So here is something I have been watching lately. Everyone keeps saying AI is flooding the internet with content like it is some terrifying tidal wave. Cool. Fine. But here is the funny part. Most of that content is boring. It is wallpaper. No one remembers it. No one shares it. It just sits there collecting dust while Google tries to figure out what to do with it.
The stuff that actually gets attention still looks like it was written by a breathing human who has done a few things in life. Not someone pretending to be perfect. Someone who has a specific opinion. Someone who tells you what happened when they tried something and messed it up. You can feel a real person behind those words. Even if they type badly. Maybe especially if they type badly.
AI is going to keep spitting out endless content. Most of it will never matter. The winners are the ones who show up as a real person with a point of view and a pulse. It is less about writing now and more about presence. If you sound like someone I could argue with over coffee then you are probably safe.
What do you think actually make content feel human right now?
It really does feel like that Jordy, I agree. Funny thing is, this whole “AI flood” reminds me of the article directory boom back around 2010. Everyone was blasting out mountains of low-effort content because it ranked easily. Half the stuff looked like it was written by someone who hated the English language!
But even then, the pieces that stuck were usually the ones somebody actually suffered through writing. You had to sit there, rewrite the same paragraph five times, try to squeeze in keywords without completely wrecking the sentence, adjust your title because it sounded like Twiki out of Buck Rogers … backspace, start again, and then still feel like it was rubbish. Imperfect, yes, but that’s the human touch.
What we are seeing now feels similar, just faster. AI can churn out the equivalent of 10,000 article directory posts per minute (granted, you’re gonna rack up your Open AI API fees pretty quick, but hey ho!). It is the same old mass-produced content problem, only with nicer grammar and fewer spelling mistakes.
But what it still lacks is the cold, hard sweat. It’s almost too easy for AI. It’s too perfect.
I think people are reacting to that. When someone expresses a messy opinion or shares something personal, it makes you stop for a moment. There is some friction in it. A little bit of soul. Maybe what we are craving is not perfection or speed but the feeling that someone actually meant what they wrote.
Big difference between words and intent. The internet is about to find out the hard way that they are not interchangeable.
Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe upcoming generations will just accept AI generated content as the norm and, wallpaper or not, that’s how information will be disseminated. I like to hope not!
You can feel when someone actually wrote something because they had to solve a real problem or they lived through the pain. There is a certain grumpiness or excitement in real content that AI just doesn’t get right … yet.
The funny thing is that imperfect writing still wins. Humans do weird things with rhythm and phrasing. They change tone mid-sentence. They rant. They overshare. They admit mistakes they probably should have kept private. AI tries to sound smart and clean. Real people sound like they typed while eating dinner and arguing with their kids.
If anything I think this whole AI flood is just going to make human voices even more valuable. Not polished. Not “high quality”. Just distinct. If I can picture the person who wrote the content even a little bit then I am more likely to to trust it.
Google is going to need to figure that out sooner rather than later. It always has done in the past, but the weather is changing!
