Proof of Effort

I saw a ​depressing prediction​ from Dan Shipper (CEO of Every) on X this week.

Here's the paraphrased version:

For years now, people have "joked" that the future of work looks like 1) people using AI to create things and then 2) people using AI to summarize and consume those things—i.e., humans are no longer truly creating or consuming what was created. Bots talk to bots, dead internet theory, blah blah blah.

It's a good argument! Especially when you open an email expecting to read from one of your favorite writers and immediately sense the AI fingerprint.

But I have a more optimistic take: We've just tightened our filters.

Because the cost of creating (generating) things has effectively gone to zero, the supply of consumable stuff has exploded. Available human attention has not changed. So what we're all learning how to do is get better and better at filtering what deserves our limited supply of attention.

And what we've implicitly realized is that if there was no cost to the person creating the thing, we don't want to invest our own resources (time, attention, energy, cash) into consuming the thing. Hell, sometimes I can't even be bothered to read the AI response to the question I asked because it's long and written by a robot.

On the other hand, people paid thousands of dollars—per ticket—to see Twenty One Pilots play an arena show here in Columbus, Ohio, last night. The cost of BECOMING Twenty One Pilots was enormous: years of practice, playing to mostly empty rooms, overcoming self-doubt, self-funding albums, and more. The cost of orchestrating that show was equally enormous. The band is known for putting on spectacular shows. For weeks, people on Reddit speculated about what the show's production might look like.

In a world where everyone constantly cuts corners, we love it when people take the long route.

Our daughter is really into Sesame Street right now. And amid the brain-rot landmines on Netflix and elsewhere, Sesame Street still seems like a positive, low-stim choice. And then I discovered a season of "Sesame Street Classics"—episodes from the 1970s and 80s. We watched an episode from 1978, and she loved it. And I loved it, too! And I loved it even more knowing that it was totally made from human imagination and collaboration.

I'm not speaking from a mountaintop here. I constantly feel tempted to use AI to ramp up publishing volume. Volume used to be what separated the megacreators from the rest, so the perception of volume FEELS like the bridge to cross to grow. But that's a relic of an earlier time. Volume today looks a lot like "​midslop​" and begs the ancient question: If a tree falls in the forest with no one around to hear it, does it make a sound? I don't know, but it doesn't make a sale.

It's better to make something with proof of effort. Proof of care. Proof of YOU investing your own time, pride, creativity, and love into the thing.

And it's not mutually exclusive from AI.

My friend Jonny Miller is an AI evangelist, but he leverages it in ways that still feel effortful.

A few weeks ago, he published an essay called How to Unclench that has received nearly 2 million views on X.

The essay is great—it's actually been quite an unlock for me. And Jonny is both a friend and a member of The Lab. But I'm interested in what it teaches us about the current state of content creation

The essay reeks of effort. Months (years?) spent thinking, pressure-testing, iterating, and then figuring out how to communicate one specific idea. The writing is immediately engaging. He underscores it with animations (probably AI-assisted) that are simultaneously "unnecessary" (strictly speaking) but so helpful in grasping the ideas.

Effort.

The entire essay was published not on Jonny's blog, but on a domain he secured just for this essay. I've seen this a few times lately with other creators:

• High Agency by George Mack
• AI 2027
• AI 2040

Again, it just reeks of extra effort. And when we see that the essay is a 30+ minute read, that human effort invites us in.

It may seem like we're entering a time when it's harder than ever to cut through the noise and competition for attention.

How can a trust maximizer compete?

But when everyone is spreading their effort wider and wider, deep, concentrated effort becomes rare, obvious, and attractive. If you don't want to compete on volume, the best thing you can do is choose not to.