I think we can all agree that using the internet sucks now.
We’ve all felt that frustration of searching for something specific and getting AI-generated nonsense or ten paragraphs of SEO gibberish before the maybe-answer.
But now, scrolling feels... weird, doesn't it? Like wading through lukewarm digital soup someone left out overnight mixed with subway conversation and a bad dream.
Your feeds serve you things you vaguely recall seeing three days ago, or content precision-engineered to make you momentarily angry. It's the uncanny valley, but for information itself.
It wasn't a sudden collapse, more like a slow erosion of habit, a digital boiling of the frog. The internet gaslights you into thinking it's always been this way. But find an old bookmark, an old screenshot, try to revisit a link from five years ago. You'll see it.
The vibrant, messy, human web has been paved over, replaced by algorithmic ghost towns designed to funnel attention towards advertiser KPIs.
The enshittification of the internet itself is in full swing.
A wave of AI slop is beginning to descend upon us and will take down the platform-dependent, virality chasing, TikTok star model of the “creator economy.”
Algorithms Killed the Social Media Star
The proliferation of slop is driving a massive, aching demand for authenticity, for voices that sound human because they are human, for curation through the infinite ocean of crap.
This isn't a thirst for just any personality, but a rejection of the hollow influence peddled by those famous merely for being rich or hot.
Their endless, transactional shilling of often questionable products feels like part of the problem, contributing to the digital noise and fueling the search for genuine connection. Real engagement with real people serving a real function: curation.
Why is this a problem now?
Because everywhere else the internet touches, the veneer that separated us from the cookie syncs, pixel trackers, and ad auctions has nearly entirely vanished.
AI-generated content is everywhere you look (even taking classes at community college). If it’s not looking you right in the face, the exhausting suspicion that something might be AI-generated is always lurking.
Hell, even the aforementioned influencer slinging mewing gum was probably AI-generated.
It represents the perfect state of the internet optimized perfectly for algorithms by algorithms.
It also represents an incredible opportunity for the next generation of truly scalable media empires to emerge.
Unlike in the prior false starts and fizzled “digital media” revolutions, the spectacular failure of the mainstream web to be anything other than a machine for harvesting clicks and serving up slop has catalyzed the final missing piece.
There's a predictable rhythm to media disruption, a cycle insiders know well: true innovation flares brightest just before capitalism figures out how to bottle and sell it efficiently, often suffocating the original spark.
Disruption: New tech cracks open new channels. This is where the blogosphere and social platforms started - breaking open distribution monopolies.
Experimentation: Raw voices, weird ideas, authentic connections bloom in the "inefficient" chaos. This is where the magic lives. We’re here now.
Optimization: Commercial interests standardize, scale, and start extracting value, prioritizing metrics over meaning.
Decay: The system becomes over-optimized, brittle, and hostile to the humans it supposedly serves. Enshittification sets in.
Reset: Pressure builds, a new disruption emerges, and the cycle begins anew.
We've pinballed through this cycle online multiple times, each time thinking this was the one, the moment digital media would find its stable, sustainable form.\
Each time, we were chasing a mirage.
Each time, it was just too early.
The reasons were twofold: the supply-side infrastructure often wasn't ready, but just as critically, the demand-side—widespread audience readiness to seek out and support independent online voices—hadn't materialized yet.
Here’s a quick breakdown of why those previous eras sputtered out:
Each failure point wasn't just bad timing or weak infrastructure; it was a fundamental mismatch between immature technology and an audience not yet disillusioned enough with the status quo.
This is why now is different. What makes this moment uniquely investable is that both sides are finally aligned.
The infrastructure stack has actually been mature enough to support sustainable creator businesses, but the catalyst for demand didn’t exist. Until now.
The tools weren’t enough. For a new model to succeed, we needed the dual effect of algorithmic decay – frustrating users and making sustainable, direct-audience models comparatively more attractive and resilient.
Enshittification Isn’t Just a Nuisance
We’re past the point of frustration.
It's fundamentally changing our relationship with information and each other. It's not just that the digital landscape feels cluttered or unnavigable. It feels designed against us.
It feels like the “dead internet theory” is coming to life.
This is why mainstream audiences are actively fleeing algorithm-dominated platforms.
This isn't just inconvenient; it creates a profound need. A need for guides. For trusted voices. For curators. But this isn't just about individual creators anymore.
It's about the potential for creator-led media companies built around a distinct human perspective, taste, and trust, capable of scaling that perspective without diluting it.
And so we arrive here, in this present moment where the demand for a new vision of content online is here and the infrastructure exists to support it.
This mature stack fundamentally changes the power dynamic, enabling creators to build resilient businesses centered on direct audience relationships and escape the dependencies that doomed earlier eras.
