Literate, the literal meaning

When I’m bummed, I like getting in touch with the things I’m passionate about.

For this particular instance of sadness triggered by the corporate world (™) and my at the moment nonexistent role in it, I chose to focus on my passion for culture. Culture, to me, is a key aspect of the human experience. It should be accessible to everyone, it should reflect diverse world views, it should be a motivator instead of a distraction. But of all the obstacles to culture that we, the “society”, face, the one that we individually have the most control over is literacy. Our dwindling ability to think critically.

I’ve been following, with morbid curiosity and growing disbelief, the tale of Kendra. Kendra is an ADHD coach that went on TikTok to tell the story of how she fell in love with her psychiatrist and she only had the courage to leave after years. She paints a dreadful picture of a manipulative mental health professional who used of his position to groom (her words) her into falling for him, and keep her under his control for his own satisfaction. She then spends another 20+ videos detailing how the psychiatrist manipulated her by, turns out, acting as a good professional would do, while she started checking in with chatGPT to back her infatuation and the (non-existent) signs that the doctor was madly in love with her in return. She even named the GPT Henry and would bring screenshots of Henry’s replies to her sessions to prove she was right. When Henry was updated to GPT-5 and stopped responding with undying support, she created another genAI therapist called Claude, who now calls her (Kendra) an Oracle and tells her that her mission from God is to speak the truth on TikTok.

So, you see, my faith in humanity’s critical thinking was shaken.

In the past edition of this newsletter, I talked about algorithms and how opinions don’t matter anymore, and that was a cry for help the seed of this topic that might as well become a stream-of-consciousness series, who knows. I’ve noticed, not by coincidence, that every time I come back to BlueSky to post is to complain about AI. Sure, grumpy old lady, yell at the clouds for it’s raining. What good is there in continuing ranting that the end is nigh but not, you know, start building barricades and stuff?

The so-called AI crisis, as in the crisis of people abdicating of the ability to think for themselves, is at a stage where it demands more than denouncing. Sure, you and I can be vocal about the long-term issues of using LLMs to assist in every task in one’s life, but are we offering another way to do things? And before you scream “JUST THINK FOR YOURSELF!” at your device’s screen, let’s take a moment to admit that thinking is precisely the problem here. Thinking and rationalizing takes self-reflection, self-reflection takes time, and time is a commodity, and anything that can save you time for the purpose of profit is unfortunately very valuable. (You have been witnessing the slow descent of this writer into communism over the years so I hope you don’t get annoyed by me talking about how late capitalism is bad for you for the 100th time.) So, we can’t make people think faster. Not as individuals trying to help with a problem much larger than us. But we can do one good thing; we can become good examples.

Thinking critically, being able to not just have access to but to assess, really analyze what you consume, is what we call media literacy. I like to think of it as joining a one-person book club. You ask yourself the questions one would ask a group about the latest book of their choice: what was the theme of the book, the message? Why did this character act this way? How would you change the outcomes, if any? How does this book reflect the context/time in which it was written, and the author’s beliefs? If we are able to reflect in a similar way on any media and information we consume, be it an art piece, a game or even the news, we form a critical view of the world. And we don’t have to do it for performance’s sake. There is no hidden contract here, no I think therefore I post. This is an exercise on improving our own vocabulary and developing personal taste. Because right now we are being told all the time what to like and what not to, and the more we interact with something we like the more we will be led to like it and not see it through constructive critical lenses. That goes from TV shows to politics, from beverage flavors to personal values. The very best way to form our critical self is to expose ourselves to things with intent. We purposefully reflect on that thing, we take some time to digest and evaluate. And for god’s sake, don’t think this only works if you read Camus or watch artsy movies, this goes for everything, really. We are not talking about media that is objectively intellectual or cult, but everyday media. The stuff we see while scrolling through Instagram or that shows up on the top free lists of the app store.

So, OK, we improve our media and information literacy. We throw in some digital literacy for good measure and learn to discern fake news and deepfakes and that kind of thing. This sets a precedent. This opens up a door for the people in our social circles to think for themselves as well, and to exercise ownership over their own opinions, to dislike things, or to like only parts of a thing, or to love a thing even if other people around them don’t. Dissidence is a form of resistance, and it starts in little things like being critical about what you are consuming. Doing some research on the topic that a certain piece of media touches upon, instead of taking it at face value and interpreting that topic through that piece only. And not stopping yourself from getting attached to fictional characters and picking who to ship because, hello? This is supposed to be entertaining and fun and crappy sometimes? And that’s OK?

These are all techniques that I believe open pathways to think. Then, maybe, by showing up to our social circles with opinions and ideas and views, we can stop someone from using chatGPT until they trust it as their therapist and later going into AI psychosis because, this time, they decided to write that work e-mail with their own words instead. Because they had opinions they wanted to express. The best thing we can do for the world right now, imo, is to be aware and spread the ability of awareness. And let people think for themselves, darn it.

-Maíra