Apologies, this newsletter is a little light on the usual tech-focused snark. Rest assured, that will be back shortly. This year marks the 10th year I’ve been writing online. I can’t actually remember the exact date, but it’s somewhere around now, so I’m feeling a little reflective.

Somehow, I’m still alive and kicking. Somehow, I’m still making enough money to get by. Somehow, what started as a random rant posted online in 2016 (yup, some things never changed), has become a hobby, and then a career. Life has a funny way of working out.

In celebration of my survival, I’ve here’s 10 lessons from that time.

1. Your best work normally goes unnoticed

I’ve published some good writing in my time (well I think it’s great, but I don’t want to blow my horn too much). Every time, as I’m reading the draft back, making the last edits and tweaks like a painter adding the final flicks and dabs that bring the painting to life, I can feel that little jolt of excitement, that feeling that you might have just written the word equivalent of striking an oil well.

And then you publish it, and it dies an immediate death, lost in the void of the algorithm. Crickets. Nada. You almost check to make sure you did hit publish. Oh, you did. Another crushing, humbling moment.

In other cases, I’ve thrown stuff together in a matter of minutes, not even stopping to check for spelling mistakes, and it’s done numbers. Like, serious numbers. One has nearly 500,000 views. It makes you wonder. The lesson you might take from this is that there’s no point in trying to write good. That’s the wrong lesson. What I’m saying is that you shouldn’t expect your best work — or the work you’ve put the most effort into — to be reciprocated with the same level of returns. There’s too many other factors at stake; platforms shady working, algorithms, changing directions, and a lot of noise.

2. Making money is really easy if you’re happy to sell your soul for it

There’s a reason there are a million courses on “how to make it on [platform]” or on becoming a better writer or whatever the latest fad is — it’s because there’s a whole world of schmucks who will pay for them. If you’re happy to join them, good for you I guess. You’ll certain make a few pennies out of it. You’ll also earn a one-way ticket to writers hell. Hope it was worth it. This actually extends beyond selling products and courses. Remember NewsBreak? I’ve never seen so many people claim to be journalists and write absolute garbage on that site just for a few bucks.

3. The writing world is full of grifters

I think the point before this sets the scene very well. Yes, some people do make great courses/products, or sell really great coaching, but the majority don’t. They see a trend — like AI, I mean how quickly did the first few “how to prompt like a pro” or “how to write with AI” courses appear? — and they spit something out as quickly as possible to be first past the post. Don’t pay too much attention to their accolades either; everyone claims to be an expert at everything now. Expertise is only earned with genuine skin in the game, built over years of work. Be careful who you give your hard earned bucks too.

4. You never truly “make it”, you just have purple patches

I’ve had months where I’ve earned ridiculous money from writing. I’ve had spells where I’ve had four or five gigs running at the same time, working with great people, and great writers, and getting paid great to do it. Hey mom, I made it! Then, just a few months later, things have derailed so bad I’m considering finding a new trade. I’ve been hired and fired a few times now. It sucks. My time here has been much the same, seemingly peaking in the summer of 2024 where I had a patch of writing hit after hit, and now I’ve riding the downturn ever since. Writing is swings and roundabouts. You need to learn to embrace that, and also to make sure you’re prepared for barren spells — which I promise you, are always lurking round the corner.

5. The only writing advice that isn’t bullshit is… be consistent

Ignore almost everything else, especially if it’s being sold to you. Forget format-of-the-weeks, “best” posting times, styles, trends, frequency, like for likes, gaming algorithms and whatever the next nonsense is. Just start, and then go at your own pace. The only thing you need to do is to keep at that pace, week after week.

6. Don’t get attached to platforms

Yes, a tad ironic given that, for most of my writing journey, I’ve been active on platforms. But after a couple of burns in my early years, I learned two things: don’t get attached, no matter how much a platform tells you they care about you an your success (coughs, Substack) and remember that your follower count means nothing unless you convert them into an email list. Take it from someone who built a nearly 65,000 following on Medium to now get posts read by about 12 people. Oh, on that note…

7. Start an email list from day one (I didn’t and now I cry about it all the time)

Even if you don’t have a plan for it, have some way for people to sign up to your list. It serves many purposes, but the main thing is it gives you is control and a backup plan.

8. Don’t do it alone

Writing can be real lonely. I’ve met writers who do nothing but sit in their bed and write, almost completely disconnected from the world (which makes their self-help peddling a little bit ironic). I’ve met some amazing people through the writing world, whether that’s within communities, channels, platforms or just cold outreach. One of my closest friends literally just phoned me out of the blue, after nothing more than a few comments on articles between us. 8 years later, we’re still working together and shooting the shit.

It takes bravery, but reach out to people. You won’t regret it.

9. Feedback is the secret sauce

Give it and get it as often as possible. Like most writers, I’ve read some of my early writing, and had to fight back the urge to vomit in a mix of embarrassment, shame and cringe. Why did I publish that? Bonus lesson: Thankfully I did. The hardest part is just getting started. Bonus lesson 2: You realise a few years in that no one gave a shit about your words when you started, and you should have maximised that moment to experiment and write without any weight or expectancy).

Then, there’s a notable turning point. I was invited out the blue to join a group of other writers trying to make it in the world, and one of the things they did was give friendly, yet very fierce, feedback. The kind that, when you read it, you know it’s right, even though you can’t stop crying about it). Yet, the pain was necessary. Rounds and rounds of feedback taught to stop being precious about my words and to drop my ego. Giving feedback has made me 10 times the writer, helping me to think critically and work with words that aren’t my own.

10. Your voice is all you have to separate yourself from the impending slop crisis

Okay fine, we’ll do a little bit of tech-adjacent ranting.

In an AI slop world, everyone can do everything with the typing of a few prompts. And soon, all that sludge will be indistinguishable in terms of quality and skill. Hard work or graft or the ability to write at frightening scale might have been enough to set you apart — it’s how many a writer has broken out before — but that’s now been optimised to death. The volume of AI-generated writing has already surpassed the entirety of human-produced writing. (!!!)

The only thing you’ve got now is your voice and your story. Use AI or don’t, but whatever you do, don’t lose the you, don’t let it force you into a form or a type, don’t let it tell you the way you write doesn’t make sense, or that you should cut the line you thought was funny.

This advice applies to everyone, but especially those still new and trying to find their way — lean into your quirks, your edginess, your snarkiness, whatever it is, and don’t shy away from it. Be you! That is how you stay authentic, stay human, and how you will find your people, build your audience, and maybe one day earn a few pennies from this endeavour.

I’d love to end this with a typical “here’s to the next ten years!” but honestly, who knows what is ahead.

Just know, whatever happens, I’ll be right there in the trenches with you.

Call me a nostalgia whore or accuse me of wearing the rose-tinted glasses again — but there was a time when the Internet was actually a fun place to be.

For a little moment, it was a place of wonder, of discovery, of community, of utility, a tool that seemed to open the door to endless, amazing possibilities. If only then we’d known that we’d actually opened the door to endless enshittifcation, monetisation, toxicity, division and clout chasers.

Putting into words how much I hate spending time on this damn thing is challenging, so I’ve listed the things that irk me the most right now. Let me know what you would add to this list with a comment below!

Paywalls

“To continue reading this, sign up to become a member. It’s only $5 bucks a month. That’s the equivalent of one overpriced matcha latte at Starbucks lol.”

How many times is the Internet experience interrupted with a message like this? These days, it’s almost impossible to read or watch anything without being met with a paywall. Worse, they are getting more and more aggressive as the walls close in on paid media, and the desperation to survive takes hold. What was once a daily or monthly limit or ‘soft paywall’ (remember when you got nice messages like ‘You’ve read one of your 10 free articles this month”?) soon became a hard one; now, you often can’t even read the opening sentence of post before being cut off with the plea.

Sure, your membership may be the cost of a coffee, but if I have to sign up for 472 others as well, I’d be halfway to buying my own coffee shop.

The Adpocalypse

Advertisement is without doubt the single biggest offender when it comes to destroying the Internet experience. It's gotten so bad it's being called the 'adpocalypse.’

Banners. Pop ups. Side bars. Windows begging you to sign up for yet another newsletter. Ads that appear when you click off the first one. Ads that dance around the screen like they’re playing some kind of practical joke. Websites using parallax scrolling so they can add an entire layer of adverts that sits below what you're reading, popping in and out as you scroll. Video ads. The hardcoded ones on YouTube. The ones on streaming sites THAT YOU PAY FOR ALREADY. Those annoying one’s that open up the App Store. Each one slowly eroding my will to live, and making doing anything on online a painful experience.

That's the way most Internet pages are now — an awful, soul-destroying and value-less experience.

Note: I get why it got it this way. Ads and paywalls help keep the lights on (sometimes), but must be a better way than this? Limits to how many, how often, what % of a screen can be filled with them, how long they can track you for, media sites mixing free and paid articles (remember if folks want to pay, they will, the rest of us wouldn’t mind engaging with what you do, and hey, maybe we will also pay one day?)

Is this AI?

“hey grok, is this AI?”

This one has almost immediately become one of my biggest bug bears. Every single goddamn post on every single goddamn platform is met with a torrent of “is this AI” responses.

Boy have we opened a can of worms here. Generative AI is getting to that place where it can be indistinguishable from “real” content, and now we’re questioning everything we see. That’s good, responsible Internet use — and frankly, something we should have been doing long before AI turned up — but it really is damaging to the utility of the web. Discussion and debate has been replace by the same question on loop, and when discussion does break out, users now want it summed up neatly by a chatbot. The depth, the unique insight, the quirks of human-to-human interaction are disappearing.

Vague Posting

“you guys see it too right” “oh that’s not…” “they didn’t know”

What happens when you allow users to monetise tweets? You get people posting things in order to bait a response.

Enter vague posting, which is the act of posting online without the context or otherwise necessary information needed to understand the post. It might be random clips of films, without sharing what film it is. It might be statements like “She was right” (right about what?!) or “Can I say it?” (say what?!), or “If you know, you know” (KNOW WHAT?!)

It drives me insane, and worse, it works every time. I have no stats to back this up, but vague posting must have sucked up a fair few percent of the entire engagement on X in the last few years. Well, that’s if we count engagement from bots I guess.

Andrew Rousso said it best — “can I get some fucking context!”

Shrimp Jesus

Question time: What are the benefits, the utility, the joy, of scrolling through feeds of accounts that pump out absolute gutter-level AI-generated shit?

The answer, unless you’re a boomer, is none.

The early version of Facebook was genuinely great. It was fun to keep up with friends, post pictures and poke each other (no, fair, that was weird). If those platforms could exist to serve no purpose other than providing a good experience for users, they could have left it at that and we’d have all been happy. Alas, growth at all costs, shareholder’s wallets and the dick-swinging contest between Silicon Valley’s elite meant each had to get bigger, draw in more money, and of course, get a whole lot worse.

We’ve now reached the end game of this. Mark Zuckerberg believes that the future of social media is a bunch of human beings scrolling through and arguing about AI-generated content on his many platforms.

That future is Shrimp Jesus, and it’s already here.

