This is not a confession, it is a fact. Everyone is using it, even the ones pretending they are above it. Some whisper that they only dabble. Others use it every day without noticing, the way people swear they never gossip while retelling every secret they promised not to repeat. A few still insist they would never touch AI while scrolling through faces polished by software they pretend they do not use. So I am saying it first. Not because I want to show off, but because someone has to say what everyone else is circling. The pink elephant is not sitting shyly in the corner. She had filtered her wrinkly grey skin into hot pink, ordered an Uber, and left years ago, she only runs faster now.

 

When I stepped into this work, the world was only half digital. Amazon sold books and CDs. eBay felt like sorcery. You sat in front of a beige computer that hummed like an old fridge while the screen slowly came alive. The internet introduced itself with a dial up screeched loud enough to wake neighbours. A single webpage took a minute to load. Plenty of time to boil water or doubt your life choices.

 

But even that clunky digital world was kinder than what came before it.

 

I arrived in Australia as a broke migrant student paying my own way through university. There were two types of migrant girls in my classes. Most of them looked like me. Tired eyes. Rushed assignments. Nine dollar per hour shifts washing dishes until your fingers looked like wrinkly old fruit. Always one step behind sleep and two steps behind rent. Then there were the others. Fresh faces. Glossy hair. Assignments submitted early with references I had never heard of. I assumed they came from comfortable families who never had to decide between groceries and textbooks.

 

One afternoon in the library, one of those polished girls let something slip. Not by accident. More like exhaustion. She told me she was working nights. Not retail. Not hospitality. The back pages of The Daily Telegraph. Four lines. No photos. Nothing glamorous. But enough to keep her afloat and time to complete her assignments.

 

That was how I found the classifieds.

 

The rules were unforgiving. Adult services ads had to run seven days in a row. Once it went in, there was no pulling it back. You needed three or four bookings just to cover the ad fees before earning a cent for yourself. One tiny square of text paying Rupert Murdoch’s bills. My first ad squeezed between plumbers and tax agents that costs a fifth of what I paid. Their ads had bold print. Mine had restrictions. They could mention blocked drains, BAS. I could barely hint how I look like. But that little square changed everything.

 

And the calls started. My old Nokia rang fifty times a day. Usually with No Number flashing like a warning. Half the calls opened with abuse before I even said hello. The other half asked the same questions in the same dead voice until my answers became a script I delivered without breathing :

 

“Five five tall. Fifty two kilos. Size eight. Active and passive. X dollar for how long. No I don’t do that, blah blah blah…”. I said it so often the words lost all shape. It felt like talking to a conveyor belt of strangers deciding whether I was worth petrol money.

 

The world before online advertising was simple and brutal. Women stood under half dead streetlights with mascara melting into the corners of their eyes while hooligans hurled insults and VB longnecks from car windows. Petrol fumes air, piss and vomit soaked concrete. You never knew which headlights meant safety and which meant trouble. Every slowing car was a risk you could not afford to misread.

 

If the street was exposed, the bars were deceptive. You sat in a slinky tight dress that clung after an hour, sipping the cheapest drink on the menu and hoping a man would buy the next one. The air was thick with perfume, gin, and the sour melt of old ice. The waiters knew. The men knew. Even the women at nearby tables knew. They stared, whispered, nudged each other. You pretended not to notice while performing a version of normality no one believed. Everyone knew the part. Nobody said it out loud.

 

I met these women after they finished their shifts at the good old Taxi Club, a place that used to stay open 24/7, famously known back then as the “Trannies Club”,

 

The classifieds were a strange middle ground. Sanitised. Strict. And expensive. Faceless. But safer than headlights and kinder than bar stares. So I paid my week’s rent to Murdoch and placed my four lines, resisted the urge to scream at how little I could say, because there are no other choices. Then another week. Then another. Then I realised I needed my own corner of the internet before I ended up self funding his 30th yacht, instead of my uni fees.

 

 

 

I taught myself how to build a website on a computer shaped like an mini elephant. The pages loaded slowly. The colours were questionable. Everything was slightly crooked and clunky. But it was mine. For the first time I could choose my words, show my photos on my own terms, explain who I was and the “price list” before the phone rang. I did not need to stand under a streetlight or sit in a bar pretending I enjoyed the atmosphere. I could write my own narrative instead of squeezing myself into four cautious lines next to a blocked drains ad.

 

Then came social media. Seductive, unpredictable, occasionally cruel. Suddenly we could show taste, humour, mood, even the softness underneath the work. Clients could see we were actual people, not anonymous entries in a classifieds column. But the old hypocrisy resurfaced wearing nicer lipstick. Post a bikini photo and the algorithm applauds. Share an OnlyFans clip. Link to Pornhub. Advertise someone else’s scenes. All perfectly fine. Profitable even.

 

But mention real life contact. Say you meet people beyond the screen. Say you offer warmth you cannot screenshot. Gone. Deleted. Shadowed. The platforms decided digital desire is safe but real bodies make them nervous. Technology does not fear sex. It fears honesty.

 

Now the same pattern repeats with AI. Everyone uses it. Almost no one admits it. Writers run their drafts through bots then insist the cadence came from their soul. Designers feed sketches into machines then claim divine inspiration. Photographers smooth skin with invisible tools then swear it is lighting. Vanity loves a disguise.

 

I recognise the pattern because I have lived through the evolutions. The imitation gets rewarded. The truth gets questioned. Platforms profit from the work you create then scold you for naming the method. AI is just the newest glittery mask for an old trick. Flatter the audience. Hide the labour. Pretend effort never happened.

 

Technology smooths the path forward but demands patience in return. Reading became scrolling. Writing by hand became tapping on a glass screen. Languages that once required discipline, like Chinese with its thousand careful strokes, now dissolve into predictive text that finishes your thoughts before you form them. My grandfather used to sit with a cigarette between his fingers while the cassette clicked in the background. He listened to both sides. No skipping. Now most people give a song half a minute to prove it deserves to stay alive.

 

Technology polishes every edge until nothing has grip. Machines can write, compose, fake affection. They cannot recreate presence. They cannot mimic the vibes in a room when someone walks in and your skin recognises it before your eyes do. You still need a hand to fix a leak or cut your hair. You still need warmth that leaves a trace. The imitation can whisper, but it cannot bruise.

 

Every new invention brings me back to the same question. What makes this mine. It is never the tool. It is what remains human. The impulsive choices. The uneven rhythm. The instinct. The fingerprints you cannot sand away. The ones who will last are not pretending to be untouched. They know how to let the mechanical help while letting the human lead.

 

Yes, I use tools that think faster than my fingers. I also use the perfume I spray on my skin, the brief sting before it softens, the way a scent blooms differently on me than anyone else. I use my voice. Timing. Eye contact. None of it makes me less real. It means I learned how to survive the century I arrived in. Every wave of the digital revolution has pushed us further from the street corners and smoky bars where we once waited for men we did not trust. Each wave brought distance, autonomy, choice. Refusing these tools is not noble. It is asking people to stay vulnerable so others can stay comfortable.

 

The pink elephant has already bolted, sparkle trailing behind her, mischief written across her shoulders. The wise ones are not pretending she never left. They are already on her back, heels firm, eyes forward, ready for whatever comes next, still writing their own lines, still choosing what stays human.

 

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