My buddy called me last night. Said something that stuck.
“Just read your stuff out loud. Record it. Put it on YouTube.”
I laughed. Told him I sound like a dying walrus having an existential crisis. He said that’s the point.
This same buddy has nothing to do with the online space like I do. Marketing, copy and all of that crap. He doesn’t fully know what I do.
However to him. YouTube is his crack cocaine. He loves long form video essays on the wildest of topics.
He for some reason also loves reading my emails.
And then you look around and you notice that YouTube is drowning in AI garbage right now.
Faceless channels. Robot voices reading Wikipedia entries. Content farms pumping out soulless trash every six minutes.
It’s like watching the internet eat itself and shit out something worse.
Meanwhile, I’m sitting here with a twenty dollar mic I bought off of Amazon.
It’s the kind that clips to your shirt and makes you look like a budget news reporter from 1987…
Although that’s exactly what people want. (apparently)
Not perfection. Not some slick production with jump cuts and dubstep intros. Just a human being. Reading their own words. Stuttering occasionally. Clearing their throat. Being real.
The AI bros think they’ve won. They’ve got their tools churning out “content” faster than anyone can consume it. They’re turning creativity into a factory line. Art into algorithms. Stories into statistics.
And they’re wrong.
I know when it’s 3AM and I can’t sleep. The last thing I want is a robot to be reading me some bullshit bed time story. I want to hear another human being that is flawed, tired, maybe a little drunk that tells me something true.
Authenticity always wins. It might take time. It might look messy. But humans need humans. We crave that connection. You ever get punched in the gut? Words hit you like that you can’t help but think, “Shit, me too.”
Tech doesn’t give you that. It can’t. All these tools destroying what’s left of genuine human expression? They’re building their own grave.
So yeah. I’ve got a cheap mic and some words.
That’s enough.
Stephen Walker.
P.S. If you see random videos of a bearded looking hobo-dude pop up on youtube with a parrot on his shoulder. That’s probably me…