> Can we talk about something interesting now?

No, we can't, because when we replace a part of ourselves, we become less interesting, less whole. We no longer are capable of those deep technical (or philosophical, or whatever) discussions, because our relationship with language itself has changed. Just like the article's example of the druggie, who can no longer experience the profound or sublime, unmediated by the psychotropic substance; we can no longer experience the collective linguistic exchange without genAI. You, an individual, may very well be capable of doing so, but genAI also exists between us, meaning someone else will inevitably bring it up, or worse, throw the slop grenade into the conversation, completely derailing that authenticity you seek.

Language exists in the between, that space not entirely within any of the individuals participating in a conversation. To surrogate or mediate that is to potentially undermine the most core of what it means to be human, (formerly) the only fully-linguistic species on this planet.

> I can't fucking wait for this bubble to burst so we can go back to chatting shit about literally anything else.

That won't happen because that past is gone. This is akin to hoping that we go back to the pre-smartphone era when restaurants were filled with lively discussion, everyone present with their dining partners. That's the true cost of any socially-transformative tech. The cost was always right in front of us, but we were too busy focusing on what little it produced, to notice how much it took away.

Even this blog's page is a symptom of that, drowning in social media links and donation buttons. His Amazon wishlist is filled with tech gizmos and pop culture media slop, stuff that feeds the very machine he despises. I, the reader, just want to read his words, presumably he wants me to respond to them, but the non-human tech keeps getting in the way.

These transformations never revert. Smartphones and social media fully transformed society 20 years ago. The television did long before that. Before that, the motor vehicle. At least this time, more of us are starting to notice. Can we actually do anything about it though? Might be too late for that.