Knitting bullshit

Knitting Bullshit Apr 29, 2026 — by Kate Davies Designs in Posts of Note

My theme today is Knitting Bullshit and before I begin, I had better explain to you what I understand bullshit to be. In what follows, “bullshit” is used very much in the sense that Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt describes in his seminal essay, On Bullshit (1986; 2005). For Frankfurt, bullshit is an utterance with “a lack of connection to concern with truth” and an “indifference to how things really are.”

我今天的主题是“编织废话”（Knitting Bullshit）。在开始之前，我最好先解释一下我对“废话”（bullshit）的理解。在下文中，“废话”一词的使用很大程度上借鉴了普林斯顿哲学家哈里·法兰克福（Harry Frankfurt）在其开创性论文《论废话》（On Bullshit, 1986; 2005）中的定义。对法兰克福而言，废话是一种“与对真理的关切缺乏联系”，且“对事物真相如何漠不关心”的言论。

From the off, Frankfurt tells us, it is important to understand that bullshit is, in its peculiarly execrable nature, materially different to a lie. While a liar displays an underlying respect for the truth in the very act of intentionally distorting it, “the essence of bullshit”, Frankfurt writes “is not that it is false but that it is phony.” For Frankfurt, then, bullshit, is discourse from which incidental matters like truth and reality have been completely hollowed out and replaced by performance and simulation.

法兰克福一开始就告诉我们，理解“废话”那极其恶劣的本质，并将其与“谎言”区分开来至关重要。虽然撒谎者在故意歪曲事实的行为中，依然表现出对真理潜在的尊重，但法兰克福写道：“废话的本质不在于它是假的，而在于它是虚假的（phony）。”因此，在法兰克福看来，废话是一种话语，其中真理和现实等附带事项已被完全掏空，取而代之的是表演和模拟。

Unfortunately, as none of us can fail to be aware, we live in an age of bullshit; a moment when the bullshitter-in-chief sits in the White House daily purveying what Frankfurt, before his death in 2023, memorably referred to as “farcically unalloyed bullshit”. You’ll no doubt be pleased to hear, though, that the bullshit I am going to talk about today is of a very specific rather than a general kind: yes, what concerns me here is knitting bullshit.

不幸的是，我们所有人都无法忽视，我们正生活在一个“废话时代”；在这个时代，最高级别的“废话制造者”每天坐在白宫里，兜售着法兰克福在2023年去世前曾令人难忘地称之为“荒诞且纯粹的废话”。不过，你们无疑会很高兴听到，我今天要谈论的废话是一种非常具体的类型，而非泛泛而谈：没错，我在这里关心的是“编织废话”。

I have been thinking about knitting bullshit now for quite some time, but I was alerted to a particular type of it while listening to Jamie Bartlett’s excellent series Everything is Fake and Nobody Cares (available wherever you get your podcasts). The first episode includes an interview with Anne McHealy, head of product at Inception Point AI, a podcasting company founded by Jeanine Wright, formerly COO at Wondery. Until its dissolution (by Amazon in 2025 at the cost of 110 jobs), Wondery was known for producing high quality, human-authored, narrative content.

我思考“编织废话”已经有一段时间了，但直到听了杰米·巴特利特（Jamie Bartlett）的优秀系列节目《一切都是假的，没人关心》（Everything is Fake and Nobody Cares，可在各大播客平台收听），我才注意到其中一种特殊的类型。第一集采访了 Inception Point AI 的产品负责人安妮·麦希利（Anne McHealy），该公司由 Wondery 前首席运营官珍妮·赖特（Jeanine Wright）创立。在2025年被亚马逊解散（导致110人失业）之前，Wondery 一直以制作高质量、由人类创作的叙事内容而闻名。

Inception Point AI, on the other hand, is a slop factory employing just 8 people which, according to Anne, publishes “about 3000 podcast episodes per week, hosted by AI personalities.” Anne tells Jamie, that, to date, Inception Point AI’s podcasts have accumulated “12 million lifetime downloads. And we’re averaging about 750,000 downloads a month.” Stunned by these extraordinary figures, Jamie asks Anne about the editorial oversight of the content which she produces. Does she, or any of her colleagues, actually listen to any of these 3000 weekly episodes? With only 8 employees, who on earth has time to check the accuracy or quality of these podcasts?

另一方面，Inception Point AI 则是一家仅有8名员工的“垃圾内容工厂”。据安妮称，该公司每周发布“约3000集由 AI 人格主持的播客”。安妮告诉杰米，迄今为止，Inception Point AI 的播客已经积累了“1200万次总下载量，平均每月约75万次下载”。杰米被这些惊人的数字震惊了，他询问安妮关于其内容编辑监督的情况。她或她的同事真的会去听这每周3000集节目中的任何一集吗？只有8名员工，到底谁有时间去检查这些播客的准确性或质量呢？

The answer, is, of course, that no one checks or edits the podcast content– but, Anne tells Jamie blithely, this really doesn’t matter because the topics under discussion are so low stakes: “most of our content sits squarely in topics that aren’t life or death necessarily. So gardening, for example, knitting, cooking, these things we can afford to be wrong. And it’s not necessarily the end of the world.”

