For about 20 minutes, I was furious at an old lady

Yo {{first_name}},

I absentmindedly opened Substack today after a midday nap (I deleted Instagram off my phone, and it was the last remaining social media site my thumb could unconsciously swipe to for a notification and some dopamine).

The first thing that popped up in my feed was an article titled I Didn't Expect to Be Starting Over at 76, reposted by a woman whose only additional commentary/context was "Christ, this woman can write".

Oh.

You might not know this about me, but I’m a hoe for good writing. And since giving up most of my stimulating vices—like nicotine, and even caffeine 😮‍💨— a genuinely evocative piece of writing hits me like pure, pharmaceutical-grade romanticism for life and the human experience mainlined directly into my veins.

So, I was intrigued.

A woman in her 70's, writing on Substack? And she's a good writer?

What wisdom and secrets could be revealed in the prose of her rich, elderly life experience? What fruitful emotions might have ripened in her, what valuable, mature perspectives might I glean by peering through this literary keyhole to catch a glimpse of who this woman is?

I eagerly open the article, and see her profile picture — a low resolution headshot of a sweet old lady smiling at the camera. The article's thumbnail photo is a front porch with peeling weathered white paint, the sunrise peeking over the horizon in the background.

I start reading. "The cicadas start before the light does. I'm up at dawn anyway— old habit, or maybe just an old body that won't sleep past the birds. Coffee on the front porch, Louisiana already thick with July..."

She goes on to talk about how she's starting over not because of choice, but because she's outlived her life. Her friends have passed away. Her dog, Thumper, has passed away. Nobody with silver hair on the magazines talks about how starting over isn't glamorous, because your friends and dog are dead.

And I keep reading, waiting for the promised "good writing", the part where I feel the humanity of this woman bleeding through her aching words.

But as continue through the article, instead of being rewarded with the sonder of feeling a psychic empathetic connection with a stranger,

I start to feel the irritated nausea that what I'm reading was fucking generated by a large language model.

It starts as a subtle creeping sense that something is "off", then not much longer before just screaming and plummeting into the uncanny valley.

Holy shit. This isn't a real woman.The entire profile is AI.

I look at the post's stats:

Over 2,300 likes, and 350 comments...
not from people who are furious about the bullshit obviously-ChatGPT-written portrayal of a vulnerable, sad old woman, but people gushing about how relatable it is, and how she nailed it, how good the writing is.

I have a minor moment of moral questioning, wondering if even though she's a FAKE, if it's still a net positive if she's bringing comfort and hope to other elderly readers who feel seen by these articles.

But like I said, that lasts only a moment, and I immediately get pissed again.

I go full Sherlock Holmes mode and SPRINT to her page. I'm appalled. She's got over 4,600 subscribers, and Substack is promoting her account as "#2 Rising in Travel".

She's got several other articles with nearly the exact same title as the one I just read:

I investigate her other links; she has an X account with a very different profile picture than her substack. A Reddit, a website, and strangest of all... a personal Facebook profile.

Perhaps, the most credible evidence that this woman is, indeed, a 76 year old woman:

The hundreds of profile pictures of mostly the exact same photo with variations of the signature "Boomer PFP Frame", broken up with the occasional picture of a dog, a grandchild, or a Christmas ornament.

I'm mostly confused at this point, but I catch myself in middle of my indignant snooping, trying to discover whether or not "Carol" is a real woman and get really uncomfortable as I realize something:

We were already in a "trust deficit" on the internet.

It started with people aggrandizing the highlight reels of their life online, and turned into a full mudslide of disdainful skepticism as internet marketers appropriated social media with ads, and going to psychological war with the human psyche already addicted to the dopamine of notifications and the infinite scroll.

And now we are even more skeptical and mistrusting of one another online as AI use becomes more ubiquitous.

The level I was hell-bent on my suspicions about this account was intense. It was jarring. But it’s more my average experience on the internet than not.

I mentioned in a previous email/article that AI agents and bots now officially outnumber humans on the internet, generating nearly 60% of all global web traffic.

Now, I use AI. A lot.

I use it to generate images and silly little videos. I use it to edit and proofread my stuff. I use it to repurpose my content, create Youtube descriptions from my podcast transcripts, and all kinds of mundane tasks to save myself all kinds of time.

Heck, I hired a developer and built an entire business/community platform because I was duct-taping a tech stack with Skool (and a bunch of plugins), Kit, Calendly, vibe-coding website builders, and Manychat, and still didn't have all the features I wanted.

AI can truly do some incredible things. I'm not anti-AI. It's unfathomably useful, and I am a huge advocate of things that save time in fruitful, ethical ways. I even think that some AI content is good, creative, innovative, and I daresay, inspiring.

