Style Meets the Algorithm

I’ve got a habit. 

Not a dangerous one (no one’s staging interventions), but a stylistic tic … a little rhetorical pivot that walks in one direction, stops, and then sharply turns on its heel. You know, the tried and true: "Not this. That." Such as "That’s not about success. That’s about keeping up appearances."

I call it “the correction.” Professors call it “contrast negation.” Whatever it's proper name is, I’ve always liked how it landed. It’s clean. It snaps. It gives a piece a kind of rhythm and makes a point without having to raise its voice. For years, I've used it the way I use garlic: generously, and probably more often than necessary.

Lately, though, I’ve been told this little move of mine is ]]dramatic pause[[ suspicious.

Apparently, if you see a line like “That’s not about winning. That’s about not losing,” you’re supposed to squint at it like a detective in a low-budget crime show and mutter, “AI wrote this.”

Which is funny, because I can dig up blog posts I wrote five or six years ago (back when AI was still mostly a sci-fi punchline) and there it is: “That’s not about confidence. That’s about fear wearing better clothes.” Right there in black and white, no algorithm in sight.

So I guess I have two explanations to chose from: Either I was secretly channeling the future like some kind of accidental oracle, or (and this feels slightly more plausible) AI learned that move from writers like me who were already using it.

But we’ve decided, collectively, that the fingerprint belongs to the machine, not the human who taught it how to hold the pen. So, we’re starting to treat patterns like they’re crimes. As if any repeatable rhythm in language must have been mass-produced in a server farm somewhere. It’s like accusing a pianist of cheating because they used the same chord progression twice. No, that’s not automation. That’s style. (Oooops! There I go again.)

Or maybe it’s just habit. Writers, like everyone else, fall into grooves. We find shapes that work and we reuse them. Not because we’re lazy, but because language is a tool and when you find a grip that fits your hand, you don’t immediately throw it away just to prove you’re original.

What’s strange is how quickly we’ve flipped the script. The things that used to signal craft — clarity, rhythm, structure — things you’ve been doing for years get rebranded as artificial. (Damn, now I've used an em-dash, another AI "tell")

There’s something mildly absurd about being told your natural writing voice now sounds like a bot, as if you’ve been unknowingly cosplaying as software this whole time. But it also nudges at a bigger question: if a machine can replicate the patterns we rely on, were those patterns ever as uniquely ours as we thought? Or were they just well-worn paths we all happened to walk?

I don’t have a neat answer. I’m still going to use “the correction” when it earns its keep. It still works. It still lands. I’m just a little more aware now that what once felt like a signature move might actually be a shared accent … and one that’s been picked up, polished, and redistributed at such a scale that it's now it's an AI tell.

Which, depending on your mood, is either fascinating or irritating.

Not a crisis. Just a shift. (See? Just can’t help myself.)

 _________________________

Follow Up 

Barron's has just published a piece on AlphaSense's library of corporate documents, earnings call transcripts, SEC filings, and press releases. It indicates  that a single-sentence construction has exploded across corporate America since 2024. The pattern is "It's not just X, it's Y."

Hmmmmm … now I have to consider leaving this tool out of my “go tos” ‘cause AI has made it so ubiquitous that it’s making my writing sound like everybody else’s.

Oh, well.

A meaningless number ... but I like it.

 

Last week, 3 of my LinkedIn posts got a combined 357,983 impressions.

Vanity metrics. Everybody pretends to despise them while secretly refreshing dashboards like gamblers rubbing lottery tickets under a gas station light. Followers. Likes. Views. Open rates. Reach. A whole spreadsheet ecosystem built to quantify human attention, which is already one of the flakiest substances on earth.

I know most of those “impressions” meant nothing. A half-second glance. A distracted scroll. Somebody opening LinkedIn by accident while trying to check the weather. The internet counts all of it like an overenthusiastic carnival worker.

And even though I know this, I’m not above it. 

Not even close.

A big number activates my ancient monkey brain. I saw big numbers on 3 posts, added them up to 357,983 and briefly felt like a medieval peasant who’d been invited to sit near the king.

Meaningless? Absolutely.

Distracting? Unfortunately, yes.

Fun? Can't pretend it wasn't.

Reality Check

 

REALITY CHECK: People don’t have enough time

 

• The average professional receives 120 new emails each day. 
  
  
• Text messaging users send or receive an average of 41.5 messages per day.
  
  

I could go on, citing exposure to “traditional” advertising and other messaging … but the point is clear:

People receive too many communications.

 

➤Which leads to the reality:

Every message received demands attention and time from

people who are already too busy.

 

➤Which reminds marketing writers/creators:

Ya gotta improve your game daily,

both at getting and holding your best prospect’s attention.

The Ads Your Customers Swear They Never Saw

 

There’s a special moment in every marketer’s life when the data taps you on the shoulder, clears its throat, and says, “Hey, you might want to sit down for this.”

Valspar just had one of those moments.

Neuromarketing researcher Thomas Zoëga Ramsøy discovered that 95% of shoppers exposed to Valspar ads bought the brand. Only 70% of the “unexposed” did. 

Great news, right? Champagne? High-fives? Cue the case-study video?

Hold the confetti cannon.

Because when those same shoppers were asked at checkout if they remembered seeing any Valspar advertising, most of them said, with full confidence, “Nope. Never seen it.”

So there it is: the creative work doing the heavy lifting is the very work people swear they’ve never laid eyes on.

Which, honestly, feels about right.

Your brain is a stingy little machine, burning 20% of your calories while making up 2% of your body. It refuses to let your conscious mind handle anything it can safely automate. Walking, tying shoes, choosing paint brands … all shoved into the dusty back room marked AUTOPILOT: NO LOITERING.

And advertising? It sneaks in through that door.

Ramsøy found that people spot an ad in roughly 2–3 seconds. Two. Maybe three. That’s your window. That tiny sliver where attention flares just long enough to stamp an emotional watermark on the subconscious before the brain yanks the power cable from the memory department.

And that watermark? That’s what guides the hand reaching for paint cans later, while the shopper’s mouth says, “I just like this brand better.”

So here’s the uncomfortable truth: If you’re measuring success by whether people remember your ads, you’re basically asking your guests to review the meal based on a dream they half-had during dessert.

Stop chasing recall. Chase resonance. Chase the spark in those first 300 milliseconds when decision-making actually happens.

Your best campaigns might be the ones nobody remembers … except their brains already bought the product.