Did you notice the cheap ones get warm faster too? My grandma's old diner spoons bend like butter and I always thought they were junk. Guess we both had it backwards this whole time.

My buddy Dave runs a small shop in Boise and had almost the same thing happen. He let AI write all his email subject lines for about four months, and his open rate slid from 22% down to like 14%. He blamed it on the holidays at first, then went back to writing them himself in January and it bounced right back up within two weeks. The weird part is he said the AI lines looked fine on paper, they just all sounded the same after a while, like every email had the same voice. So yeah, your 38% number doesn't shock me at all.

Started doing the exact same thing after my buddy roasted my opener at a coffee shop reading lol. Now I mutter every first line while making coffee and it's wild how many just die in the air. Saves me so much editing later, better to catch it early than rewrite the whole thing around a bad hook.