I gave myself a little talking to today.
“Sit down. Wipe the Cheeto dust off your fingers if you must. We gotta talk.”
Me to my 18yo self basically.
As much as I could go back to my younger self and instil whatever wisdom I have painfully obtained over the years.
It still leads me back to the shitshow of 2020.
Because as much as I hate to admit it. We’re still up to our eyeballs in the same entertainment hell loop we fell into when 2020 rolled around. Remember it?
The world hit pause, and we all hit play.
Streaming became a lifestyle.
TikTok became a verb.
Zoom meetings became the place where your soul goes to die, even to this day.
(I’ve got one tomorrow and it’s the only one I’m actually looking forward to haha)
And somewhere, in whatever online wreckage came about, you and I became… content consumers.
Like rats pushing the dopamine lever. It all started to become weirdly addictive.
Everything evolved. (Like COVID, but less respiratory failure and more terminal cringe)
Now, you can’t just passively scroll, doom or otherwise.
You gotta be a guru.
A Thought Leader™.
A “personal brand.”
Which, let’s be honest, is just a fancy way of saying “the internet wants you to cosplay as Tony Robbins with an Instagram filter and a newsletter.”
But why?
Because the internet is bubbling over with festering A.I. generated slop.
Articles that read like a blender full of SEO keywords and corporate word salad. Shiny LinkedIn posts with zero actual human fingerprints (or, hell, fingerprints at all. Just smooth, uncanny valley language that makes you want to delete your brain for 48 hours)
“Experts” who’ve never done anything except regurgitate ChatGPT’s last meal.
So people…
The real, squishy, flawed, eye twitching people… are hunting for something else.
You can feel it, right?
That hunger for (and as much as I am in deep pain as I type the next word…)
Authenticity…
For the kind of artist who actually gives a damn about the craft, not just the clicks. For someone who bleeds on the page, who cares about the people they influence (even if they’re just yelling into space some days, like me, like you, like all of us)
And the thing is. There’s a craving for connection.
Being a “guru” is just the latest side quest.
You don’t need to be the all knowing oracle on a mountaintop. You just have to be the least bullshitty person in the room.
And if you’ve seen what’s passing for that online. It’s a low bar. So step over it.
Share your screw ups. Your weird hobbies. Your unhealthy obsession with Inbox Zero or Days Gone.
I’m still not over that post apocalyptic video game. It’s a support group at this point…
A.I. is the new gluten.
Everyone’s either allergic to it or pretending they are.
So what do you do?
You write like a human.
You bleed, sweat, and occasionally cry into your keyboard.
You call out the fakes, the flakes, the “look at me, I’m a thought leader because my bot said so” types.
And the real sauce is:
You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be real.
You have to give a shit about the art, the audience, and the impact.
And if you’re worried about being too much, too weird, too honest? Just lean in.
So, yeah. We’re still stuck in the entertainment era. A hamster wheel powered by memes, robots, and the occasional clown with a chainsaw, but now, if you want to survive, you have to be the human in the room.
The one who cares.
The one who creates, not just for the bots, but for the person on the other side of the screen.
Be the anti-bot.
Be the artist.
Be the kind of “guru” who admits they’re full of shit sometimes, but keeps showing up anyway.
TL;DR version:
We’re still in the content circus. Now, more than ever, being a real, messy, passionate human is your only ticket out of the A.I. funhouse. So grab your chainsaw. Let’s go cause some trouble.
Stephen Walker