The Bull Sheet #4: The Robots are Coming
Bi-weekly news and updates on what's going on at The Bull's Eye.
Welcome to a new edition of The Bull Sheet, my bi-weekly musings, rants, and reflections, along with an update on what’s happening at The Bull’s Eye.
First, let’s talk about what’s going on over on Medium. For those unfamiliar, Medium is a blogging platform where writers pay $5 per month to join the so-called Partner Program. These funds are then used to compensate writers based on reader engagement.
Before starting this Substack, I wanted a place to collect all the articles I had written up to that point for various websites. That led me to try out Medium. It was simple, straightforward, and even brought in a bit of money. Not nearly enough to make a living, but a nice little bonus that kept me motivated.
I started exploring Substack around the same time. At first, the learning curve felt a bit steep, but the platform’s potential quickly became clear. Compared to Medium, it gave me far more possibilities, making it an easy decision to change my focus to here.
So I began writing on Substack, then exporting my articles to Medium for some additional earnings. From what I understand, many writers do the same. Medium even has a “canonical link” setting, buried deep in the advanced settings, where you can specify where an article was originally published.
So why am I bringing up Medium now? Not sure how many of you follow me there, but those who do might have noticed I haven’t been exporting my articles lately. There’s a reason for that.
Medium has a problem with spam (and sadly, not the Monty Python kind). Certain users have figured out how to “game” the Partner Program to earn easy money, which hits serious writers hard. I won’t go into the details here. There are plenty of articles lamenting this issue over on Medium already, including one from yours truly. But engagement and earnings on Medium took a nosedive in the second half of January after the platform initiated a so-called “crackdown.”
The result? Completely clown shoes.
Many of these spammers used AI tools like GPT to churn out low-effort articles, often mass-produced, often with titles starting with “how to earn money on…” or “how to use AI to make money on…” They also flooded the comment sections of serious writers, spamming so aggressively that meaningful discussions were buried under a deluge of generic comments like “good,” “nice,” or “read my article.”
After a lot of complaints from serious writers, the powers that be finally realized the problem—but not the solution. They saw that the blatant use of AI-generated articles was an issue, especially content based on ChatGPT prompts like “write an article about how to make money on…” and similar topics. So they cracked down on AI. All AI.
That meant a lot of serious and creative writers who used AI for spell-checking, grammar, synonyms, and research were suddenly caught in the crossfire. The problem is that AI detection tools often flag “perfect writing” as AI-generated—meaning writing without spelling errors, grammar mistakes, or inconsistencies. They also look for certain repeated phrasing.
The paradox here is that serious writers tend to obsess over spelling, use spell checkers, look up synonyms, and develop their own favorite words and phrases. I’m no different. And that brings me to how I use AI in my writing.
I consider AI a tool, and like all tools, it can be used for good or bad. When writing articles, I use AI to assist with spell-checking, grammar, sentence structure, synonyms, and general research, which I always double check. I mainly use ChatGPT for this, as I find tools like Grammarly cumbersome and intrusive in many ways.
As someone with ADHD, ChatGPT is also an excellent tool because it lets me have a “dialogue” without relying too much on a browser, where I often get distracted for hours and forget what I was originally writing. I can’t even read a book for more than 20 minutes due to my mind wandering (As a result, I have a lot of audiobooks). Having this kind of “conversation”—even if its with an AI, about what I’m working on also helps me focus, almost like having an assistant to bounce ideas off.
But I never, ever use AI to write for me. The few times I’ve tried it in the past, mostly for experimentation, I got the strange sense that something was seriously “off” with what it produced. Not just for ethical reasons (though that plays a big part), but because it’s not me, not my words. It feels strange and somewhat unnatural.
When it comes to press conferences and interviews, I’ve experimented with using ChatGPT to help sort through and clean up the often messy transcripts that land in my inbox a few days after the event. In some cases, like my article on Emilia Pérez, where the conversation jumped between English, French, and Spanish—with the poor and overly stressed interpretor barely hanging on—I had to use AI just to make sense of it.
For transcription, I also rely on the excellent Sonix.ai service. Needless to say, these articles can be a lot of work, especially if the press conference is poorly organized or the moderator hasn’t prepared well enough, or goes off script all the time, as was the case with the one for Emilia Pérez.
I’m still developing a good process when it comes to handling transcripts for press conferences, and I think each one (with a possibly exception of the Emila Pérez one, to be honest) becomes better than the last.
But when it comes to the Medium crackdown, I can’t be sure, but I suspect that, like many other serious writers, I was swept up in the “AI crackdown,” which left my last few film-related articles with next to no engagement or earnings.
So until Medium gets its act together and realizes that AI isn’t just a swarm of killer robots coming to steal our creativity but can actually be a tool that helps writers—especially those with certain challenges and disabilities—better express their creativity, I will be very skeptical when it comes to exporting my articles there.
But luckily, I’m here, and you’re here, so no worries! Let’s see what else is going on.
Status on Articles
As always, I’m working on several articles. One article I’ve begun to work on is the first in a series about the Star Wars franchise called An Optimist’s Guide to Star Wars. The first part will take a look at the live-action series, and then we’ll go from there. In contrast to many of the other articles about Star Wars online these days, this will be, as the name suggests, a very positive take on the franchise I love.
But that will have to wait a bit longer.
I admit that I believed the press conferences were slowing down after the Golden Globes, but that doesn’t seem to be the case at all. I’m not even re-accredited for the next Golden Globes yet, and still, I get several invites to press conferences each week. So I had to change it things around a bit.
Luckily, I had
as guest writer this week with a review of the Netflix miniseries Apple Cider Vinegar.
But when it comes to press conferences, they’re still coming and I have to pick and choose.
One I did pick was the press conference for Captain America: Brave New World, featuring Harrison Ford, Anthony Mackie, and the rest of the cast, along with the director and Marvel head honcho Kevin Feige. I just received the transcript today, and kudos to the moderator—she was excellent, making the work so much easier and more enjoyable.
Also, just working on quotes from legends like Harrison Ford and Giancarlo Esposito makes me slightly starstruck!
I’ll also be reviewing the film next week. Press screenings for MCU films here in Norway are notoriously close to the premiere, which, strangely enough, is before the U.S. release. I’ll be watching it on Tuesday and, hopefully, will have the review out the same day.
And That’s a Wrap!
That’s all for now. With January finally behind us, I hope you’re all having a great February.
Until next time!