A few billion people watched the FIFA World Cup last weekend. Billions more didn’t care and went on with their lives. Meanwhile, a few hundred spent part of it arguing over one of my articles.
It was unexpected, flattering, scary and weird, all at the same time.
It all started somewhere halfway across the world or just a few kilometres away, who knows. What I do know is that I wasn’t checking my phone or the blog. I was busy wandering around Toronto, looking for some World Cup fever. I’m 43. I can still live disconnected, a rare skill these days.
But at one point I pulled my phone out of my bag because I had to text Feng. And since I was at it, I Googled the Canada-Bosnia score. The screen at Nathan Phillips Square was right in front of me, just too far away, and a careful analysis of fans’ faces had only led me to conclude that Canada was either winning or losing, which wasn’t exactly helpful.
Okay, neither. A tied game.
Oh, emails! Who and why, on a Saturday?
Huh, perfect strangers who had found the blog were telling me they had enjoyed it.
I clicked on my dashboard.
Holy shit.
Dozens of pingbacks were waiting in the approval queue and traffic was spiking.
I pieced it all together. The article “Why Don’t You Just Upload It to ChatGPT?” was travelling around the web, quoted on tech blogs in more languages than I can speak. And one of the kind people who had emailed me explained that the article had been posted to Hacker News, and was making the front page.
I clicked on the link.
381 comments.
The soccer fans were on the edge of their metaphorical seats. I walked away and sat on the concrete to read the whole thing, hundreds of strangers dissecting my anecdotal story and perspective on AI in translation.
I was scared. I’ve been on the Internet for a long time. People are not that nice online, especially when they post anonymously.
It started off well. “The ending is a really powerful point,” the top commenter noted. They got my point—everyone trusts AI with other people’s skills, but sees it as “a tool at best” for their own expertise.
Phew.
It turned into a debate about professional judgment. Many commenters agreed: AI can be useful, but it’s unreliable. As someone put it, “you still need some human filter.” Several also defended translation as cultural, stylistic and contextual work—not just swapping words between languages, but dealing with tone, jokes, wordplay, ambiguity, poetry and cultural references.
Then there were subplots. One thread fixated on my em dashes—proof, apparently, that a human wrote this, since the rest of the Internet now reads them as an AI tell. Another wondered whether the gym encounter had happened at all—the usual “if this even happened” energy.
Others took the anecdote in unexpected directions. Someone quoted my line about how “we all more or less look the same in gym clothes” and turned it into a reflection on community and modern life. To them, the sad part wasn’t failing to recognize someone. It was the idea that we’ve become so disconnected that we assume we’ll never see people again and therefore don’t bother remembering them.
Oh, I’ll remember this woman at the gym now. A week later, she asked me, “Are you done with your little translation?”
“This one… and many more over the past seven days. It’s, er… kind of my job?”
There’s a word I love, not for the word itself but for what it means—circumstantial: abounding in factual details. I like to understand why people do or think this and that, and I truly enjoy when the whole rationale makes sense. Opinions can change, but there’s always a reason why you did this or that at this point in time.
This is probably why I tend to give too much background. I always want to make sure people understand where I come from. I like when everything makes sense, even if it’s just an anecdote, a perspective or a feeling.
The story is true. I only changed the woman’s job title, but she works in HR.
It’s also true that I don’t have a good memory for faces. However, I can remember entire conversations word for word, which is probably why I’m writing and not working as a bouncer.
I hesitated. Should I jump in and defend myself?
I jumped in but kept it light. I enjoy explaining my point but not proving I’m right. I don’t even think I’m necessarily right; it’s all a matter of perspective.
Of course, the good stuff doesn’t scale the way the bad stuff does.
I spent a minute trying to process this comment.
There’s no off button online. I just had to ride the rollercoaster, sit tight and wait for it to pass. People don’t stay interested in anything long, which is a curse when you’re trying to get traffic but a blessing when you’re accidentally under the spotlight.
It’s amazing, actually. The article resonated and people passed it around. Even more amazing: some people took the time to write an email and say nice things.
Hey, traffic spiked, the article was read over 114,000 times, and I survived my great Internet fifteen minutes of fame mostly unscathed—although I’m really paranoid about my use of em dashes now.
Shit.
Again.
Don’t kill me, I’m human.
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