It’s all a bit fucking boring.
Yes, this is a rant… (how did you guess?!)
Let’s just say that my break from working in social media for the last 14 years has meant that when I’ve come back online to peek into the crazy world you are all still adding to and consuming, it feels a bit, well, DULL.
I get it. We are bored people spinning around on a rock, no longer hunting and gathering but instead trying to figure out how to pay our rent or mortgages and make something meaningful and valuable in a very capitalist society.
But really, coming back online after a good long break in my now flourishing and beautiful balcony garden… what on earth is going on?! I had felt the undercurrent before - the “erm, we draw the line here” feeling when it comes to my career in social and not becoming a “prompt engineer” in the “attention economy”- but now there is no stepping back into this and thinking it is anything other than pretty shit.
AI slop has absolutely ruined my enjoyment of Pinterest, my previously favourite channel. All I’m now seeing are either AI prompts for fashion shoots (indistinguishable from real life) or gardens that, frankly, no amount of pruning will get you to.
LinkedIn makes me want to throw up in my mouth every time I hear “I’m delighted/honoured/proud”. Are you really though, Janet?! You couldn’t even write this post.
If I manage to read ONE post written in someone’s actual voice and not AI, it feels like a miracle after scrolling for 10 minutes.
Instagram is now flogging me “AI influencer” courses. Trust me, very few are making money and it is not worth the water used to power it.
Honestly, it is like the emperor’s new clothes out here. Are we all OK?! And HONESTLY, if I read the word “honestly” again, I want to chuck my laptop across the room. That, or “the real rub?”. IYKYK. WE ALL KNOW.
This comes across a bit like I’ve lost my mind, but I know for a fact it is not me (spoiler, it is all of us) and is in fact us as a society. We are numb. We are in denial. We are losing touch with who we are and what matters — at speed.
2026 feels like a much better time to opt out of adding to this absolute, boring chaos. Alas i’m writing about it. However, we are going to look back at this year (and ourselves) and cringe SO hard. The irony as I write this and post it online. I’m already cringing.
I predict there will be a race to be the last online and the last on social media. Like the great Facebook exodus for anyone under 40. The last ones consuming content will be the losers.
Will no one take a stand and do the most obvious thing ever and make a platform based on the “trust economy”?! (which is the most valuable commodity of our lives now) If you do, please share the link.
Again, if you didn’t get the messages, i’m bored online. Apart from Substack, thank goodness for Substack.
And yes, I bastardised ‘After the Ball"the 1899 painting by Catalan artist Ramon Casas i Carbó with Grok. Oh the irony.
Right, back to the garden.