A new kind of feed

Two new launches signal that the game is being reset. Or so it seems.​

Read time: 8 mins (yes, get a hot drink)

Hi Reader,

That line’s been ringing in my head as new AI-driven platforms like Meta’s Vibes and OpenAI’s Sora start to reshape how we create, share, and even imagine ourselves online.

In today's newsletter, I will touch on:

• Why these platforms aren’t just “new apps,” but new experiments in identity and culture
• How the creative economy is flattening (and what still gives you leverage)
• The psychology behind our obsession with simulation, and where it might take us

Whether you’re a creator, strategist, or curious observer, this shift affects how you hold attention, build trust, and stay relevant in an environment where content is infinite, but meaning isn’t.

Most people mistake novelty for reinvention. They chase tools and miss the incentives behind them. They produce more content, without asking what it's doing to us.

This is my longest newsletter yet. Hot drink ready?

100% AI slop apps

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Video: Sora 2 by OpenAI.

Every new platform promises early advantage: a short window where algorithms are still generous and cultural gravity hasn't settled. But if we look closer, Vibes and Sora aren't the same kind of reset.

Meta's "new" products usually reinforce the old ad machine. OpenAI's move starts from creation, not community.

It leaves me feeling like the reset this time isn't about social distribution, but more like social production.

Before: Capturing reality. Now: simulating it

After a few weeks of being exposed to this new AI-generated content, it feels most "alive" when it ties itself to real cultural moments. The relevance helps to beat the lack of realism.

The question is whether users will value timely simulation more than timeless expression.

If they do, feeds will accelerate into meme-speed loops. This is great for engagement, and terrible for meaning.

Why be the first to break news when you can be the first to generate the meme about it?

It doesn't matter who captures reality fastest anymore. The attention war will be won by whoever simulates it fastest.

Identity for rent

The cameo tools and likeness fidelity open a new frontier: the trade of selfhood.

On a micro level, people can rent themselves out to their own simulacra. AI-generated versions of themselves.

On a macro level, platforms gain infinite ad inventory. Synthetic influencers without human friction.

Deepfake expert Hany Farid put it bluntly:

It’s easy to imagine a new economy built around licensing faces and voices.

It’s just as easy to imagine the backlash: lawsuits, misuse, deepfakes, and uncanny-valley fatigue.

So the question becomes:
​Who owns a digital 'you'? And can that ownership ever stay voluntary?

Spectatorship to synthetic play

For the last few years, people mostly wanted to watch aspirational content. To imagine a better future for themselves by living success through others.

Now, we have the tools to simulate that success ourselves.

Platforms like Vibes and Sora transform social media into a sandbox for alternate selves. A Matrix meets Sims environment where imagination replaces circumstance.

Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman found himself scrolling through Sora’s results and tweeted:

The dopamine loop shifts, too.
Before: scroll → discover → react​
Now: prompt → generate → share

Feeds become mirror factories.

But creation fatigue may arrive faster than scroll fatigue. Infinite expression needs new moderators, curators, and editors. A human eye in a sea of infinite content.

When platforms start making culture

Both Meta and OpenAI are chasing the same thing: self-sufficiency.

Human creators are unreliable supply chains. AI offers endless, predictable output.

If synthetic content reaches parity with human content, platforms won’t just distribute attention. They’ll own the full stack.

The deeper cost is that creators get replaced, and the culture's feedback loop, too.

In traditional media, humans shape content, and culture shapes humans.

In synthetic media, algorithms shape both at the same time.

We stop being participants.

We become test subjects in a psychological experiment about desire.

Superintelligence fuelled by attention

The business logic behind all of this ties back to the AI arms race.

OpenAI needs mass participation to feed data and fund compute.
Meta needs cultural dominance to power its ad engine and train better models.

So both are doing the same thing: turning engagement into training data.

Users like you and me think we're playing with creative tools. In reality, we're donating behavioural feedback to teach machines how to act human.

As Craig Elimeliah warned:

Maybe it's not a reset

Maybe I'm cynical. Maybe it's not reinvention. Maybe it's consolidation disguised as innovation.

Vibes is Reels with prompt buttons.
Sora may never become social at all. It's a generator, not a digital town square.

And while the idea of licensing your digital double sounds revolutionary, most people won't want a clone selling toothpaste on their behalf.

The NFT era taught us how fast technological novelty can curdle into cultural cringe. Mass creation may also stall.

Most users still prefer to watch rather than make.
Even AI-native generations will tire of tweaking prompts once the thrill fades.

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has said these apps “pick up on unconscious wishes and interests that the user may not even be aware of.” That’s part of what makes them so sticky and so hard to trust.

