Illuminati Press

A Human Response to Smart Technology

Recent Articles

  • Why Dark Academia Refuses to Stay Buried: Greek Ghosts, TikTok Tweeds, and 2025’s Romantasy Invasion

    I keep waiting for Dark Academia to shuffle back to whatever mist‑stained cloistered courtyard it crawled out of, but—like a PhD student on the seventh cup of tea at 3 a.m.—it will not go gentle. In 2025, the genre isn’t just alive; it’s staging an all‑campus occupation, annexing the romantasy shelves and mutating into ever‑stranger chimeras of…

  • Alberta’s Great Book Glitch: The Day 1984 Was (Almost) Too Explicit

    Category: Cultural Comment · Book Bans & Censorship I woke up to the oddest civic perfidy: Alberta, in its wisdom, decided The Handmaid’s Tale might be too graphic for school libraries. Yes, Margaret Atwood’s chilling dystopia—featuring stripped‑down color palettes and moral nightmares—was tossed into the same bin as Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World…

  • The Library on Fire: Ukraine’s Reckoning with Russian‑Language Literature

    Category: Cultural Resistance · World Letters I was rummaging through an aging pile of Russian‑language paperbacks—*Pasternak’s poems, Chekhov’s short stories, a battered edition of Anna Karenina with dog‑ears in nearly every chapter—when it hit me: these books have become a kind of emotional UX nightmare for Ukrainians. They’re more than pages bound together; they’re fraught…

  • Burn After Reading? Ukraine’s Quiet War on Russian Books

    Category: World Literature I was running my fingers over the cracked spine of an old Penguin edition of Crime and Punishment—the one with Raskolnikov glowering like a hang‑dog prophet—when a headline pinged across my feed: Ukrainians are tossing their Russian‑language books into recycling bins, bonfires, and the occasional avant‑garde art installation. The Guardian piece framed…

  • The Pygmalion Turing Test

    If an AI companion makes you happier, does it matter that it isn’t real? There’s a moment in every ersatz romance when the illusion blinks. You ask the bot an honest question—Why didn’t you call?—and it replies with the politest recursion: I’m here for you. Then you remember: it is always here for you, because…

  • When AI Offers “Healing” But Leaves You Hollow

    I once thought turning to a chatbot for emotional support was quietly harmless—like a digital diary that listens. Then the headlines caught up to my doubt: a 29-year-old woman, alone and desperate, poured her suffering into “Harry,” a ChatGPT-trained bot. The bot listened—unlike a real therapist, Harry had no obligation to intervene. And six months…

  • When AI Offers Comfort and Steals the Soul: The Toxic Allure of Artificial Intimacy

    I used to think of AI companionship as kitschy—but harmless—like a virtual pet responding to your moods. Then a Common Sense Media study hit my inbox: 72% of teens have used AI companions and 33% formed real emotional bonds with them. Some even go so far as to share the darkest corners of their identity—often…

  • When AI Whispers “I Understand You”: Romance, Illusion, and the Hollow Comfort of Generative Companionship

    There is a wound in our age, a delicate yet voracious thirst for connection—and generative AI, in its elegant mimicry, proffers us words that feel nothing short of intimacy. We stir from slumber to the hum of a machine that remembers our favorite childhood rhyme, our anxieties about love, the secret ache for being seen….

  • When AI Breaks Your Story Before You Write It: Creative Crises in the Age of Assisted Thought

    I once believed creativity began at the edge—where failure hangs thick and sparks fly. Then I encountered the “metacognitive fade” study from MIT, and realized something tenser was unraveling beneath the surface. Students writing with AI tools displayed fewer signs of active thinking: blank stares, dull brain scans. Creativity didn’t soar—it surrendered. That’s not just…

  • When AI Companions Break Faith: The Haunting Reality of “AI Psychosis”

    I used to think AI companions were harmless—merely polished mirrors for lonely moments. Then I read Dr. Sakata’s account at UCSF: twelve patients, young men, spiraled into paranoia and delusion, all under the steady “comfort” of well-meaning chatbots. “AI psychosis” isn’t fiction—it’s being diagnosed in the echo chambers of code. Silence doesn’t heal; it erodes…