Internet Media

I’ve followed Charlie Warzel’s Galaxy Brain since the height of the pandemic, even before it was aqcuired by The Atlantic. I’ve nodded along for years as Warzel wrote about internet bullshit, but lately the newsletter has gotten weird even for me.

Charlie Warzel, The Feeling of Control Slipping Away:

Culturally, the flood of slop, AI influencers, fake accounts, and AI tools is blurring the lines of an already post-truth age.

I can’t make sense of that!

Is an “AI influencer” an influencer whose area of influence is “AI”? Are they an approximation of a human influencer created using generative tools? Flood of slop, fake accounts. Where? Which AI tools?

I give myself some credit here. If Galaxy Brain is now unrelatable, that’s because I’ve insulated myself from internet bullshit. But I did it, in part, because of the influence of reading Galaxy Brain. I feel I owe something to Charlie Warzel. It’s concerning that his brain might be getting eaten by the subject he studies. So please send somebody to check on him. I’d hate to lose a good one to internet madness.