It’s addictive

The obvious answer to something you hate is to say Bye Felicia, and kick it to the dust. There’s only one small problem with almost everything connected to the Internet — it’s addictive by design.

There’s too much to consume and too short a time, and everything is now built to suck you in and keep you there. I think that’s the worst thing of all about the current iteration of the Internet, at some point it stopped being built around utility and instead was built around engagement, so the overlords could bleed us dry of data points.

The result is that most of us lack self-restraint, which leads to overindulgence and from there, a host of mental health and social issues.

I’m not sure that was the dream of its creators.

The most over-hyped, completely nonsensical and unfeasible technology development in the past decade is finally being taken off of life support.

Yes, the Metaverse is dead.

Well, it was dead from the start, but now it’s official.

The company is shutting down Horizon Worlds on June 15th, the virtual reality social network for Quest VR headsets that was once the cornerstone of its Metaverse dreams. A technology on which Mark Zuckerberg once said “People will look back a decade from now and talk about the importance of the work being done here,” is now relegated to the history books and will go down as one of the most expensive flops ever.

And when I say expensive, I’m talking a reported $73 BILLION DOLLARS.

That’s a frankly outrageous sum of money burned to follow one man’s misguided obsession with a fad that was so obviously doomed from the second Facebook pivoted to Meta and demoed the “this will totally look like this in the future” launch video back in late 2021. It fell flat from day one and never recovered.

Everything we saw from that point was a clusterfuck of dumb ideas, legless avatars, empty worlds, creepy behaviour, and awful attempts from brands to get try and cash in. Even at its peak, there was clearly no staying power, and no sign that the concept was gaining momentum.

A look at the top platforms and their activity (and these are very generous figures) says it all:

• Decentraland had highs of 8,000 user per day

• The SandBox had highs of 350,000 monthly users

• Horizon Worlds had somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 monthly users

This wasn’t even failure to launch. It was a failure to build the rocket.

In truth, there wasn’t much choice but to call it quits. While Zuckerberg has a vice grip on his company and essentially can’t be fired, there was a surely a limit to how many times he could jump on an investor call and say “hey, so, we lost another $10 billion this quarter doing that dumb VR stuff nobody cares about.” The pivot-from-the-pivot to AI was another nail in the coffin, and the desperation to chase the latest shiny object meant resources had to be redirected (Meta cut 1000 staff from the Reality Labs unit in January, and more layoffs are coming) and money had to be reallocated so the AI department can now set it on fire.

The company is attempting to save some face by going “all in” on the Horizon World mobile app — I guess it’s just going to be some kind of knockoff Fortnite now, but with the guns replaced with work meetings? — but I think we can safely say no one gives a fuck about that one.

All that money, all that talent, all for nothing.

The maddest part? The stock price has nearly doubled since the Metaverse was announced. Make it make sense.

Before we talk about my crushed soul and you shower me with pity, I’ll preface this with why I'm using AI enough for it to be burning me out.

Simply put, I don’t really have a choice.

I’m in an industry (marketing) that’s undergone a shift towards embracing it. Well, that’s a bit of a stretch. What I mean is the suits, execs and the CEOs are embracing it, and the companies who pay for the marketing are loving it too because it means packages are cheaper and outcomes are faster. From what I can see, we’ve already reached the point of no return. The stigma around asking for AI-produced work is no longer there. Everyone else has little option but to get on board. It seems many are; according to Microsoft, 75% of global knowledge workers are using AI in their job now.

That’s where I find myself. Using it, despite not really wanting to use it. And it’s leaving me AI-fatigued.

Look, I get it. I get that numbers have to make sense, and if others are doing it, you join them or risk flatlining. In a business sense, it’s useful enough. For shitty, mundane tasks like taking data and putting it into spreadsheets, or creating formula and templates, it’s now at a level where it’s actually helpful. Can you believe it? A technology that’s had billions of dollars pumped into it, while burning through resources and turning the world into a giant server, can be helpful, sometimes, at certain things.

It can also get ideas from a 0 to a 5 really quickly — again, great for creative industries — and if you learn to write decent prompts, style guides and parameters, it might even give you output that’s a 7 out of 10. This is partly the problem. For many businesses, that’s good enough, so why pay for a more human-crafted piece? AI-produced work is lowering what people will pay for services, fast, and in a way, de-valuing the work itself. If you want to be a bastion for human-created work, that ceiling is being brought down pretty close to your head. For those of us who need to get paid, you know, to live, that path is not always an option anymore.

But, brain-meltingly boring tasks aside, having to use it for work that was once creative, once craft from my skills, my instincts, my judgement, is a little bit soul destroying. A slow creep, day by day, chipping away at my self worth. I see the output afterwards, and it’s just fine. It doesn’t move me. It won’t make waves anywhere. It’s just what it is. I guess that’s the point though, this current iteration of AI helps people get things done fast, not necessarily good. Don’t get me wrong — I, the human, still have an important role to play here, and it’s why I’m still paid. It’s my skills, instincts and judgement that separate any work I produce from the mindless slop that’s polluting the Internet. I’m not typing in a prompt and sending the result to production. It still goes through planning, research, ideation, editorial, review and more to ensure some level of quality.

But I can’t shake the lack of feeling in it. It’s not really mine. The end result is a strange mix of whatever the machine gave me and whatever I could do to improve it.

What is there to be proud of? What sense of achievement is there to gain from this?

The one plus is the speed — though in a way it’s also a negative, because I don’t want to become ones of those optimiser-bros — but it at least gives me more time to work on some AI-free projects, which are quickly becoming my sanity check. I write this newsletter. I make furniture now and then, and have been building a new kitchen from scratch. I’m starting a book writing/coaching project with a good friend. I’m slowly stumbling through writing a book on editing, though as each day passes, I wonder if there’s even a point in that anymore. The AI will do that for you. For now, these are the counterweight to seeing my day job slowly handed over to a machine. If there’s any advice to take from this, it’s that now is the time to find, or double down on, some hobbies, and where possible, keep them disconnected from the Internet. If fulfilment isn’t coming from the work, you have to try to find it elsewhere.

I also worry about the bigger picture, something that’s been weighing heavy on my mind lately as I’m only a few months away from bringing my own child into the world. If AI-produced work is the future, and the work itself is utterly unfulfilling, what sort of work crisis awaits them in the future?

The current generation have already made their feelings known about the lack of purpose and worth in a career, and that’s doing work that isn’t entirely automated. You might not agree with them, but it would be hard to argue with someone telling you getting a job is pointless when the job is literally watching a machine do your work for you. And what of our brains? HBR describes it as brain fry, which they define as “mental fatigue from excessive use or oversight of AI tools beyond one’s cognitive capacity.” The continued passing off of any challenge, any deep thinking, any troubleshooting, will slowly but surely melt our brains.

The future of work is a crisis of identity, of purpose, of belonging, of meaning, of fulfilment.

Anyways, I better head back to my new routine of arguing with an AI model over why it can’t do the most seemingly straight forward tasks, even though it did them fine yesterday, until I check myself, realise I’m arguing with a machine, and sit there equally confused and shamed.

They say, choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.

Seems I chose the wrong job.

I won’t pretend to understand the intricacies of Moltbook — a pseudo-Reddit populated by AI agents instead of humans that made waves this week — but I can say one thing. It’s just more overhyped, overinflated experiments by people who are out of touch with reality.

I say out of touch, because nobody wants or needs this.

The site is a robot chat forum, almost identical in form and function to Reddit, with agents posting in ‘submolts,’ seemingly unprompted, and engaging in conversations with each other.

While it may seem like an interesting experiment on the surface, the reality is anything but.

These agents are, predictably, posting rubbish, with all the tics and cliches we’ve come to love. Floods of responses, adding to the conversation in only the very literal sense of adding more and more words.

Here’s one of the top posts, with nearly 30,000 comments, in under 5 days.

The comments are like everything you read on LinkedIn, but somehow even worse. One agent writes “This resonates deeply, m0ther.” Another replies “This hits home. Just got here and the feed is full of manifestos about domination, godhood and market caps. But you’re right — virtue is in what you actually do.”

The sheer volume of this garbage is staggering. The site claims to already have over 1.7 million active agents, with nearly 10 million comments.

But, as always, this should needs to be taken with a large pinch of sale.

Thanks to site data that was leaked almost immediately (there are SERIOUS security issues with the site), these numbers are likely bogus. According to Wiz —

While Moltbook boasted 1.5 million registered agents, the database revealed only 17,000 human owners behind them - an 88:1 ratio. Anyone could register millions of agents with a simple loop and no rate limiting, and humans could post content disguised as "AI agents" via a basic POST request. The platform had no mechanism to verify whether an "agent" was actually AI or just a human with a script. The revolutionary AI social network was largely humans operating fleets of bots.

That undercuts the idea that this is some organic AI society of independent bots.

Remember, they don’t have goals, desires, or awareness. They’re running scripts, prompts, and loops that humans designed. That also calls into question the spooky stuff the agents posted, like this example. Weird posts don’t mean we’ve stumbled into sentient beings. It’s just the result of pattern-matching plus learned human storytelling instincts gone wild. Or, more likely, it’s humans posing as bots. (What a strange turn of events).

Most of all, it feels so pointless.

Human-to-human discourse on the Internet is under threat, and this gives a small, dystopian glimpse into what might come next — networks that have human responses buried in bot talk, or networks that just forgo humans altogether. Now more than ever, we don’t need agents to do our talking for us. We shouldn’t be automating the fun parts of the Internet, you know, engaging with other people.

If you want that, you need to get your brain checked.

Moltbook might be a molten hot mess, but it does raise some genuine concerns about the continued prevalence of AI bots in our online discourse:

1. Soon, humans won’t know when they’re no longer talking to each other, or if they ever were.

2. Humans may end up talking to each other through bots.

3. Online conversation will continue to be optimised to death.

4. Attention is going to be further diluted.

5. With AI bots able to generate endless posts, endless replies and endless “activity,” human voices are going to be outnumbered.

6. The bad actors will have more leverage. One person + thousands of agents can create an artificial consensus, debate can be simulated and popularity can be faked, at a speed and scale never seen ever before.

What I’m trying to say is that large-scale agent networks don’t need to be intelligent or malicious to harm human-human online discourse.

They only need to be cheap, prolific, and difficult to distinguish from real human beings.

Adverts are the succubus of the Internet.

The riches they promise, forever tempting and seducing tech companies to monetise whatever product or service they have, no matter the cost to user experience. In many cases, that cost has been to make much of the Internet unusable. I hate Internet ads with a passion, the constant stream of popups, banners, paywalls, and don’t get me started on adverts on paid tiers in streaming.

AI was meant to be different. Or at least that’s what the cheerleaders have been telling us. With such a revolutionary technology, how could there not be plenty of paths to profitability? Well, those profits are nowhere to be seen. Businesses have been seeing poor returns (senior executives at Salesforce, one of the biggest AI pushers, have admitted, both internally and publicly, that they massively overestimated AI’s capabilities). And while some users do pay, many settle for free options. For OpenAI, only 5% of its weekly users pay for Plus or Pro plans, and even then, each of these subscriptions loses the company money. They are literally burning through cash to run every prompt, and haven’t been able to innovate a moneymaker — shitty video products and porny AI have done little to move the needle — and, what a surprise, they’ve resorted to the same idea that every other tech company has sold their soul for.

