How AI May Change Social Media

Everyone is wrong about AI Slop #3

The question of AI-generated content and social media is, if nothing else, an invitation to dust off your favorite economic metaphors and let them parade in an algorithmic carnival. Let’s call social media a market, a digital bazaar where the wares are content, paid not in dollars but in swipes, likes, and half-listened seconds. In this market, “producers” are the content creators, and the rest of us are “The Great Unwashed,” eternally scrolling.

Of course, this was not always so, back in the sepia-tinted 2010s, when Facebook statuses flourished and your cousin's photos jockeyed for screen space with existential memes and early attempts at going viral. Everyone was both producer and consumer, a kind of content hobbyist, if you will. Then, as if overnight, short-form video took online platforms by storm, and the producer-consumer distinction ossified.

A significant factor here could be what Strickler refers to as “The Dark Forest Theory of the Web.” Turns out that being a content hobbyist on the Web had more downsides than upsides. As public feeds became money-making machines where shitposting had real-world consequences, many ordinary users retreated into quieter corners: closed groups, encrypted chats, Discord servers, obscure substacks.

Now, we find ourselves in the era of the Content Creator as businesses. Mr. Beast presides over a minor fiefdom of editors, thumbnail artists, and data-obsessed consigliere. But for these crowned heads of engagement, the real bottleneck isn’t a lack of ideas, money, or labor. It’s the invisible hand of platform design. Post 100 Mr. Beast videos in a single week and you’ll discover, painfully, that YouTube’s algorithm is less a free market and more a jealous bureaucrat, suspicious of overproduction and quick to impose rationing. The supply of content is limited not by the creator’s capacity, but by the platform’s appetite for spectacle.

What, then, of AI? Will a bevy of GPTs and DALL-Es let the top creators dominate even more completely, flooding the feed with a ceaseless slurry of Beastly wonders? Not really. AI may offer a few more pixels of polish, a higher ratio of jump cuts per minute, or some extra flair in the thumbnail. Still, this is only a slightly better mousetrap for those who have already captured the cheese. The platforms’ monarchs might squeeze out a bit more efficiency or visual punch, but AI won’t fundamentally upend the pecking order at the top.

If there is a revolution, it won’t start in the castle, but among the rabble at the gates. Because here’s where things get interesting: the so-called “long tail.” Some forms of content, think daily vlogs or dog photos, were always democratized. Still, others, like animation or high-production visual storytelling, remained the domain of the technically gifted, the well-funded, or the terminally stubborn.

AI promises to decrease the cost of content creation and the skills required. What once took a studio can now be managed by a hobbyist and a well-tuned prompt. Text-to-image generators, auto-editors, voice clones, and AI-powered storytellers turn what was once artisanal labor into the push of a button. Animation for the masses. Deepfakes for the family group chat. Explainers in any language for any niche, no matter how obscure or underloved.

We may soon find ourselves awash in creative micro-genres and hobbyist enclaves that would never have survived in the old regime: AI-generated history documentaries narrated by your favorite Twitch streamer, animated music videos starring your D&D character, explainer series about obscure philosophy, all built from scratch in a bedroom. AI won’t just automate what already exists; it will open doors to what was not profitable to create.

But as the means of creation become almost frictionless, a new paradox emerges: when anyone can make anything, what matters isn’t just the thing itself. Brand, personality, community, these are already moats. People don’t crave an endless buffet of faceless content; they want context, connection, a human story behind the pixels. Parasocial relationships, the one-sided love affairs between creator and audience, are the secret ingredient in the attention economy. It may be that the more abundant the content becomes, the scarcer authenticity and presence will feel.

So don’t expect the web to be swamped by faceless AI content. The value of being a person may go up as the price of everything else approaches zero.