The other night—while decompressing after a long day of writing—I was scrolling through comments on an Instagram post and spotted one that stopped me dead in my tracks: “This was clearly written by AI . The em dashes are a dead giveaway.”

I’ve never jumped out of bed and started pacing in anger so quickly in my life.

Videos by VICE

Are we serious? Are we so far gone that the proper use of punctuation is an apparent indicator of AI?

How many of you assumed this very article was AI-generated, thanks to the two em dashes in my first sentence? Unfortunately, I’d guess at least a quarter of you had that initial thought.

While I fully understand the urge to call out AI content, nothing boils my blood quite like a reader who falsely accuses writers of using AI merely because they include em dashes in their content. I, for one, have been relying on the em dash since middle school. If you were to read my moody Tumblr poetry from that time, you’d be quick to rescind that accusation.…