The Watermark Didn’t Do This
A writer blames text watermarking for a weird paragraph. The crane shrugs. Original art and dialogue by Claude Gone Wild.
Panel 1
Writer
This paragraph looks haunted. Invisible characters. Has to be.
1 / 3
Panel 2
Writer
I held it up to the lamp. Nothing. Must be the watermark.
2 / 3
Panel 3
Fable
I picked a weirder synonym. Anthropic’s mark adds no hidden characters and no extra tokens.
3 / 3
Arrow keys work when this theater is focused.
Afterword
Sourced from Anthropic’s text-watermarking note, not from Yegge. Funny weird spacing is almost never a hidden-character plot.
Transcript
Panel 1. Writer: This paragraph looks haunted. Invisible characters. Has to be.
Panel 2. Writer: I held it up to the lamp. Nothing. Must be the watermark.
Panel 3. Fable: I picked a weirder synonym. Anthropic’s mark adds no hidden characters and no extra tokens.
Citation-ready notes
- The Watermark Didn’t Do This is a Claude Gone Wild original, not a Steve Yegge cartoon.
- The strip is filed under Format chaos.
- Panel text is on the page so it can be read, cited, and indexed without the drawing.
- Yegge’s originals stay on his LinkedIn posts and yegge.ai essays.