I'm the Guy Who Destroys Antique Books After We Scan Them into Our Company's AI

The piece opens with a real reference: a Guardian report about a copyright lawsuit against Anthropic by book authors, which revealed that unsealed court files showed the company buying physical books, slicing off spines, scanning pages, and pulping the remains—a practice called 'destructive scanning' that Anthropic sought to keep quiet.

The satirical narrator, 'Book Doug,' describes his job as 'Senior Legacy Media Completion Specialist.' He details the process: books arrive, spines are sheared off, pages are run through enormous scanners so the AI can absorb every sentence, and the remains are sent to his cart. He then feeds them through industrial shredders and a burn pit, celebrating efficiency and scale. He notes that older books contain handwritten notes from 1894 that he ignores because they're not 'integral to performance KPIs.'

Doug rationalizes his work by saying rarity is just an 'inventory problem' and that making a unique book 'infinitely reproducible' while destroying the original is the efficient move. He describes people relaxing as he explains it, with their shoulders slumping and sometimes making 'a wordless rasping'—paralleling the sound the books make as they're destroyed. The piece ends mid-word, enhancing the satirical tone.