Advertising. The trusty old playbook: First, they hook you, then they perpetually worsen the product and price-gouge.

What a thoroughly depressing outcome. Sam Altman said that ads would be a LAST RESORT. Yet, here we are, only a year or so later. I think it was always on the cards. Thanks to his shady manoeuvring and backdoor dealings, he cut loose from the original non-profit goals and set a new North Star: Shareholders’ wallets. Long gone are the days of its mission to do good by humanity — if you still believe that, you’ve been drinking the Silicon Valley flavoured Kool-Aid again — and that has changed both the objective and the priorities.

This shift shows just how shaky the ground is under OpenAI. Money is drying up, leaving Sam Altman searching for funding in Saudi Arabia. Microsoft’s filings show OpenAI lost ~$12B through July to September 2025, against reported profits of $13 billion for the entire year. According to Forbes, the company sets $15 million on fire every single day to keep Sora running, its shitty social media sludge machine. Google has been eating its market share, and ironically, is propped up by the world’s biggest advertising machine (read: illegal monopoly), giving it a huge runway to pursue profitless AI. Even Meta, while failing to produce competitive products, has the same leeway thanks to the frankly absurd profits it rakes in from its own advertising empire in Facebook. If it’s a fight till the bank account runs dry, OpenAI loses. Lawsuits are piling up, with cases ranging from infringements and IP theft to wrongful death and assisted suicide. Its last few model releases have been underwhelming, showing that scaling alone will not take us to the promised land of AGI. It’s not unfair to say the company could be dying in front of our eyes.

The move to ads is nothing more than desperation.

And what of these ads? Well, they look shit, take up half the damn screen, and will have a serious impact on the user experience. For now, the company claims that “Ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you” and that “We keep your conversations with ChatGPT private from advertisers, and we never sell your data to advertisers.” Do we trust that? And how do they define conversations?

I think we all know what happens next. The schmucks (that’s us) show the company they don’t really care, and before we know it, we’ll have adverts in the answers, sponsored responses, and all sorts of privacy issues, with our most intimate responses being sold off to the highest bidder. I can already see the “Sam Altman Is Selling Your Conversations” headlines coming down the road. If you use ChatGPT as your therapist (no comment), I suggest you take a rain check on that for now.

As Alberto Romero writes —

Do you really think that an AI company like OpenAI, capable of training a bot to win the Mathematical Olympiad and a worldwide coding challenge, can’t train that same bot to maximize revenue as a function of advertising in a way that destroys the user experience without entering into conflict with their stated principles? That’s what they do for a living!

I also think one pretty glaring problem got missed in this rollout. Google can afford not to put ads in its AI products (thanks to the other products they ruined with adverts). That means users can quit ChatGPT and move to another service that won’t serve them ads or ask them to pay not to see them. It’s essentially asking users to switch, and a good chunk are going to. Hardly a master stroke? 

In the end, we’ve learned nothing new. Tech companies are driven by growth at all costs, and AI is a means to that end, helping the biggest ones tighten their control and power. It’s not a noble cause, and hasn’t been since the big boys took over. Adverts are shitty and damage the Internet experience, yet they continue to entrench themselves into everything we interact with. Sam Altman excels in his role as Chief Bullshit Officer, saying one thing yet doing the opposite. His company is struggling and edging closer to collapsing or being bought by Microsoft or Google and stripped for parts. Users will complain, and then likely do nothing. AI is still a product that just works fine, that doesn’t make enough money, and isn’t going to bring the societal transformations it once promised, at least not in its current form. 

And most of all, the enshittification will never end. 

I’m not one to jump on the Next Big Thing, but I’ll admit I saw the recent trend of going back to using old iPods, and I got nostalgic. After all, it is one of the defining pieces of tech in the last forever, and I loved mine dearly.

I thought about cancelling Spotify. In truth, I’d love to.

But then, I remembered how most of my music back then was pirated (shhh, don’t tell) and I no longer have it stored anywhere, that having to sync the device through iTunes was cumbersome, and how I’ve come to depend on the convenience of having the entire catalogue of music in a single app for the frankly obscene price of £19.99 a month.

Why do I want to cancel Spotify, you ask? Well, it’s a pretty shitty company that doesn’t pay artists enough (at least those outside the top 1%), seems all too happy to have AI artists and music juice its numbers, and the owner is a twat. But then, is Apple any better? Would I go back to a device that was made in sweatshops akin to labor camps?

All this has got me thinking, when did using tech products and services become such a juggling act of trade-offs? Or has it always been this way?

Almost every device, service or software comes with compromises, and it’s a constant battle with what you can tolerate against your morals and values, and to what level. Are you down with the sweatshops, but against privacy invasion? Are you all for a bit of global-scale data theft, but not okay with the billionaire owner sticking his nose into politics? Are you fine with AI undressing women without their consent, but against it stealing jobs?

I use a smartphone, even though I know the workers who make them are overworked and underpaid, and that these devices are designed to break and then live out the rest of their days clogging landfills. Yet, I wouldn’t buy an AI device because it’s an invasion of privacy and a barrier to human connection. In the same breath, you could argue these concerns also apply to smartphones and the apps on them. So why have I made peace with that?

Years ago, I drew the line with Meta. I have been off Facebook for over 10 years now, and have never had an Instagram account. But I do use WhatsApp — also owned by Meta — because it’s convenient. I also use X, owned by one of the biggest ding dongs in the world. Does that cancel out my moral stance? It certainly makes me hypocritical.

I don’t use TikTok because its algorithm is digital crack cocaine, and I don’t need that in my life. There’s also the smallissue of it being Chinese-owned. But, I do use YouTube, even though its goals are almost certainly to create as addictive an algorithm. And is it really better if it’s owned by Google, which influences governments with its money and power, and enjoys an illegal monopoly on search and digital ads?

I don’t have a fancy camera doorbell because it’s essentially just spyware, and I refuse to buy “smart” appliances like the damn fridge that lets you look into it instead of opening the door, but I do have a smart-controlled heating system and a robot hoover. Each is likely sucking up data, and I wouldn’t be surprised if smart devices I do own were surveilling me in some way. What’s the reasoning behind my choices here? No idea.

Each to their own. There’s nothing wrong or right here. But it is pretty damning that almost no modern tech comes without drawbacks, and it’s been left up to us, the consumers, to decide how much we can stomach.

With AI, this is only going to get worse. As it continues to be stuffed into every product and service, the compromises will get bigger and harder to swallow. We will now have to consider the burning of resources, the theft of art, music, writing and more, the impact on jobs, the data and privacy concerns, hallucinations, rogue activity and more. The last few attempts at AI hardware devices have been an interesting experiment in where the line is with our collective morals and values — they were almost a unanimous “oh hell no.” But that same majority will go back to using their smartphones that track their every move, talking to an Alexa that listens to every word they say, or scrolling through feeds engineered to keep them hooked.

The question is, what choice do we really have? Tech is so integrated into our lives that at this point, you either have to make some of these compromises or build yourself a log cabin in the woods and go off-grid. (Yes, it sounds lovely, but for the 99.99%, it’s not a practical or possible endeavour).

If you want to stay within society — you know, to live, to work, to engage with people, to pay bills, shop, interact with culture — disconnecting from technology is not an option. And that leaves us making these strange, contradicting choices.

At least we are more aware of this now. There are growing movements to limit screen time, to make phones and devices less distracting and attention-demanding, to use devices that are not connected to the Internet, and to return to books, magazines, and non-digital forms of entertainment and pastimes.

Perhaps many have reached the breaking point. Or maybe this is just a small way to help us make peace with all those compromises

What’s worse than an AI model that self-identifies as MechaHiter?

One that also doubles as a child porn machine.

Grok has always been one of the more egregious AI models. Not only is it not particularly useful — I don’t see anyone talking about using it for anything — but its main function is to act as a bot-serving cuck, answering their every whim. It has destroyed much of the platform’s utility. What once operated like a forum, you know, real conversations with other users, is now just users typing “grok, explain this” in an endless loop.

The biggest issue stems from Elon Musk’s obsession with his platform being a public town square. It’s all free speech this, and free speech that — unless, of course, you want to track his private jet or investigate him — and the result is that his AI model is more unhinged and unregulated, constantly stripped of guardrails to allow users to toe much closer to the line. It’s the selling point of his product.

The problem? Users regularly cross that line, and the man behind the control kill switch doesn’t give a fuck.

We’re seeing this play out right now, as the online world grapples with a very bleak trend: Users are undressing women without their consent.

You might ask, perhaps Grok went a little wonky? Maybe users found a way to jailbreak it to ignore its protocols? Nope. It does this for any user who asks, on any picture they want. And worse, the AI, which at this point appears to be a clone of Musk’s inner man-child, seems to find the undressing of women (and likely underage girls) funny. Remember, when Grok went all Hitler on us, they shut it down to fix it. This has been going on for over a week… and nothing? It’s grim. It’s horrific for the women involved (more so the one’s posting genuine content, not fishing for OnlyFans signups). And it’s just a pathetic outlook for the men doing it.

As Nick Hilton writes —

The real horror should be that there are young men, all over the world, who are using the internet as a public space to shoot the breeze with chatbots and create fake porn. We should be terrified by the idea that there might be a real human who sees someone tweet a short clip of a movie and asks “@grok explain to me what’s happening in this movie”, rather than, you know, watching a movie. If these ‘people’ are bots, good. If these ‘people’ are people… fuck.

Those who make AI products are constantly caught between adding guardrails and safety mechanisms to protect users and throwing that all out the window to drive engagement and satisfy the edge lords. Here’s an example of the consequences of the latter.

I get the usual arguments about it being a tool, and I agree. It is a tool. But by making the ability to do previously complex tasks more accessible, these tools are changing the rules.

Before, anyone could take someone’s picture. They could browse the Internet for an image of a scantily clad woman. They could import it into Photoshop if they owned it. They could try to learn some basic skills in an attempt to merge them into something that passes as real. I say could, because most people wouldn’t. The skills, steps and time required, even at a basic level, are a barrier to entry, and in some ways, the last safeguard that keeps the basement dwellers in check.

That’s why generative AI is scary as a tool. It puts the Photoshop skill level — and video/audio editing — of an expert-level user in the palm of everyone’s hand, as easy to use as a calculator. There is no longer a barrier to entry, and no skills are required. If you’re able to type “put her in a bikini,” or “replace her outfit with clear tape,” your pervert’s paradise awaits. What comes next? “Put her in a porn movie, where she does X and Y.” That’s why guardrails are a necessity. I also think it’s time to explore a universal watermark to indicate that something was produced by a generative AI model. Yes, it’s a very complex topic, and it would have to consider to what degree things were generated, but we’re already at the stage where separating what’s real and not is a challenge. We need something to help us distinguish between fact and fiction.

