A few weeks ago I sat down and deliberately wrote the most AI-sounding LinkedIn post I could. Not by accident. Not because I was being lazy. On purpose, as an experiment.
The result was genuinely disturbing.
Not because it was bad. Because it was good enough that people would engage with it. Like it. Maybe share it. And never notice that it was hollow from the first sentence to the last hashtag.
Here it is.
The Specimen
Unpopular opinion: most people who think they write like humans don't.
Who needs to hear this.
I've spent years studying the way people communicate online — and I've noticed three things that separate authentic human writers from everyone else.
They're specific. They're vulnerable. And they're not trying to sound smart.
Here's where most people get it wrong. They think writing like a human means using casual language. It does not. It means having something real to say → and saying it without the safety net of a template.
It's not about the words you choose — it's about the thinking behind them.
The writers who consistently build trust aren't the ones with the biggest followings or the most polished content. They're the ones who quietly show up, delve into the things that matter, and navigate complexity without hiding behind jargon. That authenticity resonates every time.
Let's be honest — three things will immediately make your writing feel more human. Remove the transitions that announce themselves. Break your own structure on purpose. And leave something unfinished.
For the love of God — stop writing like a machine.
Here's the thing. The framework doesn't lie. When you strip away the scaffolding, what's left is either something real or it isn't. It's not about perfection. It's about presence.
I'll leave you with this.
You already know how to write like a human. You've just been taught to write like a machine. And that framing changes everything.
This is the same pattern I keep seeing. The first 80% of someone's writing looks fine. Maybe even good. But the last 20% is where it falls apart: the formulaic transitions, the performative vulnerability, the weird confidence that sounds borrowed instead of earned.
At RageDesigner we work with creators, founders, and professionals who are tired of sounding like everyone else. We see this gap every single day. The distance between "sounds human in a draft" and "actually connects with a real person" is where all the real work lives.
And it's never the part anyone teaches.
What's one thing you do to keep your writing authentic? Drop it in the comments — I genuinely want to hear your perspective.
If this resonated and you're ready to build a communication framework that actually sounds like you, visit ragedesigner.com.
That post took me about ten minutes to write. I wasn't working hard. I was working from a pattern I've catalogued for years: the AI writing formula that's so widespread it's become invisible.
Now let me show you everything that's wrong with it.
None of these tells are wrong by themselves. Em dashes have been in good writing for centuries. "Let's be honest" works if you're actually about to say something honest. Short declarative triplets are a legitimate rhythm choice.
The problem isn't any individual element. It's what happens when all of them appear together because a model defaulted to them, not because a writer chose them. Intentional use of a pattern is style. Unconscious repetition of a pattern is a tell.
If you love em dashes, use them. Just know that right now they read as a marker to a lot of readers, and decide accordingly. That's a choice you get to make. The point of this breakdown isn't to ban vocabulary. It's to make the choices visible so they're actually choices.
The Annotated Breakdown
I'm going to go through this line by line. The goal isn't to mock the format. Most people who write this way don't know they're doing it. The goal is pattern recognition. Once you can see it, you can't unsee it. And once you can't unsee it, you can build the fix.
This opener follows a template so common it's practically a meme. "Unpopular opinion" signals that something edgy is coming, but what follows is almost never unpopular. It's a manufactured tension device. The opinion here isn't unpopular at all: it's a vague criticism of a vague group that no one identifies with. Nobody thinks they're the bad writer. So the opener creates the feeling of a hot take without the actual discomfort of one.
The tell isn't the words. It's the structure. Real unpopular opinions are specific enough to actually make someone disagree.
This is what I'd call performative address. It doesn't identify anyone. It's a signal to the algorithm that says "I am creating relatable content." It also implies the writer has wisdom the reader doesn't, without establishing why. In human writing, you'd know who you're talking to and say so. "If you've ever rewritten a sentence six times trying to sound less stiff, this is for you." That's an address. "Who needs to hear this" is engagement bait dressed as directness.
The em dash is the first structural tell. AI models use em dashes at roughly five times the rate of human writers. More importantly, this sentence establishes authority without grounding it. "Years" is vague. "Studying" is vague. A human would say what they actually saw. "After reading about four thousand LinkedIn posts trying to figure out why some felt real and most didn't, I noticed a pattern." That's specific. This version is a credential shadow.
Short declarative triplets. This structure shows up constantly in AI-adjacent content because it works: it creates rhythm and feels punchy. The problem is it's been used so many times it's become a formatting tic rather than a writing choice. Real writers use this construction when the content demands it. Here it's doing the structural work that actual specificity should be doing.
The arrow symbol in body copy is an AI formatting artifact. It's used to create visual movement in a way that markdown bullets can't, but it reads as generated. More importantly, "something real to say" is a completely empty phrase in an article that's supposed to be teaching you how to say real things. It's meta-hollow. The post about authenticity is using authenticity as an abstract concept rather than demonstrating it.
