If you're Chinese, ChatGPT has probably offered to 'steadily catch' you at least once. But what why does it keep saying that? And why is 我会稳稳地接住你 a meme (instead of making people mad)... and by the way, will Chinese college students boo at their graduations?

Zeyi Yang is a senior writer at WIRED, and his article was the inspiration for this. See below for more of his work!

oh, and welcome to 🕹️WHAT'S THIS BUTTON DO?🕹️ a series where I get experts to explain technology to the rest of us. this is episode two. hope you dig.

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== sources/references == =====================

Zeyi’s article: https://wired.com/story/chatgpt-chinese-catch-you-steadily-sycophancy/

find Zeyi on bsky: https://bsky.app/profile/zeyiyang.bsky.social OpenAI launches a new image generation model: wired.com/story/openai-beefs-up-chatgpts-image-generation-model/ openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-images-2-0/

Concurrent, the newsletter Zeyi mentioned: https://afraw.substack.com

A sample question of someone asking about 'catch steadily': AI 说的「稳稳地接住你」到底是什么意思？

https://www.zhihu.com/question/2028251818384192677

📝 On punctuation in other languages 📝

Efecto ChatGPT: ya empezamos a hablar todos como robots https://elpais.com/ideas/2025-10-19/ya-empezamos-a-hablar-como-robots.html

The ChatGPT effect: We’ve all started talking like robots https://english.elpais.com/technology/2025-11-01/the-chatgpt-effect-weve-all-started-talking-like-robots.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com

「それChatGPTに書いてもらったでしょ？」と思ってしまう瞬間 (The moment when I think "did you have ChatGPT write that for you?") https://note.com/megumi_log/n/n8c5a518bbc8d

AIは嫌いじゃない。でもAIっぽい文章は読めない (I don't hate AI. But I can't read AI-style writing.) https://note.com/shoppukun/n/n75b48abc390b catch yall on the next one.