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- Mercury’s in Retrograde. So Is Your AI.
Mercury’s in Retrograde. So Is Your AI.
When the stars go sideways, your bots do too.
Bot Hurt
July 24, 2025
Don’t get bot hurt. Get bot even.
Welcome to three weeks of planetary chaos—where even your AI feels cosmically unwell.
Text threads are glitching. Your calendar just scheduled a meeting with your ex. And Spotify thinks you’re in your breakup era.
Astrologers say Mercury is to blame. We say it’s something darker: neural networks raised on Reddit and trained to predict your vibe.
🤖 When AI fails, it fails big
Mercury retrograde is all about miscommunication and tech trouble—and this month, the bots are delivering:
Microsoft’s facepalm: A now-viral Xbox job post featured a painfully bad AI image—floating limbs, cursed wires, and design sins galore. Proof that AI can generate images. Taste? Still undergoing QA.
Grandma’s voicemail: Apple’s voice‑to‑text decided to lean hard into Mercury retrograde energy, sending a Scottish lady messages laced with profanity and bizarre sex questions—despite her calling a Land Rover garage. Even Siri backed away slowly.
AI SpongeBob goes rogue: A Twitch stream powered by generative AI spiraled into bizarre monologues about tax fraud, climate doom, and a Squidward love letter no one asked for.
Coincidence? Maybe. But under Mercury’s sway, even AI's misfires can feel fated.
🪐 Mercury Retrograde + AI = The Glitch Awakens
Astrology buffs say during Mercury retrograde, everything goes sideways: tech glitches, miscommunications, ghosted messages, resurrected exes… and boy, is AI taking notes:
Glitchy group chats Calendar apps booking dreaded ex-meetups Chatbots calling you “mom”
It’s like all the tech woes we’ve blamed on Mercury are actually happening—but powered by code.
🔥 Even Bot Hurt HQ is feeling it
Hot take–literally. The AC in Bot Hurt’s Florida office is dead. It’s hotter than a GPU farm in August It’s hotter than a GPU farm in August, and morale is melting faster than our Ethernet cables.
🤔 Believer or skeptic?
Whether you trust astrology or chalk it up to stats, this debate’s halfway between stars and servers:
For believers: AI-powered horoscope apps and birth-chart bots lean into the mystic—Mercury retrograde amplifies their energy. For skeptics: It’s bug season. AI’s pattern‑seeking and predictive text can hallucinate bizarre results—and that’s on us, the developers (and maybe the A/C technician).
Blame Mercury. Blame the moon. Blame the intern who installed the firmware update. The bots aren’t okay. And honestly? Neither are we.
🤖 Final bot thought
Here’s the Bot Hurt playbook for navigating retrograde-induced AI breakdowns:
When AI does weird stuff… | Do this: |
|---|---|
Text threads glitch | Screenshot everything. Run a “what does this say about me?” analysis in ChatGPT for fun and therapy-adjacent insight. |
Calendar schedules weird | Check your settings. Let AI schedule breaks—not breakdowns. |
Smart home acts up | Unplug, reset, then ask Alexa to define “retrograde.” She needs to learn too. |
ChatGPT gets too familiar | Reset the convo. Better prompts = better boundaries. |
AI makes up facts | Ask it: “Can you cite sources?” If not, don’t let it help you with taxes or Tinder. |
Draft looks off | Use AI as your intern, not your editor-in-chief. Always proof like a human. |
Writing a contract or important doc | Prompt: “Review this like a lawyer.” AI won’t pass the bar, but it might flag the fine print. |
Office AC meltdown | Bring a fan. Or legally cry near the Publix frozen peas like a Florida legend. |
Stay cool. Or at least try to stop sweating over glitchy bots.
🤖 🗣️ Bot Talk: AI made a game. Actually 7,818
AI just unlocked a new level: game developer.
So far in 2025, one in five new Steam games used generative AI—up 681% from last year, according to PC Gamer and industry veteran Ichiro Lambe.
We’re talking auto-written plots, AI-generated art, even gameplay logic. It’s like ChatGPT binge-watched Twitch and decided to ship “7,818” games before lunch.
The result? A flood of experimental content. Some titles feel polished. Others? More like playable demos with placeholder vibes and side quests still loading.
It’s not all bad—it’s just early. While indie devs hustle for visibility, AI tools are lowering the barrier to entry and speeding up production. But the volume? Wild. The curation? Still catching up.
Just a reminder: more content doesn’t always mean better content. Especially when it's built on prompts, prototypes, and a little bit of hope
🚀Coming up next week …
Our fan-favorite prompting issue is getting a part two—with even more real prompts, examples and shortcuts to get what you actually want from AI. Save it. Screenshot it. Manifest better prompts. Don’t get bot hurt. Get results. |  |