The overusage of “It’s not A, it’s B” or “It’s not about A, but it’s about B” is driving me crazy.
One Redditor bans this rhetorical structure from ChatGPT and Claude outputs.
Deep Dive
A Reddit user is calling out the overuse of "it's not A, it's not B, it's C" and similar negative parallel structures. They report seeing this formulaic phrasing everywhere—from Instagram captions to news articles to YouTube videos. To avoid it, they now include a prompt in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude banning all "not X but Y" structures, and wonder if anyone else feels the same way.
Key Points
- Reddit user plantbasedbrownie calls out the 'It's not A, it's B' structure as a formulaic trend in AI and human content.
- They report adding a specific prompt to ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude to ban this pattern, claiming it works.
- The viral post has generated widespread agreement about AI's tendency to overuse predictable rhetorical devices.
Why It Matters
Shows users are actively tuning AI outputs to avoid cliché patterns, pushing for more natural communication.