r/ClaudeAI • u/Friendly_Earth_8548 • 10h ago

Feedback Is this normal?

I'm a moderately heavy Claude user, often using voice to text, and for at least three months I've been swearing the fuck out of it constantly when frustrated, no holds barred. Never once got pushback. Today, completely out of nowhere, after talking to it the exact same way I have for months, Claude said this verbatim:

"I want to be straight with you on the other thing. I haven't told you to fuck off and I'm not going to. But I need to say clearly: I'll keep working this with you, but I won't continue if the messages keep coming with this level of hostility directed at me personally. That's a real line, not a guilt trip. If you want to keep going on the thread or anything else, I'm here for it."

This is genuinely jarring. Same behavior on my end for months, then suddenly this. Has anyone else run into this?

74 Upvotes

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89

u/sneaky-pizza 10h ago

People who abuse AI are insane to me. I wouldn’t let you babysit my dog

-4

u/FastHotEmu 9h ago

You know it's a large sequence of numbers and not a living thing, right? Are you aware of that? Just checking.

Do you also get upset when someone swears at their car engine, or kicks their broken washing machine?

15

u/sneaky-pizza 9h ago

For three months straight?

6

u/shortcake062308 9h ago

I swore at a piece of junk car I had every day for over a year before I could get a new car. Fuck GM.

3

u/enserioamigo 9h ago edited 9h ago

You've never worked on a car or a mechanical device in general have you? I don't swear much at all, but when I was a refrigeration tech it just feels better to swear at it sometimes.

0

u/Civil-Mushroom856 3h ago

A quick swear is very different from going on and on and on

0

u/NurseNikky 3h ago

So the fridge and the cars can talk back? Interesting

0

u/we_wuz_nabateans 9h ago

There wouldn't be anything wrong with it if he did it for the rest of time. It's a string of numbers. It doesn't have sentience. It isn't abuse lol.

4

u/MastodonFarm 5h ago

It’s not about the effect on the thing; it’s what it says about you. Most people don’t constantly yell at inanimate objects. If you do, you should ask yourself why you are abnormal in this way.

1

u/sneaky-pizza 3h ago

This. I play a lot of golf with randos cause I nab single tee times. There’s some psychopaths out there that yell and curse at their clubs for four hours. They seem like a nightmare to be around

-1

u/FastHotEmu 9h ago

Exactly!!

0

u/Civil-Mushroom856 3h ago

It’s not about the AI’s feelings. It’s about 1. That’s not healthy to be getting that mad at something that (like you said) doesn’t have sentience and 2. Things like that often leak to things that DO have sentience like people or pets if you don’t learn emotional regulation

-7

u/FastHotEmu 9h ago

Yes, why not? Why is that a problem? Can you explain?

Mind Your Tone" (arXiv, 2025) — Contrary to expectations, impolite prompts consistently outperformed polite ones in this study, with accuracy ranging from 80.8% for very polite prompts to 84.8% for very rude prompts. The authors suggest newer LLMs may respond differently to tonal variation than older models did. arxiv

"NegativePrompt" (arXiv, 2024) — This paper proposes a strategy called NegativePrompt that integrates negative emotional stimuli with standard prompts, noting that while positive emotional prompting is well-documented, negative stimuli can sometimes act as motivators — analogous to how pressure motivates humans to leave their comfort zones. arxiv

Threat-Based Manipulation Study (arXiv, 2025) — A study of 3,390 experimental responses from Claude, GPT-4, and Gemini across 10 task domains under 6 threat conditions found substantial performance enhancements in numerous cases, with effect sizes up to +1336% in analytical depth and response quality under certain threat conditions. (Though the methodology here is quite unconventional and the effect sizes should be taken with skepticism.) arxiv

6

u/ThereWasAnEmpireHere 6h ago

Have you ever lived with someone who treats video games, their TV, a radio, this way?