“Delusion Under Influence”

On June 15, Zuckerberg will pull the plug on cartoon characters nobody used the Metaverse.

Oh no! That’s terrible news for…

The 3 people who used it.

(One of them paid 450k to have a “house” near Snoop Dogg.)

But okay…

Now that I got my final licks in – since I’ve been clowning on it for years – I want to take a moment and note how a bunch of billionaire morons tried to convince the world that the Midverse will “change the world”… and reach a $5 trillion valuation in a few years.

(For reference, NVIDIA is the biggest publicly-traded company right now at a market cap of $4T.)

And I want to take that moment because…

They’re doing it again.

History is repeating itself in real time as of this writing:

Except now their newest and brightest shiniest object and the next best thing since sliced bread which will change the world is…

So-called generative AI.

(And the only difference now is that it’s worse – Meta lost a total of $80B on the Midverse, yet they’ve ALREADY sunk $140B+ into AI.)

Spoiler alert:

It won’t.

It can happen – e.g. smartphones changed how society… well… functions really.

But it seldom happens – so infrequently you can probably count it on one hand.

And yet…

Every couple of years, these slicked-up lizards tech bros start marketing their newest tech toy as a world beater.

So if you’re currently sipping on the AI Kool-Aid…

…thinking it will be your white knight on a horse that will prompt your customers into a buying frenzy rabid to devour all protein powders you’ve got on offer?

Be careful not to get drunk and commit a DUI.

(i.e. Delusion Under Influence.)

It’s an expensive felony to commit.

Now for the pedantic types reading this:

I DO NOT hate AI.

I loathe having to state this every time:

I pay SammyGpt $25/month so I can use it with no limits – otherwise the poor thing overheats and temporarily locks me out.

And I use it nearly every day – it’s a useful tool whenever I need a quick fact/stat/information…

So my quarrel is not with the Borg itself…

It’s with its overlords.

The Huangs, the Zuccs, the Sammys…

And frankly, I don’t even have a problem with them that much – since I can easily tell they’re on their bullshit and just ignore them…

After all:

I wouldn’t ever listen to my barber about whether I need a haircut – what’s he gonna say? No?

But the problem arises with other people…

Who DO listen to their barber’s opinion on whether they need a haircut.

Late last year, I was talking with a UK supplement brand which liked my idea behind Email Storyselling…

…but just wanted to enhance it further by making it “AI-powered”.

Even though one of the main premises behind Email Storyselling is to give your subscribers a fresh, different, and AUTHENTIC email experience.

(And I made sure that I was clear on it – but it seems I need to try even harder on that…)

LLMs are not authentic – they lack the human context and the syntactico-rhetorical idiosyncrasies necessary to MAKE something authentic.

Because all they can do is just regurgitate what someone/something has already done before…

…and spit it out in the form of some lifeless drivel.

It’s the reason why every ChatGipity-generated marketing email sounds exactly the same – even if it comes from different brands.

(See my “AI-generated email bingo.” email – on Email Echoes – for a great side-by-side comparison of how different supplement brands sound EXACTLY the same… precisely because they all prompted their emails lol.)

That being said though…

I DO use AI.

Whenever I need to look up a quick fact/stat, or a piece of information whilst I’m writing an email, it’s phenomenal. It saves me time googling and gives me almost exactly what I need.

(So I guess Email Storyselling technically IS “AI-powered” after all…)

But what I DO NOT use AI for is writing… idea generation… market psychology insights… and overall strategy.

For that?

It’s about as useful as a punctured condom.

So yes,

That’s the reason why the guy who owned a decently-run supplement brand…

…stayed merely a “potential” user of Email Storyselling.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink it.

So if you’re STILL heavy into the whole “AI-powered” shebang?

I’m not gonna push it – whatever I say in this, or any future emails, probably won’t change your mind in any way, shape or form.

You just do what you gotta do.

Just know you won’t be doing email marketing the Email Storyselling way – whether DIY or DFY. It’s not for you.