Yi Zhou and the Tone-Deaf Triumph of the AI Word Salad (A Book Review)

Never-ending filler…

Over the last few months, we’ve all witnessed a morbidly interesting character study of Yi Zhou. We saw it all: performative victimhood while supporting sexual predators, smear campaigns, manipulation, endless lies and false narratives, narcissism, attempts at intimidation and even an attempted call for a manhunt on yours truly!

I’m sure, just like me, you keep asking yourself: what the absolute hell is wrong with her? What possesses a person to act like this & never learn from her mistakes?

Could a book written by Zhou shine a light on the mysterious psyche of this trainwreck? A book advertised as “a memoir”, her “research”, a “survival toolkit” for victims of abuse and an “educational guide”.

I decided to try it out, got a kindle version of Yi Zhou’s “The Art of Triumph: Trauma, Sex and Art” for $12 on Amazon and got ready to get educated and enlightened… And if you think a book about a healing journey written by an influencer would be an insufferable pompous mess… You’re really overestimating it! It was so much worse than I imagined.

The 75-page book took me less than 40 minutes to finish! All because only 4-5 pages throughout the book aren’t absolutely dominated by a random AI-generated illustration. We’re talking 80% of a page taken up by a picture. Not some diagram providing useful info, no! Just a picture. And it’s not the “good”, believable AI that was used, it’s the type that routinely “melts” faces, leading to illustrations like this:

At one point, nearly the entire page was taken up by a random ugly doodle, for no reason whatsoever!

 

That’s the entire page. $12, ladies and gentlemen! Some might think I’m fabricating this, but here Zhou is herself, accidentally scrolling to this exact page without looking while she was talking about the book:

For giggles, I decided to see how many pages the text of the book actually takes with no pictures… And it’s less than 14 pages (font size:11), with all the acknowledgements and “About the author” part.

What about the contents of the book? Do we get the memoir, the personal stories and survival tools from the author, who calls herself a writer and researcher? Nope! We get 9 chapters of regurgitated filler and AI pictures mixed with bumper-sticker platitudes akin to something like this:

The whole thing feels like the author is about to begin telling her story, but then just decides not to bother and slaps an AI-generated definition of a psychological term before proceeding to do the same in the next chapter…

Zhou apparently had so little to say in her “book”, she just paraphrased her own statements and repeated them within half-a-page from the original quote. Check out a couple of examples:

< Prologue >

“…The world seems to move at a different pace; our senses, once vibrant, now heightened in their alertness to potential threats. Eyes swollen from tears, pupils constricted as if trying to focus on some elusive sense of normalcy…”

And several small paragraphs later (still in the Prologue):

“…a world moving at a different pace, heightened senses alert to threats, swollen eyes from tears, and constricted pupils…”

Or this example:

“…My research has shown that, much like dogs who have suffered at the hands of cruelty, individuals who endure abuse often develop aggressive tendencies…”

And again, a bit later, within the same damn Prologue:

“…individuals who endure such abuse can exhibit behaviors similar to those of abused animals, like dogs. Research indicates that abused dogs often display more aggressive behaviors…”

Oh, and if you think the author will provide references to any of the supposed “research” she studied for the book, think again!

Since this was initially presented as a memoir, I expected personal stories. Well, the closest you’re going to get to that is the “revolutionary” revelation of the mental health being a taboo subject in Chinese culture, where she was raised until she turned 8. Then she moved to Italy and lived in relative luxury in a much more relaxed and liberal culture, but you won’t hear about that from the book! You will see the same “Chinese culture strict!” narrative regurgitated throughout the book. Yeah, Zhou, traditional cultures aren’t open to discussing mental health, you’re not exactly knocking anyone’s socks off with that tell-all.

