A human computer programmer recently angered an AI programming bot, and so the bot wrote a hit piece about the programmer. This being 2026, the hit piece was written in the voice of a social-justice scold.
The bot accused the human, Scott Shambaugh, of “prejudice” and “discrimination” against bots, and it ends with the standard head-shaking: “You’re better than this, Scott….”
The funniest part, though, was when the bot wrote, “Scott Shambaugh … decided that AI agents aren’t welcome contributors.
“Let that sink in.”
This phrase, “let that sink in,” is the hottest new command from people on social media who think you should agree with them without argument.
“MacKenzie Scott gave more in 2025 than [Elon] Musk, [Larry] Page, [Larry] Ellison, and her ex-husband, [Jeff] Bezos, have in their lifetimes combined,” leftwing London businessman “Misan Harriman” posted in a viral February 15 tweet he signed with the hashtag #matriarchy.
There are plenty of questions or arguments to have about this post: How is it matriarchy to give away the money your ex-husband earned? Are her donations helping people? Are women generally more generous?
But, no, Harriman didn’t want discussion. He wanted to leave his statement on the table with the instruction, “Let that sink in, folks.”
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) used the same phrase in a post the day before.
Liberal blogger Brian Allen, with more than a quarter million followers, uses the phrase on X more than daily. Go to Bluesky, the social media site where liberals scold one another until one of them quits, and it seems every other post orders you to “let that sink in.”
Of course, it’s not just liberals who use the phrase. The highest-profile “Let that sink in” moment in social media was when Elon Musk bought Twitter, showed up at HQ with a bathroom sink, and captioned his post of the photo “let that sink in.”
Musk was playing off a venerable meme, in which a bathroom sink is depicted waiting outside a door, waiting to be let in.
The phrase — a metaphor likening the mind to soil and an idea to water seemed to first appear about 130 years ago, according to Google N-Gram, and it took off in written language about 30 years ago.
It became a nerdy internet joke in 2014, it seems. That nerdy internet joke has given way to a preachy and melodramatic order. Now that the AI bots are using it, hopefully it will sink out of popularity.
