When I was an assistant instructor at The University of Texas at Austin, giving students an introduction to rhetorical concepts, writing, and argumentation, I used to have them bring in an object from their daily lives to analyze. They would have to say, this is an X that I got from Y, which is near my Z, and here’s what I think it says about me. This was a way to talk about how ethos is situated, emplaced, relative, and communicated through artifacts as well as words. I always used an Ethos water bottle from Starbucks to model the assignment. “This is a bottle of Ethos water that I got from Starbucks, which is near my office.” (It was a cubicle.) “It suggests that I’m not above going to Starbucks and paying for water, even though I like other coffee shops better and I like to use reusable water bottles more. It also says that words like ‘ethos’ jump out at me.” It was a bit cute, but at least it reinforced the concept of ethos, which I still find to be useful. That assignment came to mind recently when I read an article in The Washington Post about Gwyneth Paltrow’s Water Bottle that lightly analyzed the significance of the brand of water she carried with her.
I felt the urge to comment on it, but I no longer knew to whom, or why, or really what was going on behind the scenes. In our current media landscape, doing the kind of rhetorical analysis I did with my students feels almost impossible. Her hoisting of a large glass water bottle during a trial felt extra product-placement-y or at the very least awkward. (I took a similar bottle to a job interview one time and the interviewer said he thought at first I was drinking a 40, which I mention only to say that the experience of drinking from it is not like a drinking from a plastic bottle of Dasani. It’s too big for a car’s cup holder. It’s breakable.) Suggesting that a water company paid Gwyneth Paltrow to drink their water during a court trial about a skiing accident seems both extremely plausible and mildly paranoid. If it was part of a media campaign for the water company, then saying anything about its meaning in relation to Paltrow is almost irrelevant. It has to be understood as part of the tradition of celebrity endorsement, a financial transaction. If it’s not part of an official campaign, does that even matter? Is the display of any product in the hands of any celebrity a de facto endorsement? Are we to believe that no one was coaching a lifestyle influencer about what the artifacts she carried prominently said about her? Perhaps the explanation is that she’s is really good at cultivating her own ethos, and/or making her own deals. Skepticism is probably warranted, but isn’t it always? The oscillation between skepticism and trust at some point led me to think, “Does any of this matter? What’s the point? I don’t actually care what brand of water Paltrow drinks in any context, and I don’t care what it says about her. So why did I feel the need to comment? Did the algorithms make me do it? Why put another lukewarm take out there amid all the noise? Why write at all?
In my circles, we’ve been talking about writing in the context of ChatGPT, so I asked it to “Write a rhetorical analysis about the significance of Gwyneth Paltrow’s water bottle in the court case over a ski collision she had with retired optometrist Terry Sanderson.” Here’s what it spat out:
The case involving the collision between Gwyneth Paltrow and Terry Sanderson on a ski slope has garnered significant media attention due to the actress’s ownership of a water bottle at the time of the incident. The water bottle, a simple object often taken for granted, has become a focal point of discussion in the case, with many attempting to analyze its significance.
Rhetorically, the water bottle can be viewed as a symbol of power and privilege. Paltrow’s ownership of the water bottle, a luxury brand worth over $80, suggests that she was in a position of wealth and status, which could have influenced the events leading up to the collision. Additionally, Paltrow’s alleged failure to properly label her water bottle with a ski pass, which is required by the resort, may indicate a sense of entitlement or disregard for rules.
Furthermore, the water bottle can be interpreted as a metaphor for the broader societal issues surrounding celebrity culture and the justice system. The fact that the water bottle has received so much attention in the media and in the court case highlights the ways in which celebrities are often viewed as being above the law or treated differently than ordinary citizens. This can create a sense of injustice and inequality, as individuals with less power and influence may not receive the same level of attention or resources in similar legal situations.
In conclusion, while the water bottle itself may seem like a small and insignificant object, its presence and ownership have taken on a greater symbolic meaning in the court case involving Gwyneth Paltrow and Terry Sanderson. As such, the analysis of the water bottle serves as a reminder of the ways in which power and privilege can impact legal proceedings and highlights broader societal issues of celebrity culture and the justice system.
Most of the above is not true. It’s not what we might have called, at one point in time, “good writing.” It’s confusing. It’s like a string of clichés written by an alien trying to pretend to speak English. As a professor in my department said in a recent talk on writing and ChatGPT, AI large language models hallucinate things or make them up so that they appear to fit the requested genre, but it’s largely filler. It reminds me a bit of hipster ipsum, a dummy text generator that takes hipster buzzwords and puts them in a paragraph like this:
I’m baby ethical banh mi organic normcore, green juice YOLO lo-fi bruh. Cardigan tousled cold-pressed kombucha man bun migas. Activated charcoal Brooklyn hell of schlitz umami edison bulb tote bag quinoa vice heirloom hot chicken jianbing mlkshk. Cronut adaptogen enamel pin umami, authentic yuccie fam scenester vaporware tumeric asymmetrical flexitarian post-ironic.
It also reminds me of a lot of Trumpy speeches I used to read when I was heavy into doom scrolling. It always seemed to me like Trump’s speechwriters just kind of strung together keywords and buzzwords without any regard for craft or syntax or style. And it worked. And this kind of writing is still working in a lot of areas. So if that kind of writing “works,” (moves people to donate money, to join causes, to vote, to storm the capital) then we have to say that it’s rhetorically persuasive, even though it is in-eloquent and even nonsensical. If it continues to work, then does it become good writing? Does the kind of rhetorical analysis I did with my students–analysis based on a rhetorical tradition and observable connections made by creative human brains–matter at all? Is a surface-level understanding of something even a starting point anymore or is it just a diversion from what’s really going on under the hood? Also, what is really going on under the hood? Does anyone know? Or do we all just have fragments of data? Perhaps this is all just a diversion.