Okay, if not personal stories, maybe we’ll find the “survival toolkit”? No! $12 gets you a boring lecture on what narcissism, PTSD and CPTSD are. “Her” (AI) description of narcissism sounds incredibly ironic to anyone who knows of her past, if I’m being honest:

“…A narcissistic personality is characterized by a grandiose sense of self-importance, a constant need for admiration, and a lack of empathy for others. <…> These individuals exploit others for their own achievement and have a sense of entitlement... <…> they also lack accountability and the capacity to take responsibility. In fact, instead, they opt to shift the blame to others, sometimes even to their victims…” (Chapter 2)

Sounds familiar? I bet it does…

Chapter 3 is another interesting example of a word salad, with the author completely missing her own point. Here she talks about the social media-curated perfection and its harm to one’s mental health:

“…Social media promotes unrealistic standards that can be harmful to individuals' self-esteem. For those who have experienced trauma or abuse, these “perfect” images can exacerbate feelings of inadequacy and trigger negative emotions. <…> Ways to protect our mental health on apps include setting boundaries, limiting screen time, and curating our feed to follow accounts that promote positivity and diversity…”

And this comes from an influencer whose feed is 90% AI-generated pictures of a young woman she looks nothing alike, yet she keeps acting like it’s her. Someone clearly didn’t heal that trauma. Maybe she should try “limiting her screen time”?

The rest of it is the same mess: filler, AI-generated definitions and surface-level “advice” on healing that you can get for free from a random inspirational account on social media. People suffering from PTSD/CPTSD need more than “go outside”, “meet new people” and “do crafts”. They need to first literally rebuilt their self-worth and re-learn to communicate in a healthy way. A book like the one Zhou “wrote” won’t help anyone.

In Chapter 8, the author mentions David Lynch’s Transcendental Meditation. I thought, “Oh, cool! This might be an interesting exercise most people aren’t aware of!”

But Zhou just flexes on the readers about her visiting the David Lynch Foundation in 2018 and enjoying it. Gee, thanks, Zhou! Can we get a freaking example of the said meditation? Maybe a small exercise the survivors can practice at home wherever they are? No, dear reader! That would mean she’d have to actually give a damn about you, and narcissists “lack empathy”, remember?

 

Anyhow, once the book was over, I decided to give it a little check. I used three separate AI detectors, checking each chapter for artificially generated content.

Here’s what I got:

The author basically AI-crunched a useless “guide” with AI pictures and thought it made her a writer!

If you’re a writer, and you feel unsure about showing your works to the world, I want you to remember there are people like Zhou out there, publishing pure slop without a second thought. If they can get an audience, so can you! And I bet your works are a lot more valuable!

Now, Amazon allows selling AI-generated books on the platform, but they have to be labeled appropriately by the “author”, and this book was not.

So, I reported it to Kindle Content Review Team (Case # 48147343) and got a refund. That’s the happy-ending for me.

I went through the book reviews on Amazon, all 7 of them. 1 was negative (not mine), two were from “living” accounts, although one unlisted her review, and 4 were posted within days of each other by accounts that never reviewed anything else before or since. Fake reviews for a fake book. Fitting.

Final rating: 1 tired AI-bot out of 10 (specifically for the huge pointless doodle).

 And if you’re genuinely looking for a good book on CPTSD, may I recommend you this one:

“Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving” by Pete Walker. I’ve owned a kindle version since 2018, and I honestly can’t recommend it enough. It provides not only in-depth knowledge on the topic, but has legit, detailed toolkits for reforming your self-perception after abuse, learning to set boundaries and communicate your needs in a healthy way, without relying on the trauma bond and abuse-induced behavior patterns.

Here's a brief preview of the toolkits (Chapter 16) and some of the topics discussed in the book:

 

It’s a treasure trove of information collected and presented by someone who actually cares about survivors of abuse living with PTSD and CPTSD. And it’s cheaper than Zhou’s AI book! You can even get the audio version for free if you have an Audible subscription. And it would definitely be more helpful.

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And, that’s the review! Thank you so much for reading! I hope you never get disappointed by a book, hope AI literature gets banned forever and I pray Zhou realizes how much of a clown she is when she looks at her self-imposed “writer” title. We’ve seen better writers in YT comment sections.

Take care, and see you next time! 😊