Silly but True

The Inspiration Behind the Devil is in the Em Dash

First I want to address the elephant in the room. “The Devil Is in the Em Dash” is a silly story, and I know that. It started as a throwaway line to a tech friend while we were laughing about the AI panic: “It’s a high-tech satanic panic.” That was enough. The internet already knows how to escalate fear. Whisper, rumor, headline, torches. Add a spooky punctuation mark and suddenly the em dash is a gateway to hell.

Before Substack, I tried fiction on Reddit. Because it has such a friendly and welcoming culture. On paper it made sense: big audiences, lots of communities, plenty of feedback. My brilliant plan was to drop the piece and then reply in character, each comment a little more “possessed.” It needed an active thread to work. The crickets packed their tiny bags and moved with me to Substack.

When I started planning releases here, this idea wasn’t really a story. It was closer to a warning label with jokes. No plot. Barely a character. Still, I kept laughing, and Substack felt like the right place to try it. Writers love em dashes, and writers are the most likely to be accused of using AI because they write too clean or too fast or too often. Perfect target audience.

I stopped waiting for comments and built an actual arc. Merger as it might be. I mapped four posts to the legendary “stages of demonic possession”. invitation, oppression, obsession, possession, exorcism. If you squint, it’s all there.

I wasn’t trying to scare anyone. I wanted the grin you get when a metaphor snaps into place. Em dashes as a stand-in for the way we project fear onto tools. AI as a mirror we don’t like. The punchline is that the “demon” sounds exactly like us, just louder. If it made you laugh, great. If it made you roll your eyes, fair. This isn’t my main lane. If you’re here as a paid reader, you already know I usually give you weirder, more psychological fiction.

So why publish the silly thing at all? Because silly is useful. It lets me play with the same themes I hit in heavier work—creation as confession, tech as amplifier, without dragging you through a swamp. It sharpens timing. It tests whether an idea has legs. And it takes a little sting out of the panic.

Thanks for reading while I swung at a lighter pitch. I’ll get back to the strange, the psychological, the haunted. But every so often, I’m going to summon a punctuation goblin, let it run around, and send it home with a glass of water. Stories don’t need permission. They need a spark, a plan, and a writer willing to look a little ridiculous. I can do ridiculous. I probably won’t do it often, but I can.

Then again…

Is it really that ridiculous when you think about the fact that multiple evangelical groups have already claims AI is satanic? Or am I now a reporter?