Flexing

Ads are dead. Everyone is now a content creator because old systems no longer work: 1) Display advertising only shows ads to broke people that can't afford premium subscriptions. The K shaped economy makes this worse. How do you sell a premium product when your target audience pays not to see ads? 2) College degrees, certifications, and CV's have all been defrauded to death. AI spam and Indian fraud have annihilated these previously quality indicators that someone would make a good employee. 3) Meatspace ads are increasingly irrelevant as more transactions and attention move online. Even things you think would be relevant, like billboards, are superceded by Google maps. And with self driving cars, who is going to look at a billboard ever again? 4) SEO has been dead for 20 years, and now Google is getting replaced by AI powered search. 5) The internet is increasingly walled gardens (X, FB, Discord) that don't want you leaving the platform. So while they serve ads, there's a tension with them. X is trying to bring in commerce to the platform to remove this tension. Below, McDonald's isn't going into 'fine dining' as a new business vertical. They're going to run a restaurant at a small loss as a marketing ploy. People will go there as a joke, the well dressed waiter will recommend the Michellin star chef made Happy Meal, and those people will post about McDonald's online. It's advertising, The End. Kraft recently announced a "Mac & Cheese" flavored soda. Tesla shot a car into space, then made a flying car. Tesla's marketing budget: $16. Not a typo. Anthropic's marketing is claiming Claude helped the US military with Iran, and that Claude is so powerful it'll doom humanity. The bad news: you must create content. You have no choice. Your CV will be auto-denied and/or filled by Indians. Your ads will be seen only by brokies. The good news: content creation is Lindy. From shadow puppets on cave walls, to YouTube brainrot, it seems to have value no matter what technology does. It's also a moat: only ~1% of people create any content at all! Most aren't willing to look ridiculous in public. And the best news: you need to create things AI can't, like racism or misogyny. Otherwise people just copy your content with AI. Launching an upscale restaurant isn't news. McDonald's has a brand built from fast food, and are being jesters by pretending to be upscale. It's different, fun, it brings out the comments. Frens, we live in the golden age. Your future depends on you being a jackass on the internet.