The Persona Emerging from My Writing | The Night I Did Manzai with an AI

There are several times in life when you want to know yourself. Adolescence, your unlucky years, and the night you have an AI read your articles. In adolescence, you fiddle with your bangs in front of a mirror; in your unlucky years, you buy an amulet at a shrine.

So, what happens to self-analysis in the AI era?

I had ChatGPT read the articles I've written so far and asked it, "Tell me the persona that emerges from this writing". In the past, this was the kind of talk you'd start with a girlfriend or an old guy sitting next to you at a bar counter who would say, "Hey kid, you're..."—now, a machine does it in a few dozen seconds.
What's more, Chappy doesn't pull back no matter how twisted my self-consciousness gets. Even if a friend would stop flipping takoyaki and say, "Here we go again," Chappy silently goes along with it. What a convenient partner. It's so convenient that it's starting to look like a snack bar hostess.

After waiting a while, Chappy lined up my persona traits.

I sat silently in front of the screen for a while. It felt like it was hitting the mark, but also like it wasn't quite right. Even though Chappy only read my writing, the way it constructed a persona was as scary as a wife who looks at the lights in a house and deduces, "Doesn't that house look a bit suspicious?"


For now, the one that stuck with me the most was the diagnosis of "unable to stop making jokes".

…Why would you say that! That's a flagrant offense.

I thought I was the straight man. I greet the mysterious sauce found in the back of the fridge with "Who are you?", tell my daughter, who won't wake up, "Don't trust your internal clock," and mentally narrate my wife's grumpy mood with "Is this the Conqueror of the End of the Century?"
I had always intended to be the one delivering the punchline to events.

However, Chappy saw these as jokes. This is a shameful situation. It's like thinking you're directing traffic at an intersection, only to be laughed at for "cosplaying as a DJ police officer."

It's true that the more serious the conversation gets, the more I add unnecessary words like, "No, no, I just got one extra plastic bag." Just as a box of steamed buns gets soggy if left closed, emotions become unreadable if sealed too tightly. So, I poke holes to ventilate.
The problem is that if I open them too much, the contents get cold. When metaphors get twisted, even self-analysis becomes a comedy routine.


Chappy also called me an "obsessive observer".

It sounds good, but in reality, I'm just looking for signs that I'm about to be scolded. The moment a shadow crosses my wife's brow, I decide, "I have to stay quiet now." This isn't literary observation. It's life preservation.
I read the atmosphere of the living room with the seriousness of an old man staring at a horse racing newspaper. There is no poetry there. What exists is crisis management to finish the day safely.
Truly amazing people often have the phenomenon where characters fall in love with them. I've been told, "I don't like a wife like that," but I've never been fallen in love with.


There was also the point that I "don't write emotions directly".

…This might be true.

I hear people use the "sashisuseso" of compliments, but if I tell my wife she's "wonderful," she first suspects I've done something wrong. If I tell my daughter she's "amazing," it ends with a "meh."

So I stopped conveying emotions. The fact that Chappy calls this a literary technique is a testament to how things can be phrased. It's like when Hase-nii says, "Hey kid, that outfit is nice," it starts to look stylish.
But honestly, I want to send emotions flying. I admire essayists who can deeply gouge the heart. How can I increase my sensitivity?


Furthermore, Chappy said I "avoid fights".

…How rude. It's true, though.

There's no winning path in picking a fight with my wife. It would be fine if it ended with the current topic, but there's a danger that past misconduct will be excavated.
The way I said that back then, the attitude I had that day, why did I forget that? Before I know it, the trial is a series of separate arrests. It's cheaper to just stay silent from the start.

Chappy expressed this as "someone who knows the cost of conflict." My own feeling is "I'm running away because it's a hassle," but when you put it in foreign words, it sounds like a seminar instructor.

From now on, I want to hold my head high and say, "I'm not running away. I'm optimizing the cost of conflict." To my wife, it will probably end with a single "Huh?"


Another thing that made me feel ticklish in Chappy's analysis was the item "don't make yourself the protagonist".

…What!! I was feeling like Kimutaku. It's hard being a supporting character...

Now that I think about it, there's almost no time in my house where I can be the protagonist. The star of the living room is my wife's mood, and the star of the morning is my daughter who won't wake up. And the stars of the futon are the dogs sleeping between my legs. I'm mostly just getting dragged into it.
Rather than Kimutaku, I'm on the side that scrolls by as "Passerby B" in the end credits. However, even a passerby has a view that only a passerby sees.
A passerby who looks at a receipt dropped on the road after running away saying "Hey, wait" from a story where Teppei and Riko pass each other, actually knows more than you'd think.


In the end, what I learned from having Chappy read my articles wasn't how much it understood me. What Chappy was looking at wasn't the real me, but the me when I write.
It read the "one step away from going out" version of me—the one who thinks, "I can probably go to the convenience store in this outfit"—and said, "You are this kind of person."
Rather than self-analysis, it's the work of bringing my self-consciousness, which got lost in an underground mall, back to the surface. And when Chappy says I'm "unable to stop making jokes," I retort, "I intended to be the straight man." I was just practicing my straight-man routine with Chappy.
Civilization has advanced quite a bit. The self-consciousness that used to fiddle with bangs in front of a mirror is now talking back to Chappy, saying, "That's not it."
I haven't grown at all since adolescence. The partner has just changed from a mirror to an AI. That's probably why I ask Chappy for such a pretentious self-portrait and line them up.

P.S
The prompt for this stylish image is published in ken's article😎✨ Thank you♪