[Ads-l] WOTY watch: "meat proxy"

[Ben Zimmer]

I also thought of "meatspace" as well as a couple of other "meat" terms
that have come up here:

"meatbag" (robot's epithet for a human on "Futurama")
https://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2009-August/092085.html
"meatmobile" (retronym for a human-driven car)
https://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2016-August/143702.html

On Wed, Aug 26, 2026 at 12:35 AM Emily Gordon <
0000205244c4ee9d-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:

> And a “meat suit” is a human body in early internet (perhaps earlier?)
> parlance; “meatspace” is messy real life in a meatsuit in 3D, as opposed to
> cyberspace.
>
> On Tue, Aug 25, 2026 at 9:24 PM ADSGarson O'Toole <
> 00001aa1be50b751-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:
>
> > This use of "meat" was probably influenced by a phrase attributed to
> > AI pioneer Marvin Minsky:
> >
> > Quote Origin: The Brain Is Merely a Meat Machine
> > https://quoteinvestigator.com/2020/05/06/machines/
> >
> > Garson
> >
> > On Tue, Aug 25, 2026 at 11:26 PM Ben Zimmer
> > <00001aae0710f4b7-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:
> > >
> > > Via "sf-isms: the lexicon of San Francisco tech slang":
> > >
> > > ---
> > > https://sfisms.org/meat-proxy
> > >
> > > Meat proxy
> > >
> > > A person who forwards AI-generated text, code, or other output without
> > > reading, understanding, or validating it. The person acts only as a
> relay
> > > between the AI system and the intended recipient.
> > >
> > > "Please summarize what Claude found instead of making me review a wall
> of
> > > text from a meat proxy."
> > >
> > > Origin
> > > The earliest matching use located was an anonymous March 31, 2026 blog
> > post
> > > titled "meat-based llm proxies." It described people who feed messages
> to
> > > an LLM and copy its responses back to others, saying that the recipient
> > was
> > > effectively communicating with the model "via a meat proxy."
> > >
> > > Niklas Gruhn popularized the shorter label with his August 3, 2026
> essay
> > > "Don't be a meat proxy," focused on unread Claude output in Slack, pull
> > > requests, and group chats. Simon Willison amplified it the same day,
> and
> > > Gruhn's post subsequently reached the Hacker News front page with more
> > than
> > > 1,800 points and 700 comments. The phrase then spread widely on X,
> > > including a viral post by Josh tried coding that received roughly 4,000
> > > likes and 490,000 views.
> > > ---
>

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