It’s Time to Break the Internet in Two

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My wife and I call Facebook “the bad place.”

We haven’t logged into our accounts in years, but often think about it. Wouldn’t it be fun to see how much better we’ve aged than our high school tormentors? But whenever I open that login page, a chilling draft cuts through our apartment. A shiver shoots down our spines. Facebook suddenly appears in our mind’s eye as a quarantined zombie town haunted by the strangest creatures on the outskirts of our social graph. Racist step-uncles. Real estate agents. Ben Shapiro.?

To confirm my fears, Facebook has now been overrun by AI-generated shrimp Jesus posts that millions of people are worshipping — a true Kurt Vonnegut dystopia come to life.

It used to be just Facebook, but lately, all of the dominant web platforms millennials grew up with are in decline. X has become a cesspool of white nationalist eels. TikTok and Instagram are openly trying to become QVC with their shop feature as influencers shamelessly hawk crappy products for a taste of late-capitalist glory. LinkedIn is mostly fine for now, but it's aggressively pushing AI-generated posts and comments, which risks turning the platform into echo-chamber of bots shilling business parables.

Across platforms, AI seems set to drown a flailing internet, flooding Google with AI-generated SEO spam and Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok with deep fakes. Even Amazon is flooded with thousands of AI-generated books every day that rip off the work of established authors.?

Facebook has now been overrun by AI-generated shrimp Jesus posts that millions of people are worshipping — a true Kurt Vonnegut dystopia come to life.

Through all of this, though, I’ve developed a sort of anarchist optimism. What if AI breaks everything, and something better emerges in its place?

Breaking the internet in two

My optimism was sparked by a conversation between Nilay Patel, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Verge, and Ezra Klein.?

Patel theorized that some people will pull away as AI pollutes our social and search platforms with a sea of sameness. One group might be Gen Alpha and Gen Z, who are increasingly quitting social media . They’ve grown up with nothing but their parents’ crappy platforms and are inclined to say: "Well, this sucks; these platforms make me depressed. I want my own thing."

The other group that is primed to pull away is well, millennials and up like me who also feel trapped in a media dystopia —?a Gartner study from December found that most people feel like the state social media has decayed . I quit using every social platform except LinkedIn this year and found that it improved my focus, mental health, and media diet. I’m discovering and reading more interesting things. We see the modern monopoly of internet platforms as invincible and that we’re destined to be caught in this hellscape forever; history tells us that they’re not — especially when there's a hunger for something better.

These legacy social platforms likely won’t die — at least not anytime soon. They’re rich, run by smart people, and highly addictive. But so are cigarettes, and like the tobacco industry, they may enter a managed decline.

We see the modern monopoly of internet platforms as invincible and that we’re destined to be caught in this hellscape forever; history tells us that they’re not — especially when there's a hunger for something better.

As a result, we may see the internet broken in two: On one side, the addictive, AI-infested social platforms of today, and on the other side, something new and better.??

What will that new thing be? I wonder if we’ll see a renaissance of niche, small, personality-driven media brands. These brands will be distinguished by how they don’t use AI, or more likely, by how they use it in deliberate ways that elevate them from the vortex sucking us into a sea of sameness. Publications like MorningBrew are already adopting this strategy to save itself from becoming another commoditized content factory.???

We’ll also need new discovery mechanisms for this content. Maybe it’ll look like a bigger version of Substack’s ecosystems, in which creators, not algorithms, recommend other writers you should read. This internet would be the media equivalent of vinyl, which (as Patel notes) has surged to 11% of music industry revenue.?

As a result, we may see the internet broken in two: On one side, the addictive, AI-infested social platforms of today, and on the other side, something new and better.??

Increasingly, though, I suspect that the new Internet that emerges will be driven by a technological shift we can’t see yet, and grow much bigger than 11%. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks playing around with ChatGPT’s voice interaction feature, which is delightful when it works and infuriating when it does not. My Spidey sense says that a whole new era and means of content distribution and discovery will soon emerge. Maybe it will be AI systems that serve us — not the platforms that want to keep us addicted to crap, and push us to discover new, interesting ideas and perspectives that improve our media diet.

Maybe it’s something that we can’t even yet comprehend. Whatever it is, I’m ready for the cleansing fire. Burn it all down and leave this hellscape behind. Let’s summon the phoenix from the ashes, break the internet in two, and build something better together. Who’s with me?

3 Links

Artificial Intelligence? No, Collective Intelligence (Ezra Klein Show): I loved this interview with EDM and visual artist Holly Herndon, who's building AI models to create truly strange, wonderful, and collective pieces of art. AI doesn't have to mean a sea of sameness.

They're Ignoring Mr. Beast's Rules of YouTube and Thriving (NY Times): Over the past few years, LinkedIn posts and tweet threads touting Mr. Beast's formulas have turned YouTube into a formulaic mess. This piece looks at creators who are breaking free of the Mr. Beast tyranny and thriving.

Gen AI Salon: Consumer Tech in a Sci-Fi World (A.Team ): I'm hosting our last AI Salon before a summer break and this event has everything: a Consumer AI hackathon. Badass speakers. Great cocktails. Join virtually or IRL in NYC.

I'm the head of Marketing at A.Team and best-selling co-author of The Storytelling Edge . Click the subscribe button above to join 145K+ marketers who read this newsletter for insights on the art & science of storytelling in the AI Age.

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