I write every post on my blog with my own mind and my own hands. I type on my phone whatever my mind has managed to organize on a given day. It’s a ritual for thinking more than an attempt at being read by others.
Funnily enough, on Day 804 aka March 15 2023 (the day I first met Isaiah) I wrote about how AI writing seemed primed to over take all natural human brain brewed artisanal content.
Three years later Isaiah’s reactor went critical, I’m still writing my human brain derived content, and timelines from Twitter to Substack are drowning in pithy highly readable artificial intelligence written content. Poor Will Manidis has jokingly taken responsibility but feed slop was coming one way or mother.
It does make a chronological feed as a timeline a much better choice for personal use as algorithmic buffing of content will make a night river of a platform into a million tributary parts. The feeds crack as the water of thought are routed elsewhere.
This metaphor has clearly reached me as yesterday I went to some effort to do a full shower, exfoliate, shave and wash routine with new products meant to improve my epidermis from tip to toe. I ended up giving myself a number of itchy red notches and spent the evening slathering on lotions and cortisone creams.
My stratum corneum cracked just as my timeline did. The moisture in my skin is we sucked out by acids and scrubbing. I’d taken off a few dead skin cells and irritated the rest.
Just like the insights and prose have been buffed and pumiced to a flat surface of legibility in our feeds. Nothing was buoyant or smooth. It was flat with the occasional warm to the touch but of discomfort. Slopping on occlusives might help my skin but I have no fix for the timeline.