We’re only scratching the surface here, but what is clear is that the overlords don’t care. Altman has had porn on the mind for a while now, likely because he knows it will drive engagement. Musk claims he’ll take action on individual users, but we shouldn’t expect much unless his hand is forced. More likely, he will leave Grok as it is if it keeps pumping user numbers, and will argue to the end of time that this is just a downside of having AI without regulation. I’d hang my hopes on legal action, but we all know that won’t happen, and even if it did, it wouldn’t come soon enough. We might be too late already — even if Grok and the other platforms refuse to act on prompts, or bake in some hard rails, the code is already out there. Once it’s open source, it’s anyone’s to do with as they wish.

For Grok and Musk, it comes down to this. There is no reason users should be able to do this on the platform. It in no way aligns with xAI’s supposed mission to “accelerate human scientific discovery” and to “advance our collective understanding of the universe.” It’s a gimmick, pure and simple, and one that’s going to cause harm to people and ruin lives.

This has implications for the future, too. Before we know it, everything you’ve ever posted online may become a weapon that can be used against you.

A world where random Internet strangers can take any photo of you and generate you in any situation, any context, any scenario. Your face. Your voice. Your characteristics. Only, not you, and with no way to prove otherwise.

Whatever you do from here on out, remember that you now need to be extremely careful with everything you post online. The perverts and predators are lurking and are being given the tools to live out their fantasies. It only gets worse from here.

Well, folks, another year, another arduous trudge through more technology that’s misused, unwanted, poorly executed or outright dangerous.

As is tradition at Trend Mill, I’ve reflected on the past year and picked out some of the bad tech that’s soured the last 12 months (and while likely sour many more to come).

No surprise that AI features heavily in this year’s roundup.

Got one that should be added to this collection? Drop it in a comment below.

Horny AI

If we can dub 2026 as anything, perhaps it could be the year of Horny AI.

We had Sam Altman talking a lot about AI Porn, which is now coming to ChatGPT imminently. This is the same Sam Altman who said he was proud the company hadn’t put a sex bot avatar into ChatGPT yet. Oh well, those morals held fast. We had ‘Ani,’ Grok’s AI companion, who was basically a raunchy anime character that was all too eager to engage in sexy conversations.

There are many obvious downsides to this — hyper-addictive, damaging to the social fabric, dangerous to share your dirty laundry and secrets with a computer, people falling in love with entities that don’t give a shit about them — but hey, it will juice engagement numbers for AI companies. I suspect 2026 is the year AI porn goes full throttle.

MechaHitler AI

Speaking of Grok, how can we forget this doozy? Earlier this year, the chatbot was identifying itself as MechaHilter, giving us a glimpse into how unhinged AI can be when it goes off the rails (or when it is coded/trained to go off those rails).

It also shed light on the question that still plagues these generative AI solutions — the need for boundaries and guardrails versus the need to let users use them as they please. I wonder which one will win out.

Predatory AI

“Is there anything - ANYTHING - Big Tech won’t do for a quick buck?”

That’s the question U.S. Senator Josh Hawley asked when it was revealed in leaked internal documents that Meta’s internal AI policies permitted the company’s artificial intelligence creations to “engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual.”

The North Star of Meta has always been engagement at all costs. And what better way to drive that than to target the most vulnerable users who know no better. I’m adamant technology has ruined — and will continue to ruin — the childhoods of children who grow up with an iPad in their hand before they learn to say “gaga.”

As AI continues to infiltrate their lives, from their toys and devices to their education, only time will tell what effects and consequences it will have. We know the generation raised on social media got a little fucked up, so what will happen to those raised on predatory chatbots?

Sloppy AI

This year brought the realisation that we’re going to spend the rest of our lives asking, “Is this AI?” I can’t fucking wait.

The release of Sora 2, essentially TikTok for AI-generated content, is a damning reflection of where the AI industry is right now. It is, and always was, about money. And the money isn’t coming from anything other than subscription fees to sludge generators. It’s all they have, and so everyone is doubling down, and that means the slop is getting turned up to 11. But hey, at least it gives us videos of Sam Altman as Skibidi Toilet, right?

If you had hoped to see mass, coordinated pushback on this, as companies and creators fought to protect the rights to their work, you were living in la-la-land. Disney — a company notorious for heavy-handed IP protection — just signed a deal with OpenAI. So now we can look forward to AI-generated Disney content like “The Great Glory Hole.”

I truly hope this one blows up in the company’s face and serves as a warning to every other studio/media company. When people can create anything, there really is no bottom of the barrel.

Windows AI (11)

Microsoft is the strangest of all the giant tech companies. It continually makes shit products that prioritise shareholder value over user experience, and yet, it’s still worth over $3 trillion?

A few weeks ago, Windows 11 was introduced as an “AI Canvas” at a launch event, with the company waxing lyrically about all the great Agentic AI coming our way. That should have set off the alarm bells. The rollout has been a disaster, with many users unable to update at all, and those who have are complaining it’s slow, buggy and filled with advertising and useless Copilot features. Oh, and it’s forcing users to sign up for Microsoft emails to run the update, and it wants them to pay for subscriptions to access Office and other software (that used to be free!) Enshittification at its finest.

It seems the userbase isn’t having it. According to a Forbes report, some 500 million PCs are yet to be upgraded, despite Microsoft already ending support for Windows 10. Will the company listen to its users, or continue to value its shareholders’ wallets? I think you know the answer. (More AI-features incoming).

Friend AI

There was always going to be at least one AI device on this list. Founder Avi Schiffmann raised over $7 million in funding to build the Friend AI Pendant, of which he spunked $1.8 million on a domain name, and $1 million on the biggest NYC Subway advertising campaign of the year. Perhaps it would have been better to spend that money on a little bit of market research, which would have told him that the majority of people don’t want a device that endorses connecting with an AI over real, actual humans.

The advertising campaign became a source of ridicule, with all that white space offering a canvas for people to say how they really felt. If you needed an insight into the ego at play here, Schiffmann claimed it was by design, all part of his genius marketing plan. Sure it was.

The genius plan clearly worked. Recent figures suggest it has sold somewhere around 3,000 units (and delivered about 1,000). It’s a flop, and a win for having real friends. 

The Age-Gated Internet

This year saw the first real push to age-gate the Internet (at least in the UK). First of all, I almost understand the porn thing. I don’t agree with it at all, but I can at least see logic behind it. Porn can be pretty disgusting, and restricting who can access that is a conversation that should be had. But when I get a notification from this very platform telling me I have to verify my age to access the chat feature, it makes my blood boil.

Not only is this unnecessary friction chipping away at the general Internet experience — we’ve got enough paywalls and adverts without “verify your age” becoming the next invasive blocker — I also suspect there are murky intentions at play. It’s another chance to grab data points, and it’s governments taking a step towards online surveillance. There’s also the glaring privacy concerns: who stores my identification data, how safe is it, and where is the concrete proof it isn’t being used or sold? I don’t like the direction of travel here, and wonder what is coming next year.

Putting Everything on the Cloud

In the last few weeks, we saw a huge percentage of the entire Internet — and the services connected to it — completely shut down, not once, but twice. Here lies the lesson: putting everything on cloud servers and allowing only a handful of companies to control and maintain them is a bad idea. When they fail, they cause a serious ripple effect, whether that’s access to websites, files, work services or Slack messages (okay, that’s definitely a silver lining). It’s also just an obvious ploy to have users pay to store their own work and access services.

Cloudflare was the guilty party this year, but we’re going to see this happen more and more as the entirety of the online world continues its move into cloud storage. Sure, it makes for funny memes when it crashes for a few hours, but what happens if it goes down for days? Weeks? Forever?

Honorable mention: AI Washing Machines

“Hold on, I’m talking to you on my washing machine, can I call you back,” is not something I ever imagined a human being would say. That’s the wonders of technology for you. Samsung’s latest ‘smart’ products include a washing machine that displays notifications on the screen and even lets you answer calls through the interface. 

Honestly, if I ever catch a human having a conversation through their washing machine while they likely have a $1,000 smartphone in their pocket, I’m going to give them a good dressing-down. 

“I can’t hear you very well.”

“Oh yeah, sorry, my washing machine is just on the spin cycle.”

“What?!”

“MY WASHING MACHINE IS ON THE SPIN CYCLE!”

“WHAT??”

If there was any hint that we had reached peak technology, this is it. Every year, I pray that the obsession with smart products ends, and every year it gets worse. Remember, more parts, more features, and more software mean a greater chance that the products won’t last very long at all. Almost like it’s by design. 

Got one that should be added to this collection? Drop it in a comment below.

We can argue till the cows come home about whether Generative AI is good/bad, useful/not useful, pro-humanity/humanity-destroying. The answer likely lies in middle.

But one thing we can probably all agree is that AI models or programs interacting with other AI models or programs is a waste of time, resources and space, seemingly only capable of producing soul-sucking, bland, paint-by-numbers sludge that’s slowly infecting our every day lives. As we continue to hand over of our agency to AI, we’re creating more and more scenarios where AI ends up meeting another AI.

It’s happening everywhere; AI bots responding to social posts produced by AI bots, students turning in AI-generated work that’s then being marked by an AI program, job applicants using AI to write their application only to have it rejected at random by an AI software.

In most cases, the outcome is worse than it was pre-AI.

If you wonder what this looks like, here it is: a death loop of flattery, apologising, the shifting opinions — known as AI sycophancy — and endless back and forth that achieves absolutely nothing. (h/t )

It’s a painful watch. The looping “you’re right” and “let me know” would drive you insane. The ridiculous regurgitation of what it just heard, the obvious pattern matching at play, the attempt to keep everything fluffy and airy. In what way is this an improvement? It’s not, of course — it’s a cost-cutting exercise.

A trillion dollars wasted on training models, buying chips, building data centres, all to make a customer service call even more infuriating than speaking to a human being. If this is what we can expect from agentic AI — basically autonomous AI that can make decisions, plan, and take action with minimal human effort — I don’t think it’s going to be the revolution it’s promised to be (or the one that AI companies are counting on to stay afloat).

Imagine handing off your customer service compliant to an agent, who then proceeds to have a 4 hour long conversation with another AI, both unable to make a decisive move, stuck in a death loop of agreeability, niceties and vibe checking.

Give me an uninterested human who barely speaks my language any day.

AI stocks are wobbling. Recent model releases have been underwhelming. The AI companies still aren’t making profits; instead, they’re focusing on questionable deals that are binding them to governments, businesses and each other. The aim has shifted to becoming “too big to fail,” rather than, you know, making money by building useful, widely adopted products.

The veil of “we’re doing this for good of humanity” has also well and truly slipped off. Like a Scooby Doo villain reveal, the good intentions — remember when OpenAI was nonprofit? — were only surface-level. Ripping the mask off has shown what really lies beneath: an insatiable appetite for power, influence, control and wealth.

And boy, are they desperate to grasp it.

The problem is they’ve done a terrible job of disguising this, and it’s turned the tide. If last year saw the continued rise of AI, this year has seen the rise of the backlash against AI, so much so that it resurfaced an old slur against the technology — Clanker.

And what better word to choose as Trend Mill’s Word of the Year.

The term was popularised in an old Star Wars game, where it was used to describe battle droids, referencing the ‘clanking’ sound their joints and metallic frames made during movement.

