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

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Interesting references, Emily and Ben. I received a request to explore
the following elaborate statement:

Quote Origin: You’re a Ghost Driving a Meat Coated Skeleton Made from Stardust
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2022/10/13/ghost-stardust/

Here is a sampling of precursor phrases with dates from twitter:

2011 Apr 28: I just feel like I’m a ghost in a heavy meat suit
2012 Jan 29: im just a brain driving a meat suit around life
2012 Jul 30: skeleton wearing a meat-suit
2012 Aug 05: people are still basically just skeletons coated in filthy meat
2012 Oct 29: Ain’t nothin’ but a ghost driving a meat suit
2013 Jan 31: You’re a ghost driving a meat coated skeleton made from
stardust, what do you have to be scared of?

Also, there is a famous short story by Terry Bisson titled "They're
Made Out of Meat" published in OMNI magazine in April 1991."They"
referred to humans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They%27re_Made_Out_of_Meat

For people who hesitate to follow links: Computer scientist Joseph
Weizenbaum employed the phrase "the brain is merely a meat machine" in
a May 12, 1972, article in the journal Science. Weizenbaum attributed
the phrase to "one of my esteemed colleagues." Weizenbaum revealed in
2008 that the colleague was Marvin Minsky.

Garson

On Wed, Aug 26, 2026 at 12:40 AM Ben Zimmer
<00001aae0710f4b7-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:
>
> 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.
> > > > ---
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org