What the AI content flood actually does to us

​Read time: 4 mins

Hi Reader,

Something has shifted in how the internet feels. You probably noticed it before you named it. Posts that look real but aren't quite, articles that say everything and nothing, a low-level unease about what you're actually reading.

It's not just a content problem. It's a trust problem. As we lose trust online, all sorts of changes trickle down.

The easy mistake is to stop at the obvious fear. See the flood, assume that's the whole story. It isn't.

From the experts

Start with the human creator question.

Paradoxically, a flood of synthetic content should make genuine human voices easier to find. Audiences will actively seek out people they know are real. So, how do you know I'm real? Anyone can claim authenticity, so the claim itself becomes suspect. And for creators who refuse to engineer their content for vanity metrics, there's a harsh reality: the algorithm may not surface them at all.

Then there's what happens to information itself. When enough of the internet becomes synthetic, it's harder to detect what's real. Real events become indistinguishable from simulations. This is the darkest outcome, and possibly the most likely.

But, stay with me as I try to stay positive. A total collapse of trust works differently from slow erosion. When nobody believes anything, disinformation loses its power, too. You cannot manipulate someone who has already stopped trusting the medium.

This causes the next shift.

When digital content is cheap and everywhere, scarcity moves. The things that hold real value are the ones that can't be faked: a room full of people, a printed book, a concert.

Let's call it the analog renaissance. Not just nostalgia. A return to what was always real. And when even that feels like effort, people retreat into the archive. Old YouTube. DVDs. Wired headphones. Watching old films in the cinema, and sports in the company of friends, not live-streamers. Things that existed before we had to question everything. Because they don't require verification from a bot.

We are a generation that has lived through recording music from radio to cassette, cassette to CD, CD to mp3, mp3 to streaming. We will not be fooled.

What if the flood of fake content accidentally restores our appetite for the real?

Interesting links

Did you see it? That's what we'd ask each other before our individualised feeds. We'd see something new for the first time. It'd give us goosebumps. We would be frothing at the mouth to talk about it in our next social setting. This week, Adidas launched their pre-World Cup campaign and, in the hours after it, I got a few messages asking, "Did you see it?"

Yes, yes, I did. And I had no choice but to put on my Total90's on the way to pick up milk.

​

Every time I prepare some content for myself, I get this weird feeling. What's the point of posting content? A myriad of content formats for a handful of privately owned platforms. At least one of the three is the unofficial home screen of our smartphone. Its so embedded in culture and society that we almost don't have a choice but to play the game. I'd love to prepare a fully developed piece of content about this. But until then, Albert Lloreta has done a fine job with this very meta piece. In Catalan with English subtitles and great visuals.

If you got this far,

you're part of 68% of subscribers, so thank you, Reader.

If this was forwarded to you, you can subscribe here.

See you soon.

​Peace,

Has

​​​