Chad Aaron Hall

That all of us are reveling in content slop is an uncomfortable truth. It may be intellectually easier to blame AI as the problem when the issue resides in people and platforms. My double-bind theory argues that attention aggregators have no choice but to allow content that pushes the bounds of social acceptability. Otherwise, engagement moves to... See more

One of the best pieces of writing advice I ever got was to–before I started the process–articulate the idea in one sentence, one paragraph and one page.

In short: it is probably a mistake, in the end, to ask software to improve our thinking. Even if you can rescue your attention from the acid bath of the internet; even if you can gather the most interesting data and observations into the app of your choosing; even if you revisit that data from time to time — this will not be enough. It might not... See more

When things become easier – anyone can make a website on Squarespace, anyone can produce images in Midjourney, practically anyone can start a startup, whatever – the vast majority of the things produced the easy way are total dogshit. When algorithms embrace the dogshit, or the dogshit contorts itself to please the algorithm, the whole visible... See more

“Entertaining” does kind of work—albeit entertaining in the way a car crash is, where you can’t look away. But I don’t think it’s specific enough. It’s not the real measurable angle. Instead, what I think is that if you look at America from around a decade ago, say, 2012 on, the more apt descriptor is that American culture is increasingly unable to... See more