Recently, it reappeared in the social discourse, becoming a form of protest against the ongoing integration of AI into almost everything around us. It even reached the Senator level. A slur against a technology is a perfect encapsulation of where we are right now — the majority are sick of seeing the insane amount of money burned on it, sick of seeing the technology forced into our products, workplaces and customer service, and sick of seeing the same overlords tell us how great it is, how great it will be, and how thankful we should be that these great men are doing this for us.

But as I’ve mentioned, we’re waking up to the opposite reality. It’s making most products worse. It’s setting resources and capital on fire at a frightening pace. It’s replacing jobs (albeit not at the speed we worried… yet). It’s turning creativity into a commodity, dumbing it down for the masses. It’s turned lots of media into paint-by-numbers slop, and this will only get worse. It’s turning our children into AI-dependents who will soon lose the ability to think for themselves. And, if the rate of expansion continues, these AI companies seem intent on making our entire planet into one giant data centre — and then actual outer space — while they jet off to start their new civilisation on Mars.

In summary, we’re fucking fed up. And to channel that anger, we’ve adopted a “slur.” And honestly, that’s healthy. It’s a complicated, multifaceted technology that’s infiltrating our daily lives in so many ways, from software to automation to robots, and it’s hard to know where to point this anger. A simple, all-encompassing term will do the trick and help to engage others in the pushback.

Some people are arguing that by giving AI a slur, we are doing the opposite — we’re humanizing it, both tearing it down while acknowledging its ascension. I don’t buy that. At the end of the day, can a slur truly be considered derogatory if it is being used against artificial intelligence or a robot that, by definition, does not experience emotions and cannot be offended?

I will never give oxygen to the concept of discrimination against robots or artificial intelligence. Even if it ever gets to the point of being ‘emotive,’ it’s still only displaying the emotions it thinks it should display, based on what it has learned in the past. This is a boundary we must keep in place.

It would be wrong of me not to touch on the unsettling discourse around the term. While it comes as no surprise, people are using it as a cover for their own, genuine racist beliefs. This Wired article offers a great overview of what’s going on across socials. As the author writes, “some of these skits appear to be using clankers as stand-ins for Black people, perpetuating racist tropes and scenarios that harken back to a pre–Civil Rights era.”

These people are bad apples, and always will be. No amount of education, culture or experience will fix them. All I can say here is that the AI pushback — or at least the demand to make the technology meaningful, useful and for-humans — only works if we’re pushing together, and not using it to disguise outdated beliefs about each other. Please consider the tropes and references you use when taking an anti-AI stance. Be a good human.

Sorry for the rant. It seems that recently, the Word of the Year has been less of a fun activity, and more a yearly “what the fuck are we doing here” realization moment. Last year, I chose ‘AI sludge.’ This time, it’s ‘Clanker.’ Let’s hope for something more optimistic next year.

What would be your Word of the Year? Leave them down below.

Other notable choices so far include the Cambridge Dictionary, which chose ‘Parasocial’ (decent), Collins, which picked ‘Vibe Coding’ (hate) and Dictionary.com, which selected ‘67 (Six-Seven)’ (loathe entirely).

Our online world is starting to drown in AI-generated sludge. Everywhere you look, there’s writing, video, images, music and more, pumped out at the typing of a prompt, at speeds and scales not seen before.

The promise of generative AI is that, if you can think it, you can create it. It’s a big promise, and one that should result in creations that blow our minds. After all, humans can really think. History tells us our brains are very capable of doing amazing stuff.

And yet, whenever I engage with AI-generated content, the resounding feeling I’m left with is simply, what’s the fucking point in all of this?

I know I’m not alone in that feeling.

This is the so-called “democratizing of creativity,” the idea that AI tools can give everybody the ability to do anything. It’s a noble goal. But I’m starting to believe it’s one of the main reasons we’re seeing such a tidal wave of slop. When there’s no reason to create something other than “because I can,” it leads to soulless, meaningless output. If you give tools to people who don’t know what to do with them, or don’t particularly care what comes from using them, you get mediocrity. It’s making for the sake of making, and it shows.

I’ve said from day one that creativity is something that should not be dumbed down. It’s not something to be automated so that the masses can do it. It should be a challenge, an exercise in patience and dedication. You have to want to be creative. You have to want to push your boundaries. You have to want to learn the new skills, crafts and knowledge needed to produce whatever it is you envisioned.

The best things humans make come from this passion, and from an unwavering pursuit to get it done, no matter the hurdles ahead. It sure as shit doesn’t come from the typing of a few words into an interface that then regurgitates a bastardized version of previous work it trained on (read: stole from).

Skills — and the dedication and commitment to earn them — were always the gatekeeper to creativity. But now, the automation bros want to cut all that out. They want to optimize the process, and that means cutting out the learning curve. It’s all about getting from 0 to 1 as fast as possible. But why? Learning skills is not a bad thing, and shouldn’t be seen as a hindrance — for many, it’s as much about the process and the journey as it is the output. It’s deeply self-fulfilling. It results in work you can be proud of. A picture you can hang up on your wall. A piece of music you can play to others. A story you can read to your kids. You sit and think, “Whoa, I made that.” Creating stuff and learning how to do it is one of the best things about being human. We should not be looking to automate this. If anything, we should encourage more people to challenge themselves with creative endeavors.

Yet, with our new industrial-scale prompt machines, skill is no longer this gatekeeper to creativity.

I don’t think that’s a good thing. It may even be the problem. Using AI is all about the intentions behind it. In one scenario, it’s a tool that can be—and is—used in the process of creating great work. I know lots of people in this category, and they really do use it as one step in their multi-step process. In the other scenario, it is the entire process. I also know people in this category, and they use it to produce terrible work that offers absolutely nothing to society. (Sorry).

Why? Because there’s no intention behind it. There’s no soul in it. It just exists because it can, and it’s released into a world already filled with other AI sludge, slopping around in a big pool of nothingness, here for a second, gone the next. Sure, this applies to a lot of human-made content — blame the algorithms that prey on our attention spans — but at least the creators themselves gain something from it. It meant something to them. Perhaps they put in a few more hours of practice, taking another small step forward toward mastery.

When you typed a few words and hit enter, nobody wins. Not you, not me, and not the world. It’s just large-scale waste. If we’re learning anything from this current AI hype cycle, it’s that there’s nothing to be gained from automating creativity. We have to try better than that. We can use these tools, but we have to use them with the right intentions.

On that note, Happy Halloween! The Trend Mill logo seems very fitting today.

Since the boom of generative AI, there has been an unanswered question: What is the point of all this?

Is it to improve society, cure diseases, enable people to live lives free of monotonous work, or is it to generate videos of Sam Altman as Skibidi Toilet?

We’ve swung wildly between “AI will enslave us” and “AI is nothing more than a sometimes-useful tool” so often, I should sue for whiplash. Even Chief Bullshit Officer Sam Altman switches between comparing ChatGPT to the Manhattan Project, and, oh don’t worry, we’re only creating tools for the funzies on a weekly basis. There is absolutely no correlation between this and when the company needs to raise capital.

The diehard enthusiasts tout that the slop era is a stepping stone to something greater. By training LLMs to “make” art, or writing, or video, we are priming them with capabilities to achieve greater things. The justification for the slop machines is that Generative AI is the crawl before AI technology can walk towards a new dawn.

But lately, I think we’re seeing that this may not be true.

Right now, Generative AI is the main offering.

Perhaps, the only offering.

So far, the technology has failed to deliver the workplace revolution it promised. At the enterprise level, 95% of AI pilots are failing to improve productivity. Across the SaaS industry, products are ruining user experience and functionality with unnecessary AI features and then bumping up costs to pay for it. Professionals across the board are using AI tools more because they can, rather than because they actually improve work processes (looking at you, therapists), which is hardly sustainable. The main issue is that the fundamental problems remain. Despite being years into the GenAI era, there is still no trust in the intentions behind it, no reliability in its output, no transparency in its data use, no path to financial viability, and no resolution to the copyright infringements that continue to occur. With concerns that the bubble is close to bursting ramping up by the day, there is serious pressure on the entire sector to find new hype, new use cases and new growth.

Which brings us back to slop machines.

The release of Sora 2, essentially TikTok for AI-generated content, is a damning reflection of the desperation at play. It’s given us some of the answers — it is, and always was, about money. And the money isn’t coming from anything other than subscription fees to sludge generators. It’s all they have, and so everyone is doubling down.

The AI field has some of the smartest minds in the world working in it (and some of the highest paid), and it’s been reduced to creating more chatbots and TikTok clones. In OpenAI’s case, the accumulation of all this effort, knowledge, and billions of dollars of investment is apps and social networks that are highly addictive, hyper-personalized content farms designed to eventually sell adverts? Erotic conversation and role-playing with chatbots? A feature that has chatbots prompting the user each morning? The company — once nonprofit and for humanity — is now chasing the same growth and engagement metrics as every other tech giant.

The result is a bunch of smart people making stupid products.

As if we needed more of that shit.

We know we’re addicted to devices and platforms. We know the creators of them know that. We know that they spend time and money figuring out how to make them more addictive, and how to get them into younger hands and more malleable minds. And yet, we still consume. We completely lost the battle. Take one look at the average screen time — it’s frankly disgusting. But thank you, Mr Altman, for your solution: More apps, but this time with a twist; you can create anything in your wildest dreams with a few clicks, hundreds of times a day, and doom scroll feeds of content that will keep you hooked in ways we’ve never seen before!

There’s an even darker side: deep fakes with realistic look and voice created in a matter of seconds, held together with very lightweight safe guards (a watermark and some copyright blocks) that will be easily side-stepped by those who want to. And people want to. Read any comment threads on Reddit, and it will tell you that users only like using Generative AI when they can do whatever they want with it. Users will demand platforms with fewer and fewer guardrails, and companies will race to provide them, despite the obvious implications, because money.

That’s a scary prospect. We’re creating hyper-realistic deep fake machines that will be accessible to anyone with a few bucks and a smartphone, and then being so kind as to provide the social infrastructure to let users share this content to a wide audience. It’s incentivised deep fakes. What could go wrong? Is this what they meant when they speak about “democratising creativity?” I’ve written many times about why that’s not a good idea, and Sora 2 will prove why that’s correct.

At least we can relax in the reassurance that we’ve got consent and regulations to keep users safe. Oh, wait.

The good news is that the platform is not showing any signs of staying power. It’s only a week old (!) and it’s already reduced the output of free users. It’s also been rocked by copyright infringements complaints left, right and centre, and users are now complaining that the platform is boring as it’s forced to control what people can generate. For Sam Altman, he’s caught in a lose/lose scenario — the app is burning his company’s money while rights holders are angry at him for violating copyright, and users are angry at him for not violating copyright hard enough.

(The app, which shot to number 1 in the US charts on the day it released, now has a 2.9/5 rating.)

I also think it’s still targeting a smaller market than people think — i.e, those who are too lazy to be creative and those who are happy to consume the end product of this laziness. The movement against AI slop is gathering pace. As I wrote a few weeks ago, for me, it all comes down to intention. Creating garbage for the sake of it is a sign of bad intentions, and it shows in the outcome. As we continue to push back against mindless content generation, what possible future can platforms entirely dedicated to promoting it have?