Carnegie Mellon researchers who studied AI writing patterns specifically flagged this binary reframing as a tell. AI models use it to create the feeling of a revelation without actually saying anything new. "It's not X, it's Y" promises insight. Here it delivers a vague claim that the thinking matters more than the words, which is neither original nor actionable.
"Delve" appears in AI output at roughly 50 times the rate of human writing, at least it did when this was written. OpenAI has since trained "delve" down sharply, so it's now in the Suppressed tier of the live vocabulary tracker. The principle is unchanged. The specific words shift as model providers respond. "Navigate complexity" is a generated filler phrase that means nothing specific. "Resonates" describes emotional impact without specifying what the impact actually is. A human writer who's spent years studying communication would never use any of these terms, because they've developed specific language for what they actually mean.
This is the tell cluster principle at work: one suspicious word is a coincidence. Three in close proximity is a pattern. Five is a verdict. We've hit the threshold.
One suspicious word is a coincidence. Three in close proximity is a pattern. Five is a verdict.
"Let's be honest" signals that something direct is about to happen, but it's almost always followed by something safe. If you were actually being honest, you'd just be honest. The announcement of honesty is a delay tactic. "Here's the thing" serves the same function: it creates the impression of a pivot to something real. Count how many times you see either phrase in LinkedIn content. It's a structural tic that AI models use because they've seen it work in persuasive writing. Real directness doesn't announce itself.
This phrase is designed to create the feeling of a meaningful conclusion before the conclusion arrives. Human writers don't announce the final thought. They just make it. "I'll leave you with this" is a stage direction that slipped into the script.
"That framing" references a reframing that occurred in the previous sentence and validates it as significant. Real insight doesn't need to tell you it just changed something. If the reframe was genuinely good, you feel it. If you have to say it changed everything, it probably didn't.
This is the Problem-Agitate-Solve formula doing its final act. The post spent 300 words agitating anxiety about authenticity without giving you any real tools to address it, and now it's pivoting to a service that can. The irony of a post about authentic writing using a sales formula to close is complete. "We see this gap every single day" is meant to create social proof. "It's never the part anyone teaches" is a manufactured scarcity hook.
A post that actually teaches something doesn't need this closer. The teaching is the value. The pivot reveals that the post wasn't really about the topic: it was about getting you to the pitch.
The word "genuinely" is doing a lot of work here. When you have to say you genuinely want to hear something, the reader's first instinct is to wonder if you do. Authentic curiosity doesn't announce itself as genuine. The "drop it in the comments" is engagement bait designed to trigger the algorithm, not a real invitation to conversation.
Seven hashtags on a post about authentic writing. Human writers who are genuinely building community know that hashtag walls signal "I am optimizing for reach." The irony is complete.
What to Do Instead
Here's the thing about everything I just broke down. None of these problems are unfixable. They're patterns. And patterns have opposites.
"Unpopular opinion:" opener that isn't actually unpopular
State the actual uncomfortable opinion plainly. If you're afraid to say it without the hedge, it isn't developed enough to post yet.
Vague authority claim ("I've spent years studying...")
A specific observation, not a credential. Show what you saw. Credibility through demonstration beats credibility through declaration.
Tell vocabulary: "delve," "navigate," "resonates," "that framing"
"Delve" means "look closely at." "Resonates" means "clicked" or "stuck with me." Say what you actually mean.
"I'll leave you with this" theatrical close
Write the significant thing. The final sentence should land on its own. If it needs a runway, it isn't there yet.
Generic engagement bait closer ("What's one thing you do...")
Ask a real question you'd actually be curious about. Specificity signals real curiosity. Vague invitations signal algorithm-chasing.
The Principle Behind All of It
What makes AI writing detectable isn't any single tell. It's the density of them. One suspicious phrase is a writer having a bad sentence. Three in close proximity is a pattern. Five in a 300-word post is a verdict.
What produces the density isn't laziness. It's templates. The writer who produced this post is following a structural pattern they've absorbed from thousands of similar posts. The pattern feels right because it looks like the things that got engagement before. But it feels hollow because it's been optimized for performance, not for actually saying something.
The fix isn't to write without structure. Frameworks aren't the problem. Bad frameworks are. A good framework gives you a repeatable way to say something real. A bad framework gives you a repeatable way to fill space.
If you can see what's wrong with the specimen above, you can build what's right. That's the whole principle. Detection leads to construction. Pattern recognition leads to better choices.
Where to Go From Here
If you want to dig into what systematic authentic writing actually looks like, the framework methodology that underlies this kind of analysis lives at howtoframework.com.
The starting point isn't a different set of rules. It's a different way of building them: for your voice, your context, your audience. Because a communication framework that actually sounds like you can't be borrowed from a LinkedIn template. It has to be built.