A year ago, X/Twitter used to feel like a community of like-minded humans.

@robin_faraj and @JoschuaBuilds were building Postel. Mehmet was building @athasdev. @JanuBuilds was growing his agency. And @kuberdenis was discovering the meaning of life in realtime.

Every day I logged in was a chance to discover a new builder or interesting HUMAN. An opportunity to connect with them on a personal level. My entire feed was curated to serve my intention of joining the community of builders and thinkers.

X/Twitter was the last platform that was truly SOCIAL, and not just brain-rot MEDIA.

But a lot has changed in a year, mainly AI writing and video has become indiscernible from its human equivalent.

We used to be able to tune out AI replies and AI content because we weren’t interested in connecting with robots.

Building a product, connecting with people over it, and iterating based on feedback was the foundation of a community and friendship that animated our lives (at least for the people that wanted to opt into this communal experience).

But now AI writes and produces the content. AI replies automatically. And the most insidious of all, AI curates your feed for you. You can no longer choose what you want to see. And all for what? Growth?

These statistical beasts (AI algorithms) are trained on the least noble of our decisions. Scrolling, before AI algorithms were adopted on X, meant you were checking in on your community and what you saw locked you back in, when your feed was full of YOUR people building cool things.

But the new AI algorithms capitalize on our tendency to dwell on dopamine-spiked videos of Trump from the hood or the latest hustle-porn. How to fix your life in a day type articles exploit viral psychology gaps and the algo loves it.

Those in favor of the new-AI-world-order would argue “if they didn’t like it, then why did they click, why did they read, why did they share.” “Expressed desire vs observed desire.” But bro, this ain’t desire.

Desires and goals are intentional. Addictions, desperation, and struggles are automatic.

AI, like social-media-psychology-hacking that destroyed minds a-la facebook, is trained not on our desires, but on our automatic animalistic tendencies. And the future of AI, trained on our weaknesses, that’s pointed towards growth for the sake of growth, like a cancer, will accelerate our devolution into an animalistic, hedonistic, and will-less species.

I’m not against AI for feedback on your own creation. But I don’t trust other people’s greedy uses of it. AI has reached a level where it is smarter than humans on aggregate. It can fool the masses. And it’s no longer a funny novelty.

Will I allow it in my feed, in my day to day consumption, unregulated, unsupervised? Fuck no.

I’ve read hundreds of books on how to live a rich life to know: the meaningful life is a happy life.

Meaning is something you CHOOSE every day. It’s directly shaped by your intentions and inputs. And the more divine the inputs—nature, humans, silence—the more meaningful the life.

We all have 24 hours of inputs. Will we spend the effort to fill it with the silence required to find our creative souls? Will we seek out and create art that bleeds from the imperfect and statistically anomalous human experience? Will we venture off and fill our eyes with the pristine beauty of birds, landscapes, and ecosystems of divine interdependence? Or will we scroll endlessly, downloading what AI has determined to be the most entertaining for the weakest-willed people, enriching the empathy-less, wealth-mongers of our current generation?

I’ve made my choice. I’m in pursuit of meaning, beauty, human connection, the divine. I’m building AI not as a content factory for dopamine-stunted humans. But as a sidekick to help derive more meaning from the world. And if you are capitalizing on the new wave of half-baked dopamine-rich AI content to grow your business, good luck, but take this as a warning. It won’t last.