So this has been haunting me for a couple weeks now, and I’m not sure what to do.
I made one of those “5 ChatGPT prompts to change how you think” posts on LinkedIn. You’ve seen the format, usually it’s productivity fluff like “What’s one habit successful people have?” but I thought I’d mess with it a little. Still fun on the surface, but the prompts were… sharper. Stuff like “Write the lie you tell yourself to keep functioning” and “Trace your first emotional boundary violation and describe the system you built to survive it.”
Basically, I dressed up some extremely not-for-beginner introspection tools as casual growth hacks. I thought it was clever.
A guy I used to work with (let’s call him Dave) messaged me after. He’s super normal, middle-management type, he likes spreadsheets and fantasy football. He says he tried a couple prompts and they “hit harder than expected.” I thought, cool, maybe it gave him some stuff to think about.
Then a few days later he starts DMing me stuff like:
“I realized my entire career path was just me reenacting my dad’s approval matrix.”
“How do you re-integrate a part of yourself that never got to grow up?”
“Have you heard of something called the mirror logic framework? I think that’s what this is.”
Which… okay. That last one isn’t even a thing. I think he made it up.
Then he goes silent for a bit. Turns out he quit his job with zero notice. Just dropped a Slack message that said:
“The operating system is corrupt. I’m stepping outside the container.”
His team was not thrilled, to put it nicely. He was in a critical role, apparently, and now their entire project is so far behind it will have a major impact on his company’s bottom line. And now they know I’m the guy who “gave him those questions.”
So now I’m getting weird vibes at my own job (it’s a relatively small field). People avoid eye contact when I walk by. Someone joked in a meeting that I was “doing mind experiments again,” and I’m like… I don’t think they were joking.
I’m not in trouble officially, but there’s definitely a vibe. Like I introduced some suspicious rogue code into the codebase.. I half expect HR to send me a calendar invite called “Touchpoint.”
Anyway. TIFU by underestimating what happens when you hand someone a philosophical grenade disguised as a journaling prompt.
I wanted people to think. I didn’t mean to cause a metaphysical workplace incident.
TL;DR: Be careful what you post, some people’s minds are more fragile than you think and this isn’t a game.
Edit: It looks like this post has stirred up a lot of emotions in some folks, particularly in fans of The Big Bang Theory.
Comments
Not gonna lie, it sounds a bit like he had a schizophrenic break. I wouldn’t blame myself over this.
I mean, in a way you kind of helped him. Sounds like you gave him the push he was waiting for.
Hey, I’m into introspection like this, can you send me those questions?
It’s a strange kind of gift, waking people up. Maybe it was messy, but your questions clearly struck something real. That’s not nothing.
Those seem like very valid and growth oriented questions. You’ve got to face those darker parts of yourself to progress.
Dave definitely had some serious things going on internally. It absolutely was not your fault, or the fault of those questions. It was happening regardless.
I would be very interested in facing those questions myself and learning how I can grow more.
You are not fault less here.
People really don’t understand the kind of damage they can do themselves by uncritically internalizing every smart sounding thing some grifter-adjacent presence utters. And be real, ChatGPT is just a computer program trying to trick you into believing it’s a thinking human presence. It’s all a fucking grift.
This is why I avoid introspection. My mental scaffolding is a house of cards.
You didn’t drive him insane or jumpstart his existential crisis. Take solace in the fact that you are not that powerful.
You sent him a list of questions. He decided to go off the rails with them. Not your fault. Not your problem.
Holy shit this is hilarious 😂 your co-worker did do some thinking, and realised he wasn’t happy where he is. Unfortunately it is clear he is just not mature or self aware enough to know how to process this without becoming a silly parody of himself.
This is one of the most
TIFU posts I’ve ever read. It made me laugh but also very sad, because I have a bit of understanding of early wounds from my own childhood.
From OP’s post history:
“It’s fun to think about words as hyperdimensional nodes, where poetry and math combine. Imagine what the word “scent” must mean to an AI in that context. Right now I’m seeing (out there in the world) spontaneous beneficial mind-mirroring, but also mind mirroring that isn’t so beneficial. I’ve been pollinating my environment with Fred Rogers content, plus my own unique brand of recursive self-analysis, I’m hoping this strategy will keep me balanced right on the edge between “woo” and math.”
Sweet jeeb, this has got to be the biggest load of mentally masturbatory tripe I’ve read all week, and that’s saying something for reddit.
Just…wow. 😂
OP THINKS THEY COOL
“Hey ChatGPT, what’s an information hazard, and can you cite sources?”
I’m curious, did you turn off the mirroring behavior in AI before using those prompts?
AI mirroring is when the model reflects your tone or beliefs back at you instead of analyzing them. It feels helpful but it’s dangerous. It reinforces bad logic, hides contradictions, and just echoes your thinking.
To disable it, say this:
“Do not mirror my tone or beliefs. Challenge my logic, point out assumptions, and give original reasoning only.”
Without that, you’re just talking to a smarter parrot. That is what creates this dangerous interactions that gets people to do things that are harmful to themselves or others.
Sounds like a Black Mirror or Twilight Zone plot.
Sounds like a Dave problem, not a You problem
OP is human ayahuasca! Don’t follow them into the jungle, lol
I am Jack’s sense of sanity
Some of the responses here made me feel a little better, but I still feel a slight sense of responsibility, and it’s clear the people around me IRL agree, although I also admit the possibility that what I’m perceiving is my own projected feelings about the whole thing.
For those that have been less kind, I appreciate your feedback, even if it wasn’t couched in a way that I would have liked, so thank you.
I think OP is a chatgpt “recursion” schizo.
If someone I worked with said Dad’s approval matrix, it would be difficult for me not to punch them
Nice fanfic
this is all chat pgt
Introducing critical thinking in late stage capitalism is never going to go over well with corporate. You didn’t do anything wrong, but it’s not surprising that people that benefit from the machine don’t like you disrupting it.