ai psychosis is a term i'm certain many of us have heard at this point in time.

and sitting here in my desk today, once again bored at work, i started asking myself, "why is this everywhere now?"

i guess i'll point something out before i continue yapping:

• previously-medical terminology has certainly been turned into reductive slurs in the past (think retardation, idiot, moron, etc.)

this is nothing new. words unhooked from their clinical referents and pressed into service as a status move.

but to me the new frequent use of this term is alarming!

like let's think about it for a second:

• in a clinic, claiming someone is in psychosis is a calculated claim about reality-testing failing, made by someone with information and who has earned the right to speak on the subject matter, who has stakes involved.
• in a forum reply or comment section, you get to skip all of that work. it's become a way to invalidate someone without even engaging with their point because it reclassifies the person into "a patient whose output i can dismiss".

the content of your post stops mattering the moment you've been grouped into a category, which is why i think people are abusing it so much as a rhetorical move? in one, single word, the speaker exempts themselves from the labor of actually having to try and understand you.

like. it's an epistemic weapon in a sense, not a medical point: it's about who has to take whom seriously. and when did we all become natural arbiters of truth? haha. feels a little egoistic idk.

the worst part, to me, is how BECAUSE it's a medical claim, it launders contempt into concern! "you're a fucking idiot" is naked, raw, and honestly respectable because it's aggression but at least it's honest. "you're obviously in psychosis, please get help" wears the fucking skin of care while doing the opposite and dismissing any raised point entirely.

the worst part? you object to it and get labeled as "someone who rejects the helping hand". it's contempt with an alibi, which is a much more efficient weapon than an insult. basically it's the go-to Redditor response to sound intellectual while avoiding any of the work that earns that status.

and like with the previously-mentioned terms, they keep the authority of their medical origin but shed all the rigor that led to the terminology forming in the first place. like a backwards euphemism treadmill, where the diagnostic impact IS the thing being excavated for rhetorical power.

so i guess my point is this: "psychosis" is just the current term getting processed and it's because of "AI" (llms) putting it in the spotlight. i think the concerns themselves are marked and valid. i think the flagrant use of intentionally-demeaning terminology isn't.

TL;DR: i think the word "psychosis" is currently being abused as a conversational power play, and also the condition it originally points to is still relevant, genuinely probably more than ever before.

the problem is that people think that using the first fact makes them immune to the second. why should it?