But here's the fricken problem:
People are using AI to pump out as much content as possible in the least amount of time. They're trying to cut corners on the thing that actually matters as it pertains to connecting and building trust with another person:

Giving a shit. Actually caring.

Ironically, creating all that content faster isn't actually more efficient for the thing that most people are trying to accomplish with their content (IE, build a connection, make their audience feel seen, develop the relationship, and establish sufficient trust that inevitably leads to a sale).

The time that we spend thinking about how to say something in a way that resonates, the energy we exert to wrestle with our experiences and articulate them in a way that will really land, the time we actually spend thinking about and in conversation with the people we're trying to speak to in our content,

AI can't replicate that in the content in generates.

This is probably why everyone and their dogs are on Instagram selling courses on how to create "yapping" videos (as in, pointing the camera at yourself and just talking).

The idea is that the more raw, authentic, unpolished you can be, the better a "yap" video is... because it's the closest approximation that our AI-slop flooded feeds have to any semblance of humanity and the quirks of individual perosnality.

I think the reason that people on social media are resonating more with "yap" videos is the reason I'm such a hoe for good writing: there's a feeling of reality infused into it. That gets us close to a feeling of connection.

And with everyone jaded af from how much slop is flooding their feeds, how every 2nd or 3rd post is an ad specifically targeted to exploit your desires as vulnerabilities, and how less and less people are actually putting effort to say something of fucking substance.

It's taking more to break through the (extremely reasonable) skepticism and earn that trust.

Fiercely protecting and creating from your humanity is one of the highest leverage things you can do for your business and brand now.

Taking your time to write your caption and actually develop the skill of communication is going to REALLY matter.

Going slow and taking 3+ hours to write an email instead of 15 minutes with Claude (like I am here lol) is going to do a lot more to make your reader feel seen, establish connection, and more likely to want to be a part of your world (because they can actually FEEL you in it).

I don't want to launch a digital product and full landing page in 60 minutes using Claude Code. I don't want to use AI to create a full info course that I can run AI generated ads to. I don't want to remove myself entirely from the value and creativity of running my business.

And while some people are making bank selling BS they made with AI, I’m noticing that the vast majority of people actually give a shit about human connection a lot (like a LOT) more.

Due to the laws of supply and demand, real, profoundly human experiences are becoming more valuable and desirable.

And there are ways to create real human experiences that scale without losing the essential elements of presence, care, and connection.

This is why basically the only thing I’m doing to sell anything in my coaching business now is live workshops.

Everything from the marketing to delivery is human all the freaking way through:
I spend a day having actual conversations with people about what they want help with and what they’d be willing to pay for.

Once I have an idea about what people want, I post on Facebook and my IG stories saying I’m thinking of running a workshop, and ask who would be interested in coming.

I make a little landing page that I send to everyone who already said they were in, and then spend a week posting about it. Maybe I run ads, maybe I don’t.

Then, when they’re on the workshop, I don’t oversaturate people with information.

I create an experience. I help them shift beliefs. I pull some people in to have conversations, I ask questions, I engage, I invite being challenged.

And yeah, I teach and coach — but specifically in a way that shifts beliefs, creates confidence in their ability to get a new result, and establishes the trust and connection that very often leads to multiple sales at once without any sales calls.

Because, you know… I took the time to care.

To do the very human work of connecting with people and figuring out what they want and need, then had the humility to not outsource my creativity, and practiced the most important skill a marketer a human being could have: the ability to communicate with trust and persuasion.

And incidentally, when I talked to my audience, clients, and friends about what workshop they wanted next… it was a workshop about how to run workshops.

Specifically:

• The process to pre-validate a workshop idea so people actually buy/come

• The exact sequence of what to teach, and how to teach it so that you create connection, trust, and shift the right beliefs in your audience so they not only get results, they become buyers

• How to position your high ticket offer in such a juicy way so that people buy ON the call without objections

So, I’m teaching that live, next Tuesday (August 25th) at 5 pm EST.
(The replay and all the bonuses/templates will be available and you’ll get my Meta Ads workshop replay as a bonus).

It’s $47, and will be about 1.5-2 hours.

[ You can join the workshop here ]

Anyway, workshops being fkin awesome aside (seriously, come),

I really implore you to spend more time fiercely prioritizing expression from the most human parts of yourself. Seek connection and conversation often. Don’t obsess over optimization or efficiency and let yourself get a little messy.

Don’t fall for the seductive spell of hyperbolic AI-enhanced levels of output (when it comes to writing, content, etc) at the cost of one of your most valuable social/business resources:

The trust that comes from people feeling you, feeling your care, feeling your effort, your wrestling, your passion.

Using AI to create content and market yourself is not more efficient because it delays the time it takes for real connection to occur — and basically eviscerates the chances of real trust being established.

That’s going to cost you more than the couple of hours GPT saved you by writing that article for you.

Big love,
A