How to Passive-Aggressively Shame People Who Use LLMs Selfishly<br>By Josh Moody — Published: Jun 23, 2026 🏺 AI disclaimer<br>This post was written entirely by a flesh-and-blood human and<br>therefore represents the pinnacle of artistic expression and<br>human achievement.

Too many slop grenades these days.<br>LLMs are cool and all, but does every Slack message need to be a<br>bulleted list where the first sentence of each item is bold?

I recently read one too many blog posts with the phrase, “it’s<br>not X, it’s Y” as a one-line paragraph and finally snapped.<br>It is now my life’s mission to purge selfish LLM usage from the<br>internet.

Define “selfish”

Selfish LLM usage: A situation in which someone uses an<br>LLM to save their own time at the expense of other people’s<br>time, resulting in a net productivity loss.

Opinions vary on the usefulness of LLMs, but hopefully we can<br>all agree that using them selfishly is cringe.

Nevertheless, people use AI selfishly all the time. This is not<br>surprising: many people are under heavy time pressure and some<br>people aren’t even aware they’re doing it. But the world would<br>be a better place if people stopped.

But it’s not polite to call someone out for blatantly using AI<br>when their brain would have sufficed. The trick is subtlety. I<br>propose a method of subtly shaming people with plausible<br>deniability:

Secretly make fun of people via emojis

Other things (less fun)

Dog whistle emojis

React to suspected AI content with an emoji that only makes<br>sense to likeminded people. Here are some ideas with variously<br>intense connotations:

Passive-aggressive emojis

Respond to selfish AI-generated content with these emojis if you<br>want to keep a low profile while secretly making fun of the<br>author.

EmojiEmoji nameMeaning🏺Amphora (Ancient Greek vase)I randomly wanted to remind you of the incredible art humanity produced with their bare hands thousands of years ago📎PaperclipClippy➖Heavy minus signEm dash〰️Wavy dashEm dash (less obvious)✍️Writing handWow this is really good writing that you definitely wrote yourself with your human brain and human hands🎰Slot machineYou kept prompting the LLM until your post was almost coherent🧨FirecrackerSlop grenade🦾Mechanical armVery cool but the machine gets credit, not you🧱Brick WallWow, that’s a lot of text🐋WhaleWow, that’s a LOT of text🔄♐Counterclockwise arrows button + SagittariusReverse centaur💙Blue heartCorporate AI slop1<br>Blue is typically considered a corporate, techie<br>color

Fully aggressive emojis

If you don’t mind being fired and/or punched in the face,<br>respond to slop with the following emojis:

EmojiEmoji nameMeaning🩼CrutchYou aren’t capable of writing even the most basic of messages without help🫟SplatSlop. Use with caution (potential sexual harassment)🪣BucketFor putting the slop in🚱Non-potable waterYou just vaporized a small country’s water supply🚷No pedestriansNo humans were involved in the making of this content📜ScrollBIG message🦜ParrotStochastic parrot✨SparkleThe universal symbol for AI content☣️BiohazardThis content is harmful to human existence<br>Positive emojis

Reward human effort with compliment emojis:

EmojiEmoji nameMeaning🧠BrainA human brain was used🎨PaletteFine art🍞BreadHomemade content, smells nice💚Green heartI love this human content (certified organic™)💪Flexed armThe opposite of 🦾, human effort à la John Henry🫆FingerprintEvidence of human🏺Amphora (Ancient Greek vase)Authentic human art that will stand for millennia2<br>Yes, the amphora emoji is also on the passive-aggressive list<br>because irony, but obviously it works for human content too.<br>By reacting to both kinds of content with it, you gain<br>plausible deniability while still subliminally encouraging<br>people to think about the importance of humanity and artistic<br>expression.

Emojis don’t cut deep enough

I admit the dog whistle emoji thing is at least 20% sarcastic.

If you want to be less culty, probably the most neutral and<br>unambiguous emoji is robot face 🤖.

Semi-jokes aside, here are some better things you can do to<br>shape the world to your liking:

Positive reinforcement

If someone sends rough (but clearly human) thoughts, engage with<br>it positively. Be extra nice and chill.

Force the author to engage with their slop

Ask genuine questions that force the slop<br>author3 to reflect on what they<br>produced and answer directly from their human brain. The<br>questions should be short and simple. Match the author’s effort<br>level.

Slauthor?

How did you come up with this idea?

I really liked [interesting detail] , how did you learn to<br>[verb] like that?

Epmathy4

I spelled this heading exactly as intended.

Keep in mind that the average person over-relying on AI for<br>common tasks is potentially under immense time pressure and/or<br>sufficiently out of their depth that they lack the ability to<br>distinguish good from bad content. They almost certainly are not<br>using AI out of malice.

Establish social norms

Turns out the average person does not like slop, so it’s not<br>hard to ringlead...