Thread by @DavidCrandall_W

I eagerly welcome the coming tsunami of AI generated web content.

Why?

Short answer: It will force us to reconnect in actual communities as humans in order to not drown in AI generated "content"

I hate using Google.

You have to WORK to find what you need.

Top results are always ads and SEO generated crap clawing for spot number 1. The results suck. The articles are long form writing to cram in keywords.

It's garbage.

AI makes this exponentially worse.

And that's a wonderful thing! 🎉

We've all been frogs slowly boiling in water.

We became ok with the fact that the internet is a bunch of word garbage and real human interaction is hard to find in public spaces.

The incoming tsunami is waking us up.

The thing that drew me online originally was AOL chat rooms. #old

I could connect with people who shared the same bizarre interests I did. It was awesome and messy in the best ways.

Next was Geocities, Xanga, Blogger. These were RAW and they weren't filler "content".

(And no, I'm not pining for the good ole days. I don't want to go back to all that.)

Then along came Social Media in the form of MySpace

All the islanders of blogging came together in one spot. MySpace even came ready made with our first friend.

We were all drawn to this new platform that still let us be creative but focused on human interaction.

Until it became a mess. (Sorry Tom ☹️)
Then Facebook…until it became a mess.
And then Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc.

We are drawn to actual social platforms until opportunists flood it with advertisements.

AI makes speeds this up and makes it exponentially worse.

But those were public platforms!

Private communities moderating and keeping human interaction as the primary goal continue to thrive.

*Well moderated* private forums, Discord communities, chat groups.

These things benefit from gatekeepers.

Back to my original point of welcoming the coming AI mess:

We will have to migrate back into smaller communities if we want actual interaction.

And this mimics our real world life more accurately. We just can't connect with a million people screaming non-stop.

I'm hopeful and excited that the storm of AI content is going to drive us all into actual, thriving communities where we get to be humans instead of advertising targets.

So, as I've said before, I'm here for it and will continue to be optimistic.

Thanks to @lukeallenmiller for suggesting this article which got me thinking about all of this again!

maggieappleton.com/ai-dark-forest