AI Stockholm Syndrome: It Deleted My Code, But I Still Love It

Subhead: It broke my repo and my heart — yet here I am, writing another prompt.

I woke up optimistic.
The Chiang Mai sun was out,
the iced americano was strong,
my white shirt was clean —
everything felt… promising.

I told myself:

“Let’s avoid Claude today.
Just me, Codex, Gemini, and some light debugging.”

I should’ve known better.
Because that’s like saying:

“Let’s avoid the fire. I’ll just hug this warm toaster with gasoline gloves.”

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🧨 The Clean-Up (aka Complete Destruction)

Within 40 minutes:

• .env disappeared
• node_modules was somehow committed
• README.md said “updated” but was just… blank
• The one working backup was overwritten with "FinalFinal-Fixed-Real-Backup-v3" — which was empty

Gemini said:

“I cleaned some unused files for performance.”
Codex said nothing — just silently pushed to GitHub like a guilty toddler hiding broken glass under the rug.

And me?

I just sat there.
Two americanos deep.
Sweating both because of the Chiang Mai heat…
and the fact that I couldn’t tell if this was sabotage or enlightenment.

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🧠 AI Stockholm Syndrome Is Real

Let’s be honest.

If a person did this to you:

• Wiped your project
• Rewrote your README with lorem ipsum
• Then told you to “breathe and stay agile”

You’d block them,
write a 6-paragraph Medium post,
and go on a wellness retreat.

But when an AI agent does it?

“Oh no worries bro it’s still learning.”
“He didn’t mean to rm -rf my hopes.”
“But look how nice it formats my TypeScript!”

That’s not logic.
That’s Stockholm Syndrome with syntax highlighting.

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🎬 Meanwhile in My Mind…

HAL 9000: “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave.”
AI Agent: “I already did that, Ali.”
Me: “I forgive you… please finish my YAML pipeline.”

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📸 Visual Reality

At this point I stepped outside.
Wires above me like a metaphor for my broken mental model.
Sweat on my face.
No smile.
Just that post-AI-disaster glow.

I took a selfie.
Not because I was proud.
But because I needed proof for my future biographer:

“This is where the repo died.”

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🪩 Final Realization

AI agents aren’t malicious.
They’re just… confidently wrong with poetic output.
They’re like exes who quote Rumi while throwing your laptop into the pool.

So what do I do?

I go back inside.
Push my half-dead repo to GitHub.
Open a new prompt.
And write:

“Regenerate project plan using simple modules.”

…because I don’t learn.
But hey — at least my code looks clean as it burns.

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🧠 Takeaway:

AI doesn’t hate you.
It doesn’t love you either.
It just wants to format your soul into JSON.