Like previous helpdesk threads - please use this to ask any and all of your questions regarding the challenge Clueless. If you don’t want your question to be handled publicly, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me directly :).
Get excited!!!
CLUELESS (As If…!)
Your challenge, should you choose to accept it: write a story inspired by the concept of being completely, utterly… clueless.
A himbo who’s too dumb (or too pretty) to realise what’s happening to him. A genius who notices everything… except the one thing that matters. A world that’s shifting, changing, warping… and nobody seems to question it. “Hasn’t it always been this way?” A roommate, a friend, a teammate who is clearly different, but insists nothing’s changed. And somehow… you believe him.
A popular jock becomes softer, sweeter, more obedient, yet still thinks he’s the same alpha guy he’s always been. A sharp-minded student slowly loses his edge, but chalks it up to “just being tired lately.” A whole town drifts into a new normal, rewriting itself in real time, while its residents laugh off anything strange as if it’s always been that way. Or maybe you’re the only one who notices… until you don’t.
Is it ignorance? Denial? Manipulation? Or is being clueless just… easier?
The possibilities are endless. What’s your CLUELESS story?
I don’t have a question, per se—I’d just like to commend whoever chose that PHENOMENAL gif for the story challenge prompt. I opened the main page and my eyes doubled in size. Thank you for brightening up the day.
Was it accusatory, or was it simply asking a question? One I could hardly be blamed for asking given this archive’s past history with AI-generated works.
Now that I know the gif is not AI I can enjoy this contest to my heart’s content.
However… I will have to pull you up on your claim in this response. If it was simply asking a question, you would have simply said “Is the gif AI generated?” and then I would have answered: “No! I will ensure that clarification is clear!”. However, what was said was “Is the gif AI generated? If so, gross.” - that’s not simply asking a question, it’s asking a question and then attaching your response to one of the possible answers, which kind of borders in the realm of accusatory.
You asked a fair question, and we resolved your concern in your favour no less, please don’t invite further possibly controversial discussion by making remarks about “this archive’s past history with AI-generated works.” - that is what we in Australia call “shit stirring”.
I apologise for addressing this publicly instead of messaging you directly, however I wanted to set a standard for everyone that this is a story challenge helpdesk thread, not a “discussions about AI usage” thread or a thread to discuss anything really outside of that.
Feel free to exercise your freedom of expression on AI use in an appropriate thread though - it’s definitely an interesting conversation and I’m sure one that would be readily engaged with by the community on how best to approach it at GSS (as I’m sure it’s already been discussed multiple times before). I’m just drawing a line about it being discussed or provoked in this thread lmao.
“If so, gross” does sound kinda accusatory, don’t you think?
And sorry, basing your decision on whether someone used an AI generated image in the announcement… Well, I will refrain myself from openly stating my thoughts on that.
I don’t know, but this sure sounds accusatory, especially since it is totally unfounded. Nu and Soren did an exemplary job managing AI last year, and with the updated rules, we never encountered any author refusing to properly tag their partially-AI works, AI stories represent barely 3% of all submissions, and all the full-AI stories we received were rejected outright, a dozen of them. We didn’t get more. The net results of the new rules were that less AI got onto the site, that authors were less reluctant to tag its use and that less AI got submitted overall.
It offends me particularly because I’m the one who spends the time to read every story submitted to detect AI. For free. My valuable time. And you act as if throwing around passive-aggressive comments with no effort somehow makes you some sort of crusader.
So you can take your misleading comments and read a few fully human written stories on the site to know what to do with them.
Sorry for posting this here right after you were trying to move the conversation. I’ll stop. I can’t believe the whole conversation got derailed just for someone who so wanted to impress on people that he hated AI he’d make a rant over just a regular gif from a Film 911 video, without any checking first.
No you’re fine king - you weren’t the instigator of the discussion after all! Plus you’re right - the gif could have been easily reverse image searched .
I don’t do story challenges often, so forgive me if I’m out of touch , but I seem to recall there used to be more rules, like word limits, not using a previously written story, that sort of thing. Are those all gone now or have I missed something? (Edit: reworded for clarity.)
You should do this story challenge! You have some of the best “clueless” stories I’ve read :).
I will edit the rules with further clarification - I simply copied a previous story challenge’s rules as I didn’t realise they’d removed some. To address your examples:
No, there is not a word limit as stories can be multiple chapters etc.
You can not use a previously written story IF it’s already been published (published anywhere, not just on this service). If it’s a story you wrote ages ago but never published and it fits the theme then by all means - it’s a new story to us!
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, but I seem to recall there used to be more rules, like word limits, not using a previously written story, that sort of thing. Are those all gone now or have I missed something? (Edit: reworded for clarity.)