Different incentives pull the two companies apart anyway.
Meta chases ad revenue. OpenAI chases research dominance.

This social platform intersection (creation, community, compute) might be temporary. And users are not as passive as assumed. Fatigue with algorithmic manipulation is real.

Each synthetic wave strengthens the counter-movement towards the human-scale internet: private communities, slow media, and embodied experiences.

Fractured creator economy

AI collapses the traditional hierarchy of celebrity → influencer → creator → consumer.​
Everyone can now jump a tier. But abundance shifts value from production to taste, curation, and trust.

The enduring advantage will belong to creators who:

• Build human relationships: communities, newsletters, events.
• Offer taste filters and context.
• Keep visible their “proof-of-human”: process, story, imperfection.

Tomorrow’s creative stack is 70 % automation, 30 % judgment:
​AI handles execution; humans provide narrative and meaning.

Creators are effectively the unpaid R&D department, teaching these platforms what culture looks like.
Their defense is to own context, audience, and offline leverage.

Expect the arc:
​Hype → Saturation → Authenticity Rebound → Integration.​
When the novelty fades, hybrid human-AI creators will remain. The ones who can explain, teach, or connect.

The psychology beneath it all

Are we entering the age of performative selfhood?​
Old social media said, “Look at me.”
The new kind feels like it says, “Look at the simulation of me.”

You no longer have to become before you can display.

It gives us agency, but it erodes the friction that once made growth feel earned.

Life becomes aestheticised. Imagination turns into a commodity.

Desire → image → dopamine → repeat.

When fantasy becomes frictionless, desire loses depth.

Creation offers temporary relief from chaos, a small god-mode of control.
Prompting feels therapeutic, until the instant gratification becomes another addiction.

AI collapses the boundary between imagination and publication, so the internet now shows not what we do, but what we dream of doing.

We're not only being played with, we're playing with ourselves at scale.

The identity paradox

AI expands infinite identity ("I can be anyone") just as life demands a stable identity ("I must still be someone").

That tension will define a generation's mental health. People will oscillate between simulation and presence, play and grounding.

Synthetic seekers:

• curate digital selves
• play in AI worlds
• believe in simulation
• attention abundance
• infinite imagination.

Realness revivalists:

• reclaim embodied life
• practice slow craft
• believe in experience
• attention scarcity
• finite authenticity.

Each synthetic surge will provoke a human rebound: another digital detox, another search for touch, texture and truth.

The bridge role

If platforms like Vibes and Sora embody the synthetic turn, the counter-movement is about reconnection.

So maybe I'm lucky. My work around Escape the algorithm, Focus Positiu and this newsletter lives in that intersection: using technology creatively, critiquing its psychological effects, and promoting balance between play and presence.

Reflections trap us in the feed; windows reconnect us with the world.

Escape the algorithm

News: Netflix will start showing video podcasts, in a deal with Spotify.

They say "we're always looking for new ways to entertain our members"
What they mean is "we're always looking for ways to keep your attention and subscriptions".

More and more podcasts are being packaged with slick, high-production video.
Will Netflix start injecting ads into them too?
Isn’t that… the whole reason people pay for a subscription?

AI music: This track is already being called the one that kicked off the next phase of AI-mixed music. 50 Cent - 21 Questions.

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50 Cent himself said in a tweet, "This shit is hot!"

This song has already been approved for Spotify. It's a crazy way for artists from back in the day to find a way to get in rotation again and a new stream of revenue.

The creators, "Almost Real Studio," would get a revenue share, but so would 50 Cent, and that would bring the new catalogue new again, and everyone would win. There's more on their Spotify.

Soul Versions, Vol. 1 • almo... Rock That Body • almost real... PREVIEW   ​

Opinion: One of the best AI-video takes I’ve seen in a while. Catherine Goetze asks the real question, "Why the fuck are we making AI video technology?"

It's sharp, skeptical, and very worth your attention.

AI TOOL: This tool convinced me months ago to subscribe. (Side note: yes, so many subscriptions...)

Last week, we saw a 4-year-old make a $3M PlayStation ad using it. Well, his dad put his drawings through the "Sketch-to-video" tool. Here's the outcome. At least that dad has justified his subscription...

If you got this far,

thank you, Reader.

I know I’m not as consistent with this newsletter as I’d like to be.
Every week looks different. The routine’s unpredictable. Finding the time (and headspace) to write these is a moving target.

So I want to say a genuine thank you.

To you, it might just be a 5–7 minute read, or something you clear out of your inbox. But to me, this newsletter is a core part of my self-employment, and the main channel where most of my work starts.

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See you in two weeks.

Peace,

Has

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