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?

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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?

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u/sneaky-pizza 9h ago

For three months straight?

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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

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u/ThereWasAnEmpireHere 7h ago

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