Everything Is Awesome Fake

During a recent YouTube browsing session, my algorithm took me to a place I haven’t been in a while. I think YouTube guessed that because I like Harry Mack, I would like live street music. (If you haven’t heard of him, he’s the best freestyle rapper of all time. No contest.)

And they were right!

I remember watching all of these videos over 10 years ago.

When nostalgia wasn’t a word you used intentionally to try to go viral. When people filmed genuine moments with no intention to monetize it or get 15 minutes of fame.

Now, the next time you are doom scrolling Instagram and you see a viral video, and you think “wow this person is so creative!” I encourage you to search for similar videos in the search bar.

I remember seeing this video and thinking it was so funny and creative. Then I saw it again. And again.

Manufactured virality. It’s gross. Now the algo and creators are rewarded for just searching for what is trending and recreating the same content and hoping your followers don’t know you copied it.

And it isn’t going to get any better with AI. Anytime I see the AI generated images on my Facebook feed it makes me cringe. Stop doing it guys!

To be clear, I use AI every day. I am not against it. It is clearly the future.

But what LLMs are not good at is TASTE. And people can tell if you spent 2 minutes writing a prompt and throwing it into ChatGPT and posting it thinking you are being creative. It makes you look worse.

So what am I trying to say?

Don’t ignore AI, it’s here to stay. But invest in taste. Invest in your own taste and creativity. AI can teach you how to have taste but it can’t feel taste. That is one of the last things humans will be able to keep.

As people get more adapted to AI content and can sense when something is manufactured or not, the people who focus on the craft and not the result will end up with a skill others won’t.