🤖 The Scoreboard Is Broken
Hey Reader,
There’s a quiet shift happening right now that I think is going to matter a lot more than most people realize. I was listening to The Best One Yet, and they pulled together three stories that all pointed to the same issue:
- Aerie is doubling down on human-centered marketing with Pamela Anderson… no AI, no retouching, no makeup.
- Reddit is moving toward labeling bots more clearly so users know when they’re talking to something synthetic.
- And then there’s a bizarre TikTok account featuring animated fruit in a fake Love Island universe that has racked up millions of followers and suspiciously massive view counts.
It’s the R-rated fruit that’s the main concern here… because AI isn’t just flooding the market with content. It’s starting to mess with the scoreboard.
The The Best One Yet made a great point: if an account is willing to use entirely AI-generated content, what’s to say it’s not also using bots to drive up those views? And once the scoreboard gets messy, people start making bad decisions based on numbers that may not mean shit.
If engagement can be inflated, and listens can be gamed, and synthetic output can look polished enough to pass at a glance… then we have a credibility problem, not just a content problem. Downloads do not mean automatic attention. Views are not automatically about resonance. Looking “professional” is not the same thing as being trusted.
But here’s where I think this conversation gets more emotionally loaded than people want to admit:
A lot of creators are not afraid of AI because they think it’s evil.
They’re afraid of it because it exposes whether they ever had any real craftsmanship in the first place.
That’s the actual wound.
Because if your business has been built on vague positioning, recycled ideas, outsourced personality, fake confidence, and performative “thought leadership,” then yeah… generative AI is going to make you sweat. Not because it’s better than you, but because it can now do a very convincing version of what a lot of people were already doing.
That’s the real disruption.
Not that AI can write or that it can design or that it can write code faster than you. It’s that it has officially commoditized a whole category of mediocre output that used to pass as impressive. So if “pretty good” was your whole brand strategy… that’s gonna be a rough little season starting right about, oh, yesterday. 👀
I’ll keep shouting this until y’all really hear it: AI is not why people cut corners. It’s the mirror.
It reflects your standards, your taste, your thinking, and your willingness to sit with a messy first draft long enough to shape it into something with a pulse.
So if you’re using AI and what comes out feels flat, hollow, vague, or weirdly not-you… that is not always evidence that AI “doesn’t work.” Sometimes it’s evidence that you haven’t fully developed the voice, viewpoint, or discernment required to direct it well.
That’s where it gets slippery because it’s very easy to use generative tools to create the appearance of authority without the substance underneath it. And that gap eventually shows.
We’re not talking about a technology issue.
We’re talking about a craftsmanship issue.
And in the next era of the internet, I think craftsmanship is going to become one of the most valuable forms of differentiation we have.
Can you think clearly? Can you say something real? Can you hold your own ideas in a room without needing the machine to tell you who you are?
The real flex is using powerful tools without becoming indistinguishable from them. Because the people who are willing to do the deeper work… the less sexy work… the work of building a real point of view and a real relationship with their audience… are not being made obsolete.
They’re becoming more valuable and that can include you, too.
If anything, this whole messy AI era is making the human premium easier to spot.
So if you want to stay visible without becoming synthetic, that’s the work. I’ve got a bunch of ways for you to do that when you scroll down for more.
👉 Check out the Dojo, below...
Gossip From the Creator Trenches...
🤖 Claude Is Not Your Boyfriend
I won’t side-eye you too hard if you’ve been riding the recent Anthropic love wave. But let’s not get amnesia. They still have defense contracts, and like every other AI company, they are in business for… themselves. A whole lot of users got a rude awakening this week when Claude Code started throttling usage harder than expected. (And yes, this has been brewing for a while… more people are just feeling it now.) The lesson here is simple: do not build your entire workflow around one shiny AI crush. Diversify your tools. Stay nimble. Stop acting like any of these companies are your benevolent tech daddy.
🔗 Fill your tea cup
💸 The Free Ride Is Over
Anytime something is “free,” you should assume you are the product. Most of us already know that and tolerate it in parts of our tech and marketing stack. The bigger issue now is that Meta’s new premium tiers are adding even more friction to a platform ecosystem that small businesses have been heavily relying on for visibility. And that’s the real problem. If discovery on Meta keeps getting paywalled, throttled, or increasingly weird, your old growth tactics are going to keep under performing. Which is why I will once again lovingly scream into the void: you need owned distribution. Think newsletters. Podcasts. YouTube. Stuff you can still use when the algorithm gets drunk and starts throwing furniture.
🔗 Decisions, decisions...
🔐 Meta Wants Your Trust Without Earning It
And in this week’s episode of “Meta continues to be embarrassing,” user privacy is back on the chopping block. You may not think end-to-end encryption matters that much, but it’s one of the clearest trust signals a platform can offer. When that starts getting watered down or quietly deprioritized, it creates a very slippery slope… not just for Meta, but for every other platform watching what users will tolerate. And here’s why you should care as a business owner: When people don’t feel safe, they leave. When they leave, attention shifts. And when attention shifts, your marketing has to follow it. Which is why relying on social media discovery the way we did a few years ago is getting dumber by the minute.
🔗 Yes, you should be concerned
🎤 Don’t Want to Sound Like Everybody Else?
If this week’s newsletter hit a nerve, the Creator Economy Dojo is where we sharpen that. Because if you keep getting outpaced by people with half your depth and twice your visibility… that’s not random.
That’s a systems problem.
Inside the Dojo, we work on the stuff that makes your visibility strong enough to hold: your message, your consistency, your ecosystem, and your ability to build trust without becoming generic in the process.
Because being visible without structure is just burnout in a cute outfit.
I’m still offering a limited number of founding member spots at $197/month, but I do plan to close those by mid-summer.
👉 Join the Creator Economy Dojo
🧠 If You Need a Reality Check…
If this week’s newsletter hit a little too close to home and you’re realizing your content, message, or visibility strategy has gotten fuzzy… I’ve got you.
Borrow My Brain is a 60-minute strategy session for when you’re stuck in the spiral and need a sharp, honest outside perspective to help you get clear again.
No bloated coaching package. No weird six-module detour. Just one focused hour to untangle what’s not landing and figure out what to do next.
If you’ve been circling the same ideas, second-guessing your voice, or quietly avoiding hitting publish because you know something feels off… this is for that.
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$197.00
Borrow My Brain: Talk Me Out of My Content Spiral, Mary
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🌙 This Week in Woo
You already know what chapter is over… your nervous system is just catching up. This week’s private reading covers the threshold between exhaustion and initiation, why Mars entering Aries matters, and the real question before next week’s bigger fire hits: what deserves your energy now?
✨ Tap into the full reading inside Woo Crew and get grounded before the momentum hits. ⤵️
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Let's Hang Out
In case you think my newsletters are on the spicy side (and they are 🌶️), you should know that I also say these things in to recorded microphones. Recently the most notable was at SXSW on the stage for Podcast Movement Evolutions. You can also catch all of the other talks & panels on YouTube next to mine.
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Many of you know Megan Eckman from cohosting The Awkward Handshake with me, but what you may not know is that BTS I am also quietly helping her launch a little cozy romance media empire. Subscribe for monthly happiness! Your first month is free.
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