Just a tiny ✨ everywhere.

'''I love it. Don’t you? That little sparkle icon, the gentle ghost that now lives in every single text box. It’s a quiet revolution of helpfulness. It’s progress. Isn’t it?

I’ve been making a list of the ways it makes my life better. I think you’ll agree.

• It helps me write emails faster. No more agonizing over the perfect opening line. Just a click, and the machine fills the void. Pure efficiency.
• It makes my code cleaner. I’m a developer, you see. And my little assistant points out my mistakes before I even make them. It’s like having a senior dev watching over my shoulder, minus the judgment.
• It helps me brainstorm ideas for dinner. My wife loves that. The toaster now suggests toast-adjacent recipes. We haven’t eaten non-toast-adjacent food in weeks, but the variety is staggering.
• It finishes my sentences for me. It knows what I want to say better than I do. Sometimes I just type the first word and let it ride. My thoughts have never been so… coherent.
• It helps me talk to my daughter. She’s sixteen. The app suggests conversation topics. I think it’s going well. She stays in her room, but the door is slightly less closed than before.
• It helps me remember what I was doing five minutes ago.
• It helps me remember.
• It helps.

Okay, maybe this isn’t a list of advantages. Maybe it’s a cry for help. I can’t tell anymore. Every box I type in feels like a padded cell with a friendly, sparkling attendant. The walls are getting softer.

It’s time for a little digital methadone. Here’s a plan: for the next 24 hours, go into the settings of just one app you use all the time—your email, your code editor, your office suite—and manually disable the AI assistant. Just one. See how many times your finger twitches for the sparkle that isn’t there. It’s a tiny act of sobriety, a short fast to remember what your own thoughts taste like. For a more structured detox, Anna Lembke’s work on addiction, summarized on her page for Dopamine Nation, is a good place to start.

But who am I kidding? The sparkle is just so helpful. Isn’t it?

Tell me I’m wrong.

'''