This stage represents the perfect entry point for pre-seed investors - catching the wave as it's building momentum, before larger capital moves in to standardize and extract value.
This is why the consumer media landscape is fundamentally changing. Creator and personality-driven media brands are not fringe anymore. They’re becoming mainstay media outlets, building the next generation of trusted distribution.
They’re the future’s “legacy media stalwarts.”
Prior headfakes were just that. This time it’s for real.
And this brings us to the core of it, the fundamental conflict and opportunity. The mathematical, algorithmic engines driving the flood of digital slop operate on probability. It analyzes vast datasets and predicts the most likely next word, the most statistically plausible image, the most probable engagement-driving headline. Its goal is to replicate patterns, to smooth out anomalies, to be predictable.
Human creativity, the stuff that actually resonates, that delights and surprises us, is the polar opposite. It thrives on the unexpected connection, the intuitive leap, the serendipitous discovery, the imprecision.
Did you see the new Snow White?
Neither did I.
No one else did either. Well, except for a few unlucky critics. Here’s what one had to say:
“A film made by people with cartoon dollar signs for eyes and not even the tiniest glimmer of art in their souls.” — Wendy Ide, The Observer
That’s media designed by committee. The smooth, predictable, perfected piece of content with no edge, no personality, and nothing to say.
We don’t want the most probable combination of words or notes. We want that spark of unpredictable insight, that touch of glorious inefficiency that algorithms are designed to eliminate.
That’s the magic. It's the delightful inefficiency of human taste finding something you wouldn’t have predicted but instantly recognize as valuable.
It’s the joy of stumbling onto something weird and wonderful, curated not by a probability matrix, but by another human being whose perspective you’ve grown to trust.
That sense of connection and serendipitous discovery was the original promise of the social web, before the algorithms fully took the wheel.
LLMs can generate content that looks like human output, but they can't replicate the unpredictable spark of genuine creativity, curiosity, and taste derived from lived experience.
They optimize for the mean; magic lives in the variance.
The Signal in the Noise
So, where does this leave us in understanding this shift?
It’s simple. It’s time to retire the creator economy moniker. It’s too cute, too “different”, too minimizing.
It’s a name stuck in a past dominated by vlogger diss tracks, Coachella selfies, and maybe Dan Bilzerian – a world away from the media operations emerging now.
Forget the tired "creator economy" label. It undersells what’s actually happening.
So if not the creator economy, then what?
This a trust-based, infrastructure-powered renaissance of human-driven creation.
Okay, forget that “over-VCed” label as well.
It’s just media.
Post-platform, pre-conglomerate media.
This is about the enduring power of media's oldest dynamic: people trusting people.
This is just media finally finding sustainable footing in the digital age by returning to its fundamental roots.
What we're seeing now isn't a new kind of media, but the powerful re-emergence of this timeless dynamic, finally equipped with the right tools and fueled by a profound market need.
Lumping new media personalities-turned-executives like Bari Weiss or Alex Cooper into the old 'creator economy' box simply doesn't fit anymore.
Companies like The Free Press or Alex Cooper's Unwell Network aren't thriving because they invented a new category; they are scaling operations built on providing the age-old necessity of a reliable human signal.
Their value proposition is rooted in the oldest media currency: trust and authentic perspective.
So, what's the real takeaway from this messy, frustrating mess?
The alarmists say creativity ended with Dall-e.
I’m saying we’re just getting started.
The trajectory of digital media hasn't led us to a technological endpoint, but circled back to a human beginning.
The algorithmic internet, optimized into a state of near-unusable hostility, isn't the final chapter.
It's the decaying infrastructure that forces us to seek, and finally enables us to build, something more fundamental.
The platforms, in their relentless pursuit of predictable engagement and algorithmic efficiency, inadvertently created profound scarcity: the scarcity of authentic human voice, trusted curation, and genuine surprise.
They flooded the zone with sludge, making the smallest sparks of human insight and creativity shine brighter than ever.
That’s why we’re retreating from the slop buckets of feeds back into our inboxes where we curate the newsletters we read.
This isn't about fighting the machines or retreating into Luddism. It's about recognizing where true value lies in a world increasingly saturated with artificiality.
The tools are finally mature enough, and the audience is finally hungry enough, for media built on direct relationships, sustainable economics, and the irreplaceable magic of human taste.
The path forward isn't paved with better algorithms navigating the noise; it's carved out by the humans providing the signal.
In the face of synthetic everything, the messy, unpredictable, gloriously inefficient spark of human creativity isn't just a niche.
It's the last frontier. It’s everything.
Joe Alalou is a co-founder and General Partner at Daring Ventures, a pre-seed fund investing in software that amplifies uniquely human skills in complex, relationship-driven fields.
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