I was looking at my LinkedIn feed the other day and I saw a post title that immediately made me go, “OK, AI definitely wrote that.” I clicked on it out of curiosity. I skipped the post and scrolled to the comments. They were AI generated too. I’m assuming the person used AI to write the post, and then a bunch of these commenters, who may or may not have even been wholly in on it, fed the post into a chatbot, asked what to say, and the result was why it was on my feed - outstanding engagement stats!
What purpose does that even serve?
Nothing if you want to do anything with it. The author doesn’t know or care what they said, let alone who commented. The commenters don’t care what they said, let alone that they form any relationship with the person writing the post. And, while maybe they do care if suddenly they “need a network” because they lost a job or life dealt them something worse, I can’t help but look at the whole thing and find it pretty funny.
Not ha ha funny. Peculiar. And - you see the opportunity here too, right?
I already thought authenticity was a competitive advantage. Not just because the world is being overtaken by AI content/slop, but - ok, yeah. You are all you’ve got when anybody can imitate anyone or anything else with a supercomputer behind their strategy. The more prolific these chatbots become, the bigger the opportunity is to be a person who actually matters in a community of non-bots.
I introduced Spencer Kier to Carly Valancy on Just Press Record this week.
If you don’t know Spencer, he has (yes, present tense, I refuse to accept it’s over) a great podcast called Audience of One. The main idea is that he’s only doing the interviews for himself and you can watch if you want, or not. It’s a curiosity and networking engine. I think it’s a fantastic approach. Kind of a less academic feeling Conversations with Tyler. I love hearing a person ask non-standard interview questions that I’d never come up with.
Just because something won’t get a million views doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing.
Which makes for a great segue to Carly. She landed on my radar thanks to several prior Just Press Record guests (thanks Anne-Laure Le Cunff, Christina Garnett, and Paul Millerd) because she did a “meet 100 strangers in 100 days” challenge that ended up stretching out and on over several years. And if that’s not enough of my kind of energy, she’s got an on-stage background to boot.
Spencer and Carly both feel a drive to create and curate a community that serves their unique interests, and enables the bespoke connections between the people and ideas in their orbit.
It’s the reality of a star holding its own center of gravity. As your energy builds, so does your pull. And you don’t have to suck it all in and become a black hole, you can actually balance it all in the most incredible of ways.
If Just Press Record had poster children - they’d be it.
They had no idea who the other was, or what they were getting into when they joined our session. I can’t wait for you to hear it.