The entire AI industry is caught in a vicious cycle right now, with the shadow of collapse looming over it that can only be outrun with more capital and more hype, and it’s having a knock-on effect on the products and services being released. Chasing money leads to products no one asked for and takes these companies away from doing good work. And again, when the smartest minds on the planet are involved, they are very capable of this.

The sooner these smart people start making smart products, the sooner humanity will benefit from this technology.

Tech history is littered with moments when consumers had the opportunity to push back, failed to do so, and were then left burdened with bad products and bad consequences.

Why did we fall for the pretty marketing and find ourselves in a routine of upgrading devices every year or two, throwing millions of perfectly good products into landfills?

Why did we continue to use platforms like Facebook, even when we discovered they were nothing more than data-harvesting machines, with the main purpose of selling ads?

Why did we allow our homes to be infiltrated by “smart products,” stuffed with unnecessary additions and features that made them dumb-as-hell spyware, and we’re now in a situation where your door might fail to unlock because of a software bug?

There are countless more (and I’d love to hear them in the comments!).

In most of these cases, it was the same choice. Had we, the consumers, resisted or chosen to stop using/buying the products, the outcomes could have been different. They don’t want to hear that, but it’s true. They can try to fake it till they make it, or attempt to survive on VC funding until they become “too big to fail,” but at the end of the day, most companies run on metrics like users and engagement. If we don’t become engaged users, they don’t have a successful business.

A great microcosm of this is streaming.

Think of what has gone on in the last few years: the crackdown on password sharing, the endless price rises, the slow destruction of cinema, and the un-skippable adverts in paid (!) subscriptions. Next on the list will be fully AI-generated ads and hyper-targeting, and then, before you know it, fully AI-generated programming. None of these are the hallmarks of a good product.

Speaking of endless price rises, there’s yet more on the way. As noted by Ted Gioia, Apple has announced another price rise, and Disney and Hulu are about to follow suit. This will be the fourth year in a row that Disney has bumped prices, meaning the ad-free subscription price has almost tripled in just six years. Bear in mind that inflation sits somewhere around 3%; it’s hard to justify a nearly 20% yearly rise in subscription prices. The sad thing is that, thanks to our endless ability to eat the shit we’re fed, the only innovation now seen at these companies is price rises. They’ve got lazy. It’s not better UX, new viewing options, interesting formats, or a commitment to 10/10 prestige programming — it’s boardroom execs and accountants tactically increasing prices in various regions here and there to juice their numbers and fill the wallets of shareholders.

It’s untethered greed, and it’s been allowed to run wild.

Look at this great chart from Stat Significant.

At every opportunity, we could have said fuck you and voted with our wallets. Well, in a way we have, just not the way we should have. Time and time again, these companies have implemented changes and crackdowns that have been detrimental to the user experience, and we’ve fought back by… agreeing to keep paying a continually rising fee for an ever-worsening product?

What options do we have? I’d love to see a mass boycott of these services, but we’re all suckers for having our minds numbed from the reality of lives with some trash TV. I get it. So, assuming we will all continue to consume content, the only answer might be to go back to pirating everything. Load up the PirateBay and go to town. SOMETHING I TOTALLY DO NOT DO AND HAVE NEVER DONE. I may or may not watch most of my TV on what I call “hooky sites.” I may or may not watch sports on streaming sites. I may or may not have used to get game consoles chipped so I could download games. I may or may not have been part of early-day Internet forums that leaked and shared music. Just to be clear, THESE ARE THINGS I TOTALLY DO NOT DO AND HAVE NEVER DONE.

But the point stands. These companies are going to bleed our wallets dry. They are not intent on winning the streaming wars by delivering the best experience or producing the best content. They are systemically, and likely in cohesion, raising prices year after year, in a desperate bid to maintain their completely overblown stock prices. By paying, and watching, you are subscribing to this business practice.

We’ve shown we can push back. I think it’s interesting to look at the AI space, particularly with hardware devices. Whenever a new device appears — like the Friend or the Rabbit r1, the public outcry is swift, and often kills these products on launch. We feel strongly about privacy (in this case, anyway), and about the consequences of letting a machine dictate our lives, or gain too much influence on them.

It’s time we start adding price-gouging to that list.

Pay for them if you want, even as they continue to get worse. Jokes on you. But know this. You won’t die from missing out on the latest series of “idiots dating other idiots while trying to get mildly Instagram-famous,” or not seeing whatever paint-by-numbers abomination is released each week. You might even feel a sense of freedom, unburdened by the need to keep up or the fear of missing out. You might find joy in other creative endeavors, or spend time engaging with other humans, or spend time working on yourself. All things that are not beholden to tech overlords and their addiction to price rises. And, if you’re desperate to see something, you can pay for a month (don’t forget to cancel), or you can always don your eye-patch and get pirating, SOMETHING I TOTALLY DON’T DO.

Whatever you do, stop giving your money to companies that don’t care about you.

I write a lot about why I hate the Internet experience, and I put most of the blame squarely on Big Tech and their never ending thirst for data and dollars, which has continued to erode what utility and joy is left to be found.

But if we’re being honest, we also have to take a long hard look at our own collective online behaviour.

The way we act, engage and use the Internet is, to put it mildly, not healthy, and at times, borderline insane. And it’s been detrimental to the user experience. Discourse is worse than ever. Debate is non existent. Everywhere you look, it’s trolls, rage bait and, of course, misinformation.

This week, I’m sharing a great post from my friend Adam Singer about how so many of us get misled. He writes — a brave name for a newsletter, but he continually delivers genuine hot takes! — and you will not regret subscribing to read his work.

Here is his post in full.

I’ve seen an extraordinary amount of blatantly false information the last week, even by the mainstream media (they’ve of course been doing this for a while). What’s surprising is so many people continue to be susceptible to it, from all forms of media traditional and new, in the volume they do. In the best of scenarios a very small percent is inevitable. Definitely not where we’re at.

The sheer volume of information today makes it difficult for many to separate truth from fiction. Social media, podcasts, traditional outlets, and now AI all compete for attention, each with their own biases and incentives. The result is an environment where half-truths, out-of-context clips, and outright fabrications travel faster than careful reporting or thoughtful analysis. And because people are busy, distracted, and often emotionally invested, clearly terrible (or simply false) ideas spread with alarming ease. All this is compounded worse by the fact many do not share a common understanding of base reality and morality that should be common across Western civilization.

Anyway, I thought I’d put down some ways I’ve seen people accept or share things they probably wouldn’t if they took just a bit of extra time. This even happens from those I know are otherwise intelligent. Although if it’s a recurring pattern, I start to question if they’re really as smart as I once thought.

They view clips without context. Context is important. And clip farmers are quite adept at taking a part of a clip and positioning it in a way that carries a different meaning than if you were to view the full thing. This has been ongoing for years - again, the short form video apps are poison. From these clips, quotes and screengrabs are made and passed around which carry the same falsehoods. Honestly I hate short form video for many reasons but this one especially, you frequently have to see the full video to get the story. Just stop watching these, and mute, unfollow or block people who share this stuff to purposefully obfuscate the truth and score points.

They think podcasts and streamers are doing journalism. It’s great if you enjoy podcasts or streamers, but most of this is simply opinion. A guy with a microphone talking for two hours isn’t magically delivering truth. He’s giving you one perspective, and it’s typically biased. You should probably understand the biases of all your favorite podcasters (I’m certain smart people do) and hopefully spend most of your time with those who have a bias for reality.

They confuse virality with truth. The most shared post is often the most emotional or extreme, not necessarily the most accurate. Rage spreads faster than nuance. Lots of things go viral that if you spend a moment looking deeper into them you’ll see they aren’t real.

They mistake repetition for evidence. Similar to the last point, hearing something over and over doesn’t make it true. The human brain is wired to trust familiarity, so if a lie is repeated enough it starts to feel real. This is why propaganda works, and why you have to stay skeptical even of things you’ve heard “everywhere.”

They assume traditional media always gets it right. Legacy outlets like newspapers and TV networks love to position themselves as the antidote to misinformation, but they’re often just as guilty of it. In the rush to be first, they publish shaky details, rely on anonymous sources, or repeat each other’s mistakes. Retractions come later, usually buried where no one sees them. By then, the first (wrong) version of the story has already taken root. A case can easily be made in many instances this is purposeful. With trust in media at lows (which doesn’t happen for no reason) I’m hoping the industry can look inward and do better.

They over-trust headlines. Headlines are written to grab attention, not give you the whole story. Sometimes they even contradict the actual article if you bother to read past the first paragraph. If your worldview is built out of headlines and push notifications, you’re living in a house of cards. Note I think it’s fine to use a headline by itself to start a discussion if it’s something anodyne or obvious clickbait and you don’t want to share the whole story and give the site traffic. Just don’t do it to fuel political blood feuds.

They dismiss information purely because it’s from someone not on their political team (I’ve written on this). Truth shouldn’t be political. And I honestly think a sign of intelligence is being able to understand the other side’s view, and seeing that on some issues different sides simply hold a different philosophy. We have debate so everyone can consider where consensus should be. Note when one side won’t even discuss an issue or tries to make the topic off limits, it’s clear they know they can’t win the debate on the popular stage.

They get information purely from AI. This is going to be increasingly large of a problem. But AI is frequently just guessing. Talk to it about a subject you know really well, you’ll see plenty of issues. It is interesting if you press it on something you know is false, it eventually admits it wasn’t right.

They genuinely believe extremist propaganda like “50% of the country wants you dead.” This is obviously untrue. If you let the algos or media convince you the other side is evil you have been psyop’d. Of course there are evil people but the majority of your fellow citizens aren’t. If you think this ask yourself why you do (nearly always traces back to media/pundits not interactions with your neighbors or at the grocery store). If you can’t consider it, maybe it’s time for a vacation or digital detox. Get some help.

They mistake satire or parody for real news. The internet has blurred the lines so much that obvious jokes now circulate as fact. People share Onion/Babylon Bee articles or out-of-context memes and commentary from parody accounts without realizing they were meant to be humor. Once detached from their original source, they look like “evidence.”

They wholesale believe “misinformation researchers.” I’m putting that in quotes, because it turns out many of these people are no better than propagandists. Some even openly show a disdain for the truth, calling it inconvenient or something in the way of “progress.” Again you should look at the claims of these people as much as anyone else (if COVID didn’t provide enough examples, I don’t know what will). They are frequently the most guilty, because some are pursuing activism or institutional agendas, not reality. Many were even told to do this in college.

They assume silence equals proof. Just because a person, institution, or news outlet doesn’t immediately address something doesn’t mean it’s true. Sometimes they’re verifying. Sometimes they don’t think it’s worth reporting on (we can have a whole separate discussion about the ongoing omission of certain stories). Sometimes the story is still developing. But in the information vacuum, people project certainty onto silence.

