# Manufactured relatability Part of [The AI Tells Index](https://feedsquad.com/ai-tells). A tell signals low effort. It does not identify an author. Skilled writers produce every shape listed here, some of them daily, and automated detectors misread those writers for it at rates measured above 60 percent on non-native English prose. Nothing in this index proves that a machine wrote anything. Read an entry as one piece of evidence to weigh against the false-positive notes printed beside it. ## Facts - Id: manufactured-relatability - Category: Rhetorical and discourse (rhetorical) - Subcategory: performed-intimacy - Also known as: We've all been there, claimed shared experience - Status: Active. Currently signals low-effort writing. - Severity: low - Evidence grade: community-observed (named by practitioners, no formal measurement exists) - Languages: en - Added: 2026-08-15 - Updated: 2026-08-17 - Page: https://feedsquad.com/ai-tells/manufactured-relatability ## Description A claim about the reader, asserted as shared fact. slop-lint carries the reply-register forms and vale-ai-tells ships a rule for the family. Separate from the false-vulnerability entry, which performs something about the writer. This one performs something about the audience, and it is checkable in a way the other is not: either the piece names the audience it claims to know, or it does not. ## Why it reads as machine-written The sentence manufactures a group and puts the reader inside it before any argument starts. It costs one clause and it flatters. Advice columnists write to a readership that genuinely shares the experience and can usually name it in the same paragraph, which is the difference worth looking for. ## Detection Type: deterministic (a regular expression, run as written) Scope: sentence ECMAScript regular expression. The build validator compiles it and tests it against this entry's own specimens. ```regex \b(?:we(?:['’]ve|\s+have)\s+all\s+been\s+there|we(?:['’]ve|\s+have)\s+all\s+(?:felt|done|seen|made)\s+(?:it|this|that)|if\s+you(?:['’]re|\s+are)\s+(?:anything\s+)?like\s+me|you\s+know\s+the\s+(?:feeling|drill))\b ``` Flags: gi ## Examples Constructed specimens. Written for this index. Never quoted from anyone's posts. ### Specimen 1 Before, exhibiting the tell: > We've all been there. The deadline moves, the brief changes, and suddenly it is Friday afternoon, which everyone in this line of work recognises including the people who insist that they do not. After, repaired: > Half our client briefs changed after kickoff last quarter. The two that did not were both from clients who had run the same campaign the year before. Note: Figures in this repair are invented for the specimen. ### Specimen 2 Before, exhibiting the tell: > If you're anything like me, you have tried and abandoned four different systems. After, repaired: > I abandoned three systems in 2024 and kept the fourth, because it survived a week when I was ill and never opened a laptop. ## False positives Who legitimately writes this way. Advice columnists, teachers, support agents and anyone writing to a defined community are addressing readers who really do share the experience, and naming it is the point of the genre. Comedians build sets on it. Newsletters with a single well-known audience use the phrase as shorthand for something their readers wrote in about last week. The check is whether the piece names the audience it claims to know, or shows any evidence of having met it: a reply quoted, a survey, a support ticket, a room. Where the writer can point to the group, the sentence is reporting. Where the group exists only in that sentence, it was invented to hold the reader. ## Model attribution Unattributed. slop-lint records the forms as reply-register output without naming a product, and vale-ai-tells does not separate model families. ## Platform notes - threads: Meta has defined and demoted engagement bait since December 2017 and its 2025 and 2026 originality posts never mention AI. A relatability opener is not engagement bait by that definition unless it asks for a reaction. ## Sources 1. slop-lint, social-reply-register molds https://github.com/eric-sabe/slop-lint (tier: community; accessed 2026-08-14) 2. vale-ai-tells, 111 machine-checkable rules https://github.com/tbhb/vale-ai-tells (tier: community; accessed 2026-08-14) ## Status history Ids are permanent. A retired tell keeps its id and its page. - 2026-08-15, Active: Opened as active at low severity. Two practitioner lists carry the family and neither publishes a rate. The phrases are also ordinary spoken English, which is why the rule is restricted to four fixed openers. ## License CC BY 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Attribution: The AI Tells Index, feedsquad.com/ai-tells Reuse the data, including commercially. Keep the attribution line. --- Dataset version 1.0.0. Schema version 1. Part of [FeedSquad](https://feedsquad.com). 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