All internet prophets are false prophets.

A false prophet is someone who leads people astray for personal gain. The message doesn’t have to be spiritual for someone to be prophet-like. I can’t think of a better way to describe influencers and algorithmic social media than that.

During Covid I found my personality changing in subtle ways. I realized that I had been taken by internet prophets. Even when I wouldn’t trade lives with an internet prophet, the algorithm was changing me from the inside. I had to come up with a new form of survival wisdom like how to make noise at bears or avoiding dangerous berries. If I didn’t, I would continue to be inexplicably interested in jiu jitsu and off-grid fort building.

I chewed on it for a while and realized that it wasn’t just short videos that were the problem, but all sermon-like video with an explicit purpose of ‘leading me astray for personal gain’ that had to go. I cancelled YouTube Premium and haven’t looked back. I now give $0 to internet people, whether directly or indirectly through affiliate purchases. I virtually never transact online for that matter. I like to take things like this to the extreme, because while it always fails when you approach absolutes, you get to explore human values more richly.

While influencers increase GDP in a time of slow economic growth, they are also harming the richness of the physical landscape of life. One of the oldest professions, to trade in goods, is being flattened in dystopian ways. It really comes down to the richness of human values, and how impossible it is to convey them through short vidoes through glass slabs. We can never really understand ourselves or our closest friends and family, much less someone we met 0.2 seconds ago in a feed of short videos. The claim at the heart of influencers is fraudulent.

I realized in writing this, I am invalidating the premise of this website. But then I realized that I write this website entirely for me. I don’t monetize it, have analytics, or have any way to trace or monetize my ideas through people’s minds into the world. I think the best advice for anyone, whether a founder, a parent or someone afflicted by internet prophets, is not to take advice, and to think for yourself.

One way to think for yourself is to wean yourself off letting others think for you. Who cares what someone says about a restaurant or a smart watch or any other internet purchase or life direction. If we don’t venture to make mistakes in the real world, the reinforcement learning algorithms in our minds will atrophy. I’m glad I learned this before I was more taken.

All internet prophets are flase prophets.