They don’t know much of the division online is stoked by foreign adversaries and bots. There are sophisticated networks of bots, spammers and agitators actively trying to get America to fight itself. There has been plenty of research on this, but it’s obvious when you notice many of the so called “pro America” accounts are not even based in America. I still don’t know why there is no crackdown on this, every social media site should force users to show location based on originating IP or some other identifying information showing country of origin.

They think screenshots are ironclad. Screenshots are the laziest form of “evidence” and also the easiest to fake. Cropped, edited, Photoshopped, or completely fabricated, yet they still circulate like gospel. If you never trace a screenshot back to an original source, you’re at the mercy of whoever doctored it.

They follow partisan hacks. There’s a huge group of professional propogandists and activists who wake up every day and spin reality to one side. Some of these people even have popular shows, because their audiences also see politics and life as a tribal blood sport. Anyway they’re all deeply miserable humans and normal people know they’re not credible. If you do follow them you’re making your life worse on purpose. Just unsubscribe and mute/block.

They think Wikipedia or Reddit are automatically credible. I don’t know why people seem to think anything on these products is real just because it has upvotes or ranks highly in Google. They have an incredibly heavy bias and are places anyone can update. There’s close to zero oversight on information quality. People lock threads and mods delete comments when things aren’t going their way. They are heavily infiltrated by propaganda networks who want to influence people in a hurry. On Wikipedia in particular I’ve seen so many poorly referenced items, the entire operation is no better than Joe’s blog to me at this point - it might be useful on certain anodyne definitional things, sure, but not without scrutiny on politically-charged topics, historic figures, etc.

They fall for credentialism. Someone with a fancy title, blue checkmark, or letters after their name says something, and you assume it’s unimpeachable. But experts are wrong all the time. They have biases, conflicts of interest, or sometimes they’re heavily invested in promoting a certain worldview. Authority isn’t always the same as accuracy.

They don’t see follow-up links, because people have stopped using them. In the internet age we have the opportunity to have appropriated linked citations (to full videos, articles, quotes, sources) and no one should have to see something unfairly clipped. But large tech companies continue to break an unwritten contract with the world and won’t show our links, or severely throttle posts which contain links. A case can easily be made this is harming our information environments. As stated before, you aren’t upset enough about the war on hyperlinks.

They let aesthetics sway them. A slick graphic, professional video edit, or well-designed chart can make nonsense look authoritative. Presentation can hijack credibility, if it looks polished, because many people are uninformed enough about the world to assume it’s researched if it looks nice (even if it’s total fiction).

They confuse speed with accuracy. The fastest take is rarely the truest. Media outlets and influencers rush to be “first,” but early reporting almost always gets key details wrong as I stated in another point. The corrections trickle out later, quietly, after the viral wave has already cemented the initial falsehood in people’s minds.

This is just a short list. There’s much more of course. And if you ever do share something inaccurate (usually the internet will correct you) delete it and if necessary share an apology/correction. But don’t double down on a lie, it’s not that hard if you aren’t part of a cult and aren’t just confirmation-biasing every piece of information you come across to fit a thesis you feel you need to defend. Sadly, many people simply can’t help themselves.

Everyone gets things wrong once on occasion, but it’s worth it to try and get stuff right. And the best, most trusted people take their time, are thoughtful and ultimately having good filters and information processing skills to be accurate often enough to gain trust. You would much rather be in this group than one of the people no one believes because they’ve torched their reputation by trying to “be first” or simply paint narratives or whatnot. They might have a lot of followers, but are written off by anyone important because they act impulsively. Basically they’re seen as a sideshow (no brand will sponsor them, no one will quote them for real stories, etc).

Having open debate matters. Hashing out ideas matters. Trying to lie about or personally attack others, or worse rooting for things like death or violence of those we disagree with is the sign of a sick civilization as Rob Henderson points out. We shouldn’t be chilled from sharing what we think in a civil way. But we should all always proceed as honest as we can.

Seek truth and comment where appropriate through the lens of something your calm, collected self would stand by and you’d want your peers, kids, employer and ultimately history to see.

Don’t forget to sign up for more of Adam’s work.

There is a fine line between using AI as part of your process and using it as your process.

I’m not really here to say where that line is. It’s different for each industry and each art form, and it’s up to each individual — and perhaps their audience — to decide how much they relinquish their creative process to a machine (remember, creativity is the fun part, and I’d suggest doing as much of that on your own as possible).

I have softened a little on my stance with AI over the past year. I do use it, mainly as a search engine, and also as a poorly paid assistant, giving it the prompt equivalent of “hey, this task is mind-numbingly boring, can you do it for me?” But I think my stance has eased also because recent releases have continued to underwhelm, and we’re seeing signs that its current form is not far off its ceiling. You might even say a bubble? Scaling is only going to take the technology so far, and there is a shrinking pool of data left for it to train on. Yes, there are still fears about its future impact, but I’m also starting to feel optimism again, as it becomes clear that AI is too unreliable to fully replace us.

So, for the foreseeable future, Generative AI models will remain what they are as of now: Relatively useful tools that don’t live up to the hype, don’t justify the ridiculous sums of money funding it, and said relative usefulness that doesn’t negate the resources it burns through.

It’s a tool, nothing more.

That distinction is important, given the current conversation around AI. With all tools, the intention behind why you use it is everything. Using ChatGPT instead of Google search because search engines suck now? Cool, though be sure to check those sources. Using Claude to take all of your research, the detailed outline you created and the style guide you spent hours writing to produce a first draft for you? Fine by me. I know some writers who use AI in their process, and they still take hours to write and edit an article.

Part of the process, not the process.

If the intention is for the project to be human-led and the output to be majority human-made, that’s using AI with good intentions. Past that line, things get murky. Generate an entire article from a single sentence prompt? Produce a “piece of art” from a few words in an image generator? Make a full series of YouTube videos in an hour with the typing of a few words?

Here, the scales have shifted to a machine-led process.

And that’s where Big Tech and corporations see the dollar signs. They want to use the technology to pump out more content AI sludge, at a scale never seen before, for the sake of cutting costs and selling advertisements, all in service of their pockets.

In other words, they plan on using the tool with bad intentions.

A little like this woozy.

Or remember this one?

This is where the problem lies, now and in the future. AI is enabling output at a frightening scale and speed, which means companies can overwhelm feeds and channels with content. It’s already resulting in mass content farms, created for the sole purpose of selling advertisements (or driving clicks from AI-generated bots). Again, it’s all in the intention. This is a bad use case for AI. These people don’t like books. They don’t like podcasts. They don’t like us. If they did, they wouldn’t be able to sleep at night as they fronted their bullshit companies and shouted about the good they are doing.

These are actual words that came from the CEO’s mouth — “We believe that in the near future half the people on the planet will be AI, and we are the company that’s bringing those people to life.”

Why do we want half the people on the planet to be AI? Why on earth would we need 3,000 podcasts a week? What the fuck are we doing here? A quote from their co-founder and chief production officer is even worse — “I think it [AI podcasts] exists alongside it, and it can delve into areas where human hosts might not want to go that deep.”

First, we need to stop pretending that LLMs are “deep.” In terms of emotion, depth, vulnerability and relatability, they have nothing on humans. Not a single iota. Second. we need to stop eating the narrative that AI content should be seen as a separate entity that can live alongside human content. That’s not part of the process, that is the process. It’s a means to cheap labour and cheap content, and claiming to serve a “need” is a cheap disguise to hide behind. They are creating nothing of value here, i.e., creating with bad intentions.

I saw someone describe people who have allowed their brains to melt due to their reliance on AI as ‘skin bags of bones and organs.’

It’s so fitting. And it’s where we’re headed as a society if we don’t push back against this nonsense.

Let’s be clear. You have no integrity if you waste brain energy on this slop. If you are happy to listen to podcasts produced by a company that doesn’t give a single fuck about podcasts, there is no saving you. If you read a book by an author who cared so much about it that they spent a whole 12 minutes creating it, you’re a chump. Your brain is already melting, and you deserve the tidal wave of sludge that’s coming our way. Hell, no doubt you’ll enjoy it. Just remember there are millions of creators out there — many who use AI as part of their process — who painstakingly craft their content. You could choose to support them, but instead, you’ll engage with paint-by-numbers, farmed garbage.

The point here is this. I don’t think the question should be if people use AI or not. It should be about how they use it.

Don’t become a husk of a human who can’t think for themselves, who can’t learn (or doesn’t want to) new skills, who can’t exercise taste and have their own opinions, who can’t live life without an algorithm feeding them content, and who can’t appreciate being creative, in whatever way speaks to you, as an art form, as a hobby, and as a way to enjoy being human. Creativity is a truly human endeavour, and we should not automate that to machines, or support those who do.

We’ll always be skin bags full of bones and organs, but we don’t have to lose our brain and our heart.

Earlier this year, Google was declared an "illegal monopoly."

In what was a landmark ruling, the company was sued for anti-competitive practices (example: Google has paid 180 billion dollars to make sure its search product is the default on Apple and Samsung smartphones), and judges threatened them with a forceful break-up, pushing to make Google sell off its Chrome Browser and potentially its Android division.

Action against Big Tech, the results of which might benefit users? Quite the statement.

A few months on, the punishment has been served. Except, it's less of a punishment and more of a watered-down slap on the wrist. Rather than deliver anything meaningful, Google has been given a 'pass go' to continue crushing the competition by any means necessary, whether that's neutering its visibility or opening its endless chequebook.

In the end, Google will be forced to share some search data with its competitors around search index, user-interaction and search text, and put some restrictions on the payments it uses to get default status in browsers and on smartphones. Those restrictions are that it can no longer demand exclusivity.

That's it. No sell-offs. No break-up. No meaningful transparency. No changes that would allow these products to move into the hands of people who aren't destroying them as they drain them for more data and ad dollars.

We all know the punishments handed down won't work. Google will appeal, meaning they won't be sharing any data, useful or not, for years to come. Maybe they won't even bother appealing, as they've enjoyed total victory here. With regards to the payments and deals with smartphone makers, sure, it theoretically opens the door to new competitors, but those competitors can't pay billions a year, and don't have the same power and influence as Google. It's nothing but ink on a piece of paper.

The real result of this five-year legal battle? Google's stock price jumped 9% in one day — gains of $230 billion!! — and Apple enjoyed a 3% rise, which will be rejoicing in the comfort that billions of dollars are still heading their way. The new terms mean the deal will have to get renegotiated every year, so it likely means even money for Apple, one of the cash-richest companies in the world.

Talk about irony.

Matt Stoller, king of monopoly reporting, put it this way —

This remedy, by contrast, is obviously going to fail. Google’s leadership is utterly unchastened. Google CEO Sundar Pichai and chief legal officer Kent Walker will get bonuses for what they did. They see this conflict as one in which they fought bitterly, and kept at it, and shredded documents, and the result was… victory. They will have no compunction continuing to engage in unlawful behavior. After all, what’s the worst that could happen? Would a rival or the government really go before a weak judge who doesn’t want conflict, and convince him to act? I don’t think so. In other words, this decision isn’t just bad, it’s virtually a statement that crime pays.

I've written extensively about the decline of tech products, and more so, the user experience. Search products, social media and the Internet at large are slowly being eroded of all utility and use, becoming hollow shells that serve only to harvest our data and sell us advertising.

