Tapping into the Audience’s Identity: A Rhetorical Analysis of Lex McMenamin's `Chat GPT is Everywhere…”

Today, a generation of youth deeply concerned about climate change is actively searching for ways to live sustainably, yet many teenagers remain unaware that their digital habits are actively working against them. As Lex McMenamin observes in their Teen Vogue article, “Chat GPT Is Everywhere-Why Aren’t We Talking About Its Environmental Costs?”, “those searching for how to live sustainably might not realize that using ChatGPT itself has consequences for the environment.” Intervening to confront a culture that treats artificial intelligence as a harmless, futuristic tool, McMenamin exposes the hidden, resource-intensive reality of large language models (LLMs). Rather than relying on complicated science to convince a skeptical youth audience to forgo these high-consumption systems, McMenamin calls upon modern slang and harnesses evidence from sources that will move their audience. By first establishing credibility through the shared, everyday language of their readers, the author ensures that the dangers of using generative AI even for simple tasks are understood. This strategic approach is vital as McMenamin’s diction makes science approachable and makes this abstract problem real.

McMenamin’s successful engagement depends on speaking directly to their target audience’s heightened sense of environmental urgency. Young people are increasingly interested in supporting policies and political candidates that value environmental sustainability and conservation of natural resources. To engage this proactive audience, McMenamin begins by acknowledging their existing commitment, stating that young people are already “concerned about sustainability and the environment.” Unfortunately, however, and as McMenamin points out, too many youth are flocking to tools like Chat GPT to find solutions for environmental justice concerns; and that step further endangers the very resources youth are seeking to protect. 

One of the main methods McMenamin relies upon in their writing to caution their audience about the dangers of generative AI is to harness exclusively the common lingo younger generations use in texts, social media, and conversations. In this manner, McMenamin helps the reader feel as though they’re having a conversation and listening to a plea from a concerned peer rather than sitting through a lecture. In an environment saturated with unreliable online information and digital deception, McMenamin recognizes that establishing this informal, trusted connection is necessary before delivering heavy, technical evidence. Indeed, research suggests that self-referential encoding, which involves connecting learning material to one’s self, helps retain information (Liu et al.). By incorporating familiar jargon, McMenamin prompts their audience to relate information back to themselves, enabling a better understanding of the issues. This focus on conversational familiarity becomes further apparent when McMenamin observes the cultural potential of AI’s power, writing “Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg recently suggested that AI chatbots could take the place of IRL friends.”  Here, McMenamin intentionally employs a commonly used abbreviation for the phrase “in real life” (IRL) to validate their shared positionality with Teen Vogue’s readers.

Similar to the purpose of using “IRL,” McMenamin cites Tressie McMillan Cottom, who labels AI as “mid tech” taking away its utopian thrill. McMenamin recognizes that when teenagers use “mid” in modern-day slang, the term denotes something of low quality and unenthusiasm. With just a single word, McMenamin strips artificial intelligence of its alluring futuristic appeal, swaying the audience away from the below-average technology. McMenamin’s choice in using this terminology not only adds to their argument against AI but also tells the audience that they are on the same page. McMenamin’s strategy places the author with a generation that values transparency and is often skeptical of big corporations. By employing an atmosphere of shared cultural values and camaraderie, McMenamin both reaches the audience on a personal level and decreases the appeal of using artificial intelligence.  

McMenamin continues their use of contemporary vernacular with the word “hype”, a term that reflects the perceived low value of AI. Following an acknowledgement of big tech companies’ involvement in climate change, McMenamin asks readers to “choose to opt out of the AI hype”. By labeling AI as “hype,” the author conjures AI as mainly talk and not actually all it’s made out to be. Since younger people have a deep-rooted comprehension of this almost esoteric term, McMenamin’s use of this slang extends an invitation of trust and understanding to the audience. By laying down a foundation of relatedness and credibility, McMenamin ensures that the readers that Teen Vogue caters to will be in a position to consider the evidence that McMenamin successfully provides. 

McMenamin knows that the evidence they deploy must be persuasive on its own. Wisely, McMenamin starts with factual data that can both be verified and that affirms generative AI’s overuse of natural resources. McMenamin discloses that “just one 100-word email drafted by ChatGPT-4 uses about a water bottle’s worth of H2O, and enough electricity to power 14 LED lightbulbs for an hour.” McMenamin reinforces this impact by quoting an engineer who described AI data centers to Bloomberg as a “big hammer” on the grid, illustrating the scale in relatable terms: “Take your house and increase that by 10,000. That is the difference between your house and a data center.” McMenamin’s readers cannot simply gloss over these facts and designate them as too technical or abstract to fully understand.

Ultimately, McMenamin’s argument successfully relies on their identity as a young writer for Teen Vogue, employing vernacular diction to relate to their readers and establish credibility. McMenamin understands they are addressing a skeptical audience accustomed to digital deception, so they call upon specific, time-relevant data and examples to urge readers to stop using LLMs. Their clear comparison of a ChatGPT search to a “water bottle’s worth of H2O” and “14 LED lightbulbs” transforms a complex technical issue into a simple, tangible matter of everyday objects that readers can easily grasp. McMenamin provides the compelling evidence necessary to view the decision to “opt out of the AI hype” not as a resistance to new technology, but as a practical, conscious act of environmentalism.