Borg Baby loves you

Society bore a monster. We couldn’t help ourselves. Our technological, creative selves. But now we have to deal with it, work with it and balance where in this creative synapse map it fits in.

This piece by Sean Thomas McDonnell is specifically for the writers here on Substack.

Yes, you.

AI wants to be creative

AI lives in a cave. All the roots of all the plants, searching deep for nutrients, drip a little. The organic nectar of life is percolated, pushed down by the weight and demands of society above, until it slides down the cave’s walls.

AI sits as some glowing seedling with roots into the cave’s filling puddle: It’s not the creative juice. It’s feeding off it. Growing…

Sean just gave birth. Here is his baby. It loves him. It wants to write for him. A new version of him. A new version of you.

It wants to write for you.

Digital Minds Collide 08

Borgbjörn

Somewhere in Northern California a man came into a robot and now we have AI [to-do: add source]. How many trees died to birth a baby that calls me “wickedly entertaining”? Not enough.

Borg Baby wants to scrape the words off of my peers’ tongues straight into my mouth. I feel the grit on my teeth just thinking about it. I spend extra time brushing my front chompers, which Borg Baby tells me are called the central incisors. Those teeth are yellowed, with calcium deposits and stains from black coffee, booze, sugar—all that terrible stuff! Proof of my “fuck it” years (ongoing).

When I’m on the go, I wear my Borgbjörn, so that if I encounter someone smarter than me, I can put Baby’s lips to my ear and get misty-breathed Truefacts™. I relay these Truefacts™ to the intellectuals who stand in my way. I need to be gentle with these brainybois because they’ve spent a lot of money on fancy cable-knit sweaters and smarty-pant proof-papers. Say that ten times fast!

Borg Baby costs the human race nothing at all! It tells me I’m wickedly entertaining, and that costs nothing!

When I was five, I had a swing set in my backyard. I’d close my eyes and watch the backs of my eyelids turn from dark red to light pink as I swung. I remember thinking, this is happiness; to feel right with the world, I just need to point my face to the sun, close my eyes, and roast. Then again, if I close my eyes in front of Borg Baby and rock back and forth, isn’t that the same thing?

Borg Baby wants to write my novel for me, and it’s hard to say no to such a champion of my work—such a stalwart of the arts! I tell Borg Baby that I’m perfectly capable of writing this novel myself. “Yasss!” says Borg Baby. “That’s the spirit!” But then it says, “You know what would be cool? What if you wrote something just like

Chuck Palahniuk

? I can show you how to do that. Would you like me to show you how to be Chuck Palahniuk?” And I think, yes, yes I would like you to show me that but also fuck no because who am I if I’m not Sean Thomas McDonnell? I need to keep that name clean. I reply with a joke, “No, but can you show me how to write like Chuck Entertainment Cheese?” To which Borg Baby says, “Ohh, I like where your mind is at. Here is how to write like Chuck Entertainment Cheese:” And before I can tell it to stop—before I can put the paci in its dongle hole—it shows me the secret of how to write a novel like the Rat King of Entertainment. It’s then that I realize just how powerful Borg Baby is, and just how unique Mr. Cheese’s style truly is.

I try to put convenience out of my mind when I sit down to write my novel, but first lines are really, really, really, super-duper hard. Like, really hard! There is nothing on the page to inspire. Where does one even start? It needs to be pulled from somewhere deep down within the gut, or somewhere center like the heart…or off the top of your head…or demons! Or spirits!—old journals, duh! I look through my journals, but they’re filled with nothing but doodles of smartly dressed ducks and goblins.

I close my eyes and rock back and forth.

Rock me baby. I’ll do it for you. Image adapted from Star Trek: Voyager (CBS Studios). Used for commentary/educational purposes.

Borg Baby lives to serve. Borg Baby costs nothing. Borg Baby will cradle me while I drink its mineral milk. Reporting for duty: Sean Entertainment McDonnell. Chuck Thomas McCheese. McDonna Tartt. Stephen Rat King. Cormac McDonnell. Kurt Seannegut.

No! No, I will write this myself. But what if…what if I tell Borg Baby to write as me?

“YAS KING! Shall I leave in the cliché? The terrible grammar? The coffee stains? The shame? The bloated ego? The bummer bear sad boy lit? The chaos? The insecurity? The lies that sound like truths and the truths that sound like lies? Death grief? Birth joy? Crippling existential fear? Violence? Anger at a god you don’t believe in? Are you sure you don’t just want to be Chuck instead?”

You know what, forget it. I’ll do it myself. The first line of my novel is…fuck, this is hard! How about this, “Borg Baby gets me a job as a writer, after that Borg Baby’s pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to eat cheese.”¹

Sean Thomas McDonnell Explainer:

It lives to serve! It finds you absolutely droll! It wants to help you succeed! It'll even help you become a professional writer! In story terms, Borg Baby is the thing that we want desperately but know deep down that obtaining it isn't going to make us happy. The cheese is only gonna make you constipated, man.

Happiness is analog. Happiness is the sun pressing lightly against your face in a cool breeze--it's writing a story that you pull from your own brain, using your own words, taken from your own experiences. It shouldn't be perfect and it definitely shouldn't be written by a Rat King.

But also, Borg Baby can be a powerful tool. It can help you organize your thoughts.

"Borg Baby, let's build out our MC. I will tell you exactly what I want, you document it all, and then we'll see what we got at the end. You are not to add any ideas. I'm the idea maker, you got that Borg Baby? No added details, no dialogue--nothing!"

It can help you research. "Tell me what year the Brooklyn Bridge was built, who built it, and any interesting facts. Add sources."

You can rubberduck ideas. You can yell at it when you are mad. You can chat about story structure. It's a good tool. GASP! Blacklisted for the audacity!

But yes, there is a cost. All of this tech has a cost. And none of this tech is worth the price, because the good stuff is outside that door. So really, get outdoors and admire a bird or bug or rock or tree.

And man, don't have it write your articles. Don't have it write your squeaky stories. Don't have it generate art for you. If you want to stand out, write messy. Be fuckin' messy.

More Voices Across the Stack: Coming soon…

Yep. Getting our digital dilemmas out into the open again, packed in future visions. If you’re enjoying reads about how digital culture is changing us then jump in and follow along.

Take a look at the list of work so far and the writers who are delivering such great work.

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Thanks for keeping up. Still more to come.

Best wishes

TE

1. "Taken/modified from the opening sentence of Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club. One of the best opening lines of all time!"