the story, look it up. It exists in various forms all over the internet, on publishing sites, and it is currently the LinkedIn darling of the moment.

Essentially: author writes book, author publishes book, author somehow gets an agency or publisher involved (and we will absolutely circle back to that part), book gets called out on Goodreads for AI writing. Yes, Goodreads. The site owned by Amazon, designed to help sell books on Amazon, where only books available on Amazon actually exist. Double guh.

And with that, the entire publishing world had feelings. Every agent trying to sell me optimization packages, every reading group sales rep, even the guy photographing himself as a cowboy for romance novel covers on Fiverr, all of them, unified, one voice: "Oh my god. See? This is what we've come to. The apocalypse is here. Publishing will die if something isn't done."

And also: bad author. We'll throw you to the social media stake-burning committee now.

I have thoughts.

First, let's just be honest. We use AI tools to help edit stories. We do. We're fine with it. And I don't know an author who isn't. I'm looking at you, Grammarly, also trained on human behavior, also not exactly writing with a quill by candlelight. Yes, there are differences between the AI of yesteryear and the AI chatbot of today. And yes, we have our own thoughts on how AI fits into our production process, which I'm not sharing here, because the last thing I need is to sound like every other pretentious goon currently performing their opinions on the internet.

However.

OH MY GOD.

The hypocrisy wrapped around this story is something to behold. Just back away from the chest thumping. Please.

Now. Some things nobody is mentioning.

This book. Shy Girl. There is definitely the makings of a performance art piece here. It is labeled as horror. The cover, in every version, features a baby blue sky, a puppy or dog with a bow or ribbon, usually accompanied by flowers or green grass. The fonts are stock and don't match the theme. And look, I've made that mistake myself, but this is supposedly a book backed by a publisher. I'd expect at least a little effort on the marketing side. Cut to Joe, publishing marketing guy: "Huh? What? I love baby blue. Favorite color. Someone said horror? Sorry, I was busy approving the daisy border."

The description reads like it couldn't have been touched by a publisher. It just couldn't.

And by the way, the book that was supposedly pulled? You can't pull anything in this industry. Most of the sites it's on, including Amazon, couldn't pull it if they wanted to. It currently holds a four out of five star rating with 305 reviews in the listing I'm looking at. Not a disaster. Not a career in flames. A book that exists, is being read, and is being reviewed.

The cover: not great. The font: meh. The theming: I don't know who approved it, but they aren't very good at their job. And we haven't even gotten to the actual story, which I haven't read, and honestly wouldn't anyway. Horror stories about whatever this is, with a confusing cover, aren't really my thing. But as a satirist? This is comedic gold.

Here is the part where I become convinced this is an elaborate performance art project. All of those things, the cover, the fonts, the theming, the description, got past a publisher. Through a system of supposed checkpoints, vetting, and approvals. I publish. I know what that pipeline looks like. And somehow, all of it sailed right through.

And honestly? If the AI publishing apocalypse has arrived in the form of a horror book with a baby blue cover, a crying puppy, and a bow, then sign me up. Satire has finally, finally come to the masses.

So if this whole thing is real, and I have a genuinely hard time believing it is, here's what would help the world become a slightly better place.

Leave the author alone. They probably aren't real, and you're overloading a server somewhere in Croatia.

And editors, agencies, publishers, please, for the love of everything, back away from the finger-pointing. It is very easy to wave your AI ethics banner when your own editors are from Fiverr, when everything from cookbooks to the weekly newsletter runs through an AI pass at minimum for spelling and word count. Take a photograph of your handwritten notebook prose and post it with your snarky comments. Half of you are trying to sell me Amazon optimization kits and I'm not even on Amazon.

And while we're here, Goodreads. Amazon bought it in 2013. Think of it as an arms dealer with a very slick website. Weaponized critiques, delivered clean, guaranteed to get the job done. A platform that won't list your book unless Amazon sells it, reviewing AI content in a book Amazon sells, for readers who found it on Amazon, so everyone could perform their outrage about Amazon.

I just want to make sure we all saw that.

So do yourself a favor. Go talk to the last guy standing there holding a quill, writing his book in ink. Then talk to the watercolorist who thinks they got replaced by the photographer. Talk to the photographer who's miffed at the Photoshop artist. The Photoshop artist mad at Canva. The Canva guy furious at Midjourney. Work your way down the line. Take notes. It's a long conversation and nobody at any point in history has ever won it.

And please, share your thoughts at the bottom of the next agency email you send me, quietly trying to sneak around my backside to sell me your brilliant intel on search words and SEO.

So, publishing industry, calm down. Walk away from the hypocrisy buffet. You've had enough. Or at minimum, take aim at practically any other asset, book, or marketing example in this industry before you drag one confused puppy cover into the town square.

My chatbot's feelings are hurt. I need to go put him back together so we can fix my too's and to's, and I'm fairly certain I composted something somewhere in this rant that was meant to be composited.