sloppy = evolving

I AM AWARE AI IS SMARTER, AND IT CAN GIVE YOU ANSWERS IN MILLIONTH SECONDS, BUT HEAR ME OUT.PLEASE.(haha sorry for the clickbait or whatever we call it)

I understand that AI is really integrated, and it is one of the biggest things that helps us do things, i.e., finish homework or choose the type of university you're supposed to attend because you were just a kid with no direction. It was much better before because, a few years ago my brother ( age 22) would have gone through a lot of reviews of his choices for college and he might have gone through reddit pages where the students of the university would actively diss the college and tell their juniors that theyve made the wrong choice, and he might've done his research via his social circle which might include his family friends or any people he met in his highschool. 

Contrasting that, when I was supposed to decide which college I would attend (now 19), which was in 2024, all I did was have a very long conversation with an AI bot, which probably just pretended to understand me and know me because it was very well trained to do so. I really felt so understood and known, which probably is creepy because it is eod just a structure or a thing which is just made up of 0s and 1s, just like my friend used to say.

For me partiularly, I started understanding how AI is really dumbing me down, and it just started my brain all slimy and sluggish because I started seeing other people and started inculcating the habit of using AI for every other task in my life that needed my critical and cognitive reading skills. 

I also started noticing how my vocabulary and my formation of speech sentences started sounded like prompt answers from ChatGPT, I started thinking more backwardly, even in my debate sessions in my debate club in my university, where I thought, "Oh, maybe what if i think like an ai " or "um what would chatgpt do in a situation like this". And then it just hit me, and I thought, okay ani you're lowkey cooked. 

One of the recent studies from the research paper called "Writing Smarter or Losing Skills? The Impact of AI in Academia" by Shamstabrej Siddiquee, where they did a research on engagement with AI for academic writing showed that a majority, 44%, reported using AI tools on a weekly basis, while 13% indicated daily use, reflecting strong engagement with these technologies 

So, actually what led to this anyways?

AI is purely built to basically perform tasks which requires human intelligence and one of the main reasons why we love using AI is because it is fast and we dont have to sit and brainstorm for ideas or think through the entire task which literally defies or takes away the entire purpose of completing a task Dvelving into the same - whenever we sit and brainstorm ideas for something, we use a notebook and write down things or we open or word doc and type out what I could preasumably do. This causes me inconvenience - the inconvenience of having to use my skills and my potential, which just causes discomfort in my way(or in this context- friction ). But for me, I'm all about friction maxxing in 2026 :]

What is friction maxxing ?

Friction-maxxing is the practice of intentionally choosing less convenient options in daily life to build tolerance for discomfort, resist technology-driven ease, and preserve what proponents describe as meaningful human experiences. As observed, most of us lately view doing the littlest things like buying groceries, even when we're free, as very effortful and very uncomfortable and the bar for effort and hard work keeps lowering day by day because we are accustomed to being spoon-fed for each and every task we were meant to do "normally" just a few years ago 

Friction maxxing is basically choosing to keep that engagement alive.

It looks like:

• writing something yourself before asking AI to refine it
• sitting with confusion instead of immediately resolving it
• doing something manually, even when there’s an easier shortcut

How will friction maxxing help us, and how is assosiateed with the overuse of AI?

To describe in simpler words, every time we choose inconvenience and every time we choose to get uncomfortable, we tend to change (might not be tremendous but in the tiniest ways possible ) because we experience something new or we get exposured to something new. 

For example: Im trying to write a paper or an article on my favourite character in recent times , so normally what I'd do when Im a lazy potato is just to prompt the same in ChatGPT, saying"write a paper on the charachter Clementine Kruczynski from the movie Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless mind ". However if I was choosing to "friction maxx" I would do a complete charachter analysis on her and understand why I love her and what part of me resonates with her, which explains my attachment to the fictional character and probably conclude with the amount of love and how much she makes me feel so understood and seen.

"bad human writing is better than ai writing"

Addressing the quote, I do agree that even if there is a little kid out there who is trying to write without using any of the fancy words or with complicated jargon is much MUCH better than a middle school kid out there who is prompting the same, while watching cartoon.

But why hate on AI so much?

The whole narrative of hating AI or chatbots is because it is trained to perform human-like activities that resemble us, humans. We are made up of a lot of emotions like love, guilt, rage, sorrow and literally a million other things which just cannot be "replaced". Whenever we ask an AI bot to correspond with us emotionally or ask it to be human-like, it is just a large language module which was just meant to do it. 

What to do now? 

Honestly, for me especially since Im from a technical degree Im just bound to use AI but I refuse to use AI creatively and artistically because I dont want to, I dont mind going through a hundreds of reference pages or bibliographies in research papers or watch a lot of youtube videos for the same - because Im capapble of doing it , even if my research methodology is rigged or full of potholes I'll just learn to be better because I can and you can too:)

Because at the end of the day, the goal isn’t just to get things done.

References/Things which inspired me to write this XD 

-https://dsc.duq.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1059&context=first-class

-https://trfjournal.cdfaindia.org/index.php/trfjournal/en/article/view/33

-https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260227-can-friction-maxxing-fix-your-focus

-https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00146-025-02847-0

- https://youraislopbores.me/

-https://open.spotify.com/track/0kyCBfVUUG0pzk2MBF0h7R

-https://youtu.be/ECWpPKzN5I0

Note:

ALL THE EM DASHES ARE MINE. THEY ' RE NOT GENERATED. I REPEAT THEY.ARE.NOT.GENERATED

This is purely written from my perspective ( a 19-year-old student ). I think the article could be structured better, but please do let me know if you have any suggestions and opinions on the same 

Thats enough ani in agony for today

byeyeye<3