答案当然是：没有人检查或编辑这些播客内容。但安妮轻描淡写地告诉杰米，这其实并不重要，因为讨论的话题风险很低：“我们的大部分内容都属于那些不一定关乎生死的话题。比如园艺、编织、烹饪，这些事情我们错得起。这并不一定是世界末日。”

Listening to this apologist for automated arbitrage with a kind of fascinated horror, I found myself pulled up short. Knitting, you say? Not life or death, you say? Who are you kidding, Anne? So, of course I went to listen to Inception Point AI’s “knitting” podcast. I heartily encourage you not to do the same, not least because this joyless experience would be contributing to the slop factory’s jaw-dropping (and depressing) number of downloads while simultaneously serving you ads for accounting software and small business insurance (your tailored marketing will, of course, be personal to you).

带着一种着迷的恐惧听着这位自动化套利辩护者的言论，我感到一阵错愕。你说编织？你说不关乎生死？安妮，你在开什么玩笑？所以，我当然去听了 Inception Point AI 的“编织”播客。我衷心建议你不要这样做，不仅因为这种毫无乐趣的体验会为这家垃圾工厂贡献令人瞠目（且沮丧）的下载量，同时还会向你推送会计软件和小企业保险的广告（当然，这些定制营销是针对你个人的）。

No, I have now done that work for you; those few sad hours are forever lost to me, and I am here to tell you that this ai generated knitting “content” is just as bad as you imagine. Worse than you imagine. Much, much worse. Let’s take the first episode on Knitting Through the Ages, for example. The podcast opens by promising to “examine the cultural significance of knitting… the way this simple act of looping yarn has brought people together across generations and continents. We’ll be delving into the juicy details and quirky anecdotes that make the story of knitting truly captivating,” your husky-voiced AI host promises, “… from ancient Egyptian socks to the rise of knitting as a global phenomenon, we’ll uncover the hidden stories and colourful characters that have shaped this beloved craft.”

不，我已经替你完成了这项工作；那几个悲伤的小时永远地离我而去了，我在这里要告诉你，这些 AI 生成的编织“内容”和你想象的一样糟糕。甚至比你想象的还要糟糕。糟糕得多。以关于《编织的历史》（Knitting Through the Ages）的第一集为例。播客开篇承诺将“审视编织的文化意义……这种简单的绕线行为如何将不同世代和大陆的人们联系在一起。我们将深入探讨那些让编织故事真正引人入胜的精彩细节和奇闻轶事，”你那声音沙哑的 AI 主持人承诺道，“……从古埃及袜子到编织作为一种全球现象的兴起，我们将揭开塑造这一深受喜爱的手工艺背后的隐藏故事和多彩人物。”

Indeed, the host does go on to talk about a pair of ancient Egyptian socks, before leaping forward to a discussion of the contemporary global knitting community … but there is nothing in-between. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Yes, that’s right: the entire history of knitting is encompassed by a pair of Egyptian socks and Ravelry. But if these two huge historical milestones are apparently the only available topics then of what, pray, is the rest of the episode composed?

事实上，主持人确实接着谈到了那双古埃及袜子，然后直接跳跃到对当代全球编织社区的讨论……但中间什么都没有。什么都没有。空空如也。没错，就是这样：整个编织史被概括为一双埃及袜子和 Ravelry（编织社区网站）。但如果这两个巨大的历史里程碑显然是仅有的可用话题，那么请问，这一集的其余部分是由什么组成的呢？

I sat through 15 minutes which sounded as if the AI had been trained on a decade’s worth of poorly-composed yarn marketing material, and was spewing it back out at me as a syrupy word salad. As I listened, I could feel my grey matter dissolving into a kind of marshmallow soup as each sentence made its own kind of inane, sweet sense, while saying precisely nothing. So far, so slop. Thanks so much, Inception AI, for such an insightful episode covering, as promised, the whole of knitting’s long, difficult, contested history: a story involving the invisible labour and creativity of women, the exploitation of that creativity and labour, industrialisation, ingenuity, resistance, solidarity … oh, you’re not telling that story, I’m so sorry. Let’s swiftly move on to the episode about knitting design… . The Art of Knitting Pattern Design begins with another hollow marshmallow preçis that seems to promise so very much: “Join us as we unravel the creative process from the initial spark of an idea to the fi

我忍受了15分钟，听起来就像是 AI 接受了十年份写得极差的毛线营销材料的训练，然后把它像糖浆般的“词汇沙拉”一样喷向我。听着听着，我能感觉到我的灰质正在溶解成一种棉花糖汤，每一句话虽然听起来有一种愚蠢而甜蜜的逻辑，却什么实质内容都没说。到目前为止，全是垃圾。非常感谢 Inception AI，提供了如此深刻的一集，正如承诺的那样涵盖了编织漫长、艰难且充满争议的全部历史：一个涉及女性隐形劳动与创造力、对这种创造力与劳动的剥削、工业化、独创性、抵抗、团结的故事……哦，你没讲那个故事，真抱歉。让我们迅速跳到关于编织设计的那一集……《编织图案设计艺术》（The Art of Knitting Pattern Design）以另一段空洞的棉花糖式摘要开头，似乎承诺了很多：“加入我们，一起揭开从最初的灵感火花到……”