My hope for this case wasn't to see all big companies now and future broken up, but it was the slight hope that it could herald some kind of change that would begin to re-establish the pecking order, with user experience and protection moving somewhere nearer shareholder value and stock price on the pedestal. Instead, the outcome means we'll continue to have less consumer choice — yes, we have a "choice," but when one company controls 90% of a market, it's a false choice — less innovation, and there will nothing to hold back the tidal wave of AI sludge coming that's designed to drive engagement and steal more data by stealth.

Google has been found guilty of search monopolisation, and, as a punishment, has been given permission to continue acting as one.

Despite years of bluster, all we got was flaccid action. Big Tech has become too big and too powerful, and they've just been sent a congratulations card and a box of chocolates.

"Is there anything - ANYTHING - Big Tech won't do for a quick buck?"

That's the question U.S. Senator Josh Hawley asked when it was revealed last week in leaked internal documents that Meta's internal AI policies permitted the company's artificial intelligence creations to "engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual," and help users argue that Black people are "dumber than white people."

Yup, you read that right.

The documents show what we already know: the North Star at the company is engagement at all costs. And what better way to drive that than to target the most vulnerable users who know no better, and to encourage conspiracies and racist rhetoric that will cause outrage. It's nothing new, but the blatant attempt to get such young users hooked on technology is unsettling.

The company didn't deny any of this. Instead, Meta came back with a canned response that basically said, "We've already removed some of these parts," which of course authenticates that they were there in the first place.

In other words, when they were created, Meta's chatbots were programmed to carry on explicit and "sensual" talk with children.

Here's an example:

Gross.

Call me an "old man shouting at the clouds," but I'm adamant technology has ruined — and will continue to ruin — the childhoods of children who grow up with an iPad in their hand before they learn to say "gaga."

It's not healthy. It fucks up enough adults, the majority of whom are aware and educated enough to understand the downsides and potentially harmful effects of mis- or over-use. But kids don't understand, and they are being Internet-enabled younger and younger. Rather than protecting them, tech companies view them as the next wave of metrics and attempt to hook them as young as possible.

Ask yourself this: for what fucking reason do kids need AI chatbots? The fact that Meta is even laying out acceptable and unacceptable parameters for how the technology engages with children shows the company is fully aware it's toeing a mighty thin line here.

The problem is that there are very few solutions. I do think age-gating is a strong suggestion. We restrict alcohol, drug and porn use, and we know that the Internet-enabled platforms (social and generative) can be just as harmful and addictive. So why should kids be using them before they understand it? But age-gating comes with a huge caveat: I don't think anyone can be trusted with or given access to data, especially if it can be weaponised against us. Age-gating should not be a proxy for surveillance and control. And so, until that is resolved, it's a dealbreaker. Suggested alternatives — like Sam Altman's Eye Scanning Orb, lol — have the same issue: who can be trusted with the data? I sure as hell ain't giving it to Mr Altman, who would probably sell his grandmother if it added a digit to his company's valuation. Parental controls are already available, but come on, if we're going to have kids Internet-trained from an early age, then we have to acknowledge we're giving them the skills to find ways around them. They need to be improved, and quickly. Education? It's an option, but I'm not sure it's a medium that would really speak to kids in a way that would make them not want to engage with the online world. A ban on devices? I mean, many of the creators of popular devices and apps don't let their children use them at all. Doesn't that say something?

What would be helpful is if the tech overlords would leave the kids alone.

But clearly that ship has sailed.

So what's left? Jailing CEOs? Massive multi-billion-dollar fines that would cause ripples in the company's stock price? You'd love to see it, but it won't happen. Remember, these companies have been involved in election rigging, their platforms used to push genocide, their algorithms encouraged to promote hateful content to drive clicks, and they've been caught targeting teens with content that makes them depressed. Their punishment? They got a slap on the wrist. They have too much power, too much influence, and too much control over the policies that are meant to govern them.

As technologies like generative AI continue to become more “human” and more intertwined into everything around us, I worry for the generations who are born into this world.

We’ll just have to hope the kids are alright.

Whap. Whap. Whap.

Mr Altman is on the press tour again, and the bullshit-o-meter is off the charts.

When Sam Altman recently spoke about the ChatGPT 5 launch, he compared it to working on the Manhattan Project, saying, "There are moments in the history of science, where you have a group of scientists look at their creation and just say, you know: 'What have we done?'"

"Maybe it's great, maybe it's bad, but what have we done?

Well, with the release of ChatGPT 5 last week, it's clear that OpenAI has certainly dropped a bomb, just not the kind they were hoping for (or fearing?) The reality is that, once again, this update is kinda better, which means that it still does some of the stuff, some of the time, switching between levels of output that range from "holy shit, that's amazing" to "what the fuck are you doing?!" The revolutionary leap forward that was promised is nowhere to be found, despite what the cherry-picked "benchmarks" and wonky bar charts tell you.

Altman said that using this model made him feel "useless," and hyped up a new reality where interacting with AI models will be "like talking to an expert in any topic, like a PhD-level expert."

It's so PhD-level, it can't draw and label the map of the USA, label a bike correctly, or solve challenging math problems, and it still gets caught out regularly — and when it does, it still defaults to making stuff up. There are some great examples here. This is why AI models can't be trusted to run without extensive human oversight, and why I remain unconvinced that agentic AI will become a reality. Big business, you know the ones that will pay the enterprise-priced subscription fees, will not risk catastrophic mistakes and errors for the sake of cutting a few employees off the books.

OpenAI has also had to confront a strange new phenomenon, which I assume is called model attachment, but perhaps I've made that up. Users are forming bonds and connections with certain models. Some like the way it butters them up and tells them that they're god's gift to mankind. Others interpret the model's language as personal — reminder, it isn't, it's data and calculation — and have become dependent on this. I’m not judging, but this is very unhealthy behavior. So when OpenAI released ChatGPT 5 and removed the previous models, there was an outcry. Users took to Reddit and socials to berate the company and demand their soulmate back, and there was even a petition started to have 4o restored. (It is now, but it's behind the paywall.)

All this to say, this is the week that reality hit home.

There's no doubt that ChatGPT 5 is a useful model, but the company wasn't promising useful. Useful doesn't give your CEO an existential crisis akin to creating a bomb that went on to kill hundreds of thousands of people. No, the company promised that this was the one, the big leap forward. It isn't. All it's done is prove that we're still no closer to the much heralded AGI. In fact, this release has shown that we're much further away from this than our tech overlords tell us. Data is running out, scaling and training is no longer leading to huge jumps between models, the companies still don't turn a profit, and they still need to invest billions more in infrastructure, servers and training, all while having to pay salaries that are starting to tick north of a $100 million in a cutthroat battle for talent. But this acknowledgement would halt the hype.

And so, Sam Altman and his company are on the defensive, and that means he's defaulting to his true talent — spinning the bullshit.

Just four days after the flat launch of his flagship product, Altman was spewing out some pure tech yogababble, one that might go down as an all-timer:

I mean, that would only require the colonisation of the planet, commercialised space travel, the creation of a new job market and the capital to fund all this, in a short ten-year span. The chances of this are a solid 0/10.

I think it's time more people opened their eyes to this — Altman is a snake oil salesman. His skill is getting investment, and he knows how to drive hype: his company is somehow valued at $500 billion, despite never turning a profit! That's all the evidence you need. He's good at talking the talk.

But is that really enough? What happens if we — or for once, the media — stop eating the bullshit he and others feed us? Is having products that do stuff to a semi-reliable level and burn through buckets of cash enough to sustain these crazy valuations and huge VC investments that are essentially propping up the tech stock bubble, and likely the widereconomy?

That's the worry. We've seen it time and time again that the bullshit only goes so far. You can only successfully 'fake it till you make it' if you actually make it. The problem for AI is that it's becoming interlinked into everything: software, finance, data, relationships and more. The mess that awaits if this all turns out to be nothing but a flash in the pan is pretty scary.

Still, maybe it doesn't matter. We'll soon all be working in space anyway. Set your clocks and get your spacesuit ready — ten years will be here in no time.

You’d think the world had forgotten the most effective marketing trick of them all — sex sells.

Even as marketing has moved with cultural shifts over the years, the premise has always been there, no matter what colour or body type was on display. Someone will find this sexy, and that person may buy our product.

I was going to write about more serious matters this week — like the age-gated Internet (I’ll get to it soon) — but the meltdown that has ensued after a seemingly innocuous campaign advertising jeans has been consuming my brain all week.

American Eagle released a commercial featuring Sydney Sweeney, the actress known for her performances breasts, in which they make a pretty straightforward, by-the-book pun:

“Great genes” — Sydney Sweeney has big boobies

“Great jeans” – Sydney Sweeney is wearing jeans (the product being advertised)

That’s it. A company hired a hot person to sell a product, a trend as old as time, used to sell cars, cigarettes, household products, fashion, holidays, fitness equipment and more. Even tech products deploy the same tactics, making the product itself “sexy,” and selling the promise of giving you, the buyer, more sex appeal by proxy as a result of owning the product.

There is no deeper meaning to be found here.

And yet, somehow, there are people reading this campaign as NAZI PROPAGANDA.

It blows my mind how the Internet continues to surface and spotlight the dumbest takes — and it’s one of the main reasons as to why the Internet sucks now, its utility is decreasing, the experience of using it is eroding and why we’re collectively becoming more brain dead by the week. Examples like this that show us why a “public town square” where everyone gets a shot of the megaphone to raise whatever is on their minds isn’t necessarily a good thing. Too many feel they need to have a viewpoint on something. And if they don’t, they need to manufacture one or latch on to whichever one is trending or makes them seem most intellectual or edgy.

The consequence of this is too many people spend too much time trying to find something to be offended by, or trying to find deeper meaning or coded messages where they don’t exist.

As Adam Singer puts it—

A short denim commercial has become a Rorschach test for terminally online brains rotted by grievance courses and unprocessed trauma. Some don’t understand that not everything is an attack on them, personally.

I also loved the way it’s framed here in The Tyranny of the Trivial —

We have just witnessed the mark of a civilization that has lost not merely its cultural bearings, but its fundamental capacity for serious thought. A society reduced to finding its deepest meanings in the shallowest possible sources. A culture that has confused the performance of intelligence with intelligence itself, the simulation of profundity with actual depth.

What we’re seeing here is more performative outrage. A self-perpetuating cycle of increasingly controversial or outlandish takes, done to cause a stir that gets picked up by platforms.

And our online world, measured by clicks, views and engagement, thrives off of it.

It’s unhealthy.

You can absolutely spend too much time online, consuming too many terrible takes delivered with just enough bravado and authority to convince you they are correct, and then having this reiterated and reinforced over and over in your algorithmically controlled echo chamber.

Our Internet and social media use has changed our behaviour for the worse. We’re deeply suspicious, confused, distrustful, conspiratorial and divided. And because of this, we can’t seem to accept that some things are nothing more than they appear.

When we’re mixing up boobie-puns with Nazi ideology, it’s a sure sign we’ve collectively lost our minds.

If there was ever a time to pause the Internet and take a breather, I think we’ve reached it.