So…here we are…Part 2…

The internet has radically transformed everything about our life.

The iPad generation raised in the ever-present glow of the screen.

Amazon capitalizing and consolidating everything.

Streaming services disrupting how we are entertained.

A wealth of information—more information than has ever been organized, rapidly and exponentially expanding—at our fingertips. 

Photography fundamentally shifted painting.

When the first photographs were seen and you could capture a perfectly realistic reflection of reality, painting started to shift toward abstraction, first to impressionism, then toward the surreal, and finally the materiality of its expression in Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. 

I’ve heard arguments that the writing inherent in the construction of the internet, the very code behind the presentation, has done the same thing to writing, and a crisis has engulfed the writer. 

ChatGPT can spit out 70,000 words in a matter of minutes, words that would have taken the writer months to craft.

However, the difference between photography and painting and the internet and writing seems to be a stark divide in my mind.

Authenticity. 

Think of the early experiments with the photograph.

If the painter cannot express his authenticity in a realistic sense anymore, then the capturing of the impression carries the authenticity of his artistic self, and so on he transfers his authentic self in each style through to the paint splatters of Pollock and the color fields of Rothko.

But the use of the chatbot to create a novel leads a reader to the Baudrillardian “desert of the real.” 

We crave the authentic.

And we can feel when it is lacking. 

Let’s step outside the world of high arts and look at our favorite content creators on social media.

The ones we are drawn to are the ones who are real, who express the authentic, who become themselves for us.

Whether that’s making some sort of dance routine or in expressing dating advice or in posting cat videos—what we are searching for is that fundamental connection in our humanity—something a chatbot cannot capture.

I’ve seen very impressive AI videos in which a very realistic person transforms into a dinosaur that turns into a wizard and on and on and on.

It is simply remarkable and we are definitely left with a feeling of awe, but still a feeling remains lacking—the real, the authentic. 

The new currency is the authentic.

We are starved for it. 

I read a news article the other day about a scientific study comparing famous poems written by Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Eliot, and others with AI-generated poems in the same style and theme.

The public surveyed preferred the AI to the authentic poetry until they found out that it wasn’t real.

They felt like a trick had been played on them.

Even though the public is more likely to prefer an AI-generated piece of art, they still yearn for the real. 

I believe in ChatGPT and AI and all that is new.

I’ve seen it firsthand in helping me in my own work and can see its applications and the profound shifts that are starting as a result of these applications.

However, that cannot change the thing that makes us human.

Our connection. 

And so here we are.

Yesterday I was talking about Dan Koe and his building a very successful business based on his audience.

It is a business that only the internet can allow.

Without the content ecosystem he has set up, the business wouldn’t be able to operate.

Surely anyone can see that 30 years ago his business wouldn’t have worked or would look radically different than it is now.

But that feels like it misses something.

In this sense the medium isn’t the message.

I think he hits the nail on the head in that it is his voice, his interests, his particular ways of being and doing that have built the business.

It is his creation and not the distribution of the creation that has captured his audience.

It is his Authenticity.

This is the lever that must be pushed if everything is equal with the distribution. 

The news yesterday spread the fears about what happens next as Comcast is spinning off its cable news networks.

Listening to some talk radio last night, I heard that in about a year’s time they are projecting that America will reach a point where more houses have streaming services than cable networks. 

This seems just like another point of reflection in this long remaking of society that the internet is able to spearhead.

And what are the major criticisms of the major news networks, despite the political rancor, that these huge corporations are driving what’s is deemed newsworthy? 

That these news anchors are talking heads for the corporate interests, for the political superstructures? 

In short, they lack authenticity.

I’ve always been drawn to Matt Drudge of Drudge Report for his ability to cut out the corporate presence, at least on his own site.

His site visits are up while the corporate news media is scrambling.

How could a guy who graduated at the bottom of his high school class, who was obsessed with news and talk radio, who never had a career higher than convenience store clerk, create one of the most influential news sources?

The internet. 

He started the news aggregator site from his one-room apartment in Hollywood as a listserv newsletter focused on Hollywood gossip and has been able to grow it to the point where it can shape elections.

And it is just a basic website with hyperlinks to news outlets, edited by himself and a few others.

Surely Drudge Report isn’t winning any awards for website design.

That is the radical power of the internet to create a business out of nothing.

Hosting links to other news sources, just like driving leads to a small local business, just like optimizing SEO traffic for websites—all these are creating a business out of the pre-existing ecosystem.

But why is Matt Drudge successful when news aggregators are a dime a dozen or why is Dan Koe’s newsletter successful when the inbox is crowded with 20 other newsletters on a daily basis or why is someone willing to pay $100 million for an impression of water lilies when a picture is far more realistic? 

One word.

Authenticity.  

• The Authenticity Illusion: Why “Being Yourself” is a Lie
• In my end is my beginning…
• The Dangerous Consequences of Conforming to SEO
• Failure is Crushing—But Here’s Why It’s Your Greatest Asset
• Language Is Controlling You: Burroughs’ Darkest Truth Exposed

If this is sparking something in you—a desire to lead with precision, speak with impact, or shape the unseen currents—step into Leadership, Influence, Poetry. It’s where strategy meets soul, and persuasion becomes an art form. For those who move worlds with words and presence. Read Leadership, Influence, Poetry: A Journey in Rising from Defeat 

Ready to burn your default thinking? Download Dangerous by Design. Discover the 10 books that fracture, interrupt, and rewire the creative mind. Get the guide & read dangerously.