Is a Multibillion-Dollar Company Smarter than a 6th Grader?
And other dispatches from the culture wars
Today’s culture briefing is filled with updates on previous predictions and observations from The Honest Broker. These are usually behind a paywall, but I’m making this freely available to all.
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Last month, I grumbled that even old school companies are now imitating the “audience capture and control” strategies of digital platforms. This malicious way of doing business aims to lock up consumers—making it hard for them to walk away, and then abusively monetizing them.
This is now the default approach of a growing number of businesses. But I was still shocked to see a purveyor of fine German sedans jumping on the bundes-wagen:
A Redditor shared this dystopian video:
Imagine paying $60,000+ for a car, and getting treated like a refugee from TikTok. In an earlier day, the Bond villain responsible for this scheme would get fired. But in the current mania, execs are rewarded for customer harvesting on such a grand scale.
But not for long. The pushback from the public is intensifying. That’s why Netflix and Spotify’s stocks have fallen so much lately—they misjudged how much their customers will tolerate.
BMW just made the same mistake.
It’s hard to believe how clueless companies have become. We recently called a plumber to fix an urgent problem on the home front. He immediately tried to sell us a subscription at $19 per month.
Subscribe to a plumber? Really?
Update: He’s now our ex-plumber.
But just when you think companies can’t get any more detached from reality, something like this happens….
I know the AI wannabes are struggling right now. But tats-for-bots is not the answer.
Back in April, I predicted that “Movie Theaters Are Coming Back”—and anticipated a “big boost” in ticket sales for 2026. We now can measure the results, and they’re stunning. The cinema business just enjoyed the biggest weekend in its history. Imax also set a record for ticket sales, and its stock is at an all-time high.
This isn’t a fluke, or driven by the short term impact of a couple of popular flicks. The whole film industry has finally figured out how important theaters are. Last week, Netflix announced that it will keep one of its forthcoming films in theatrical release for 47 days—they have never done that before.
Not long ago, experts were warning that the US movie industry would never again generate $10 billion in annual ticket sales. But that will definitely happen in 2026. And you should expect another big cinema year in 2027.
This is one of the few feel-good stories in the entertainment world right now, and a sign that cultural institutions under assault can rebound and thrive.
Maybe live music is next.
Back in 2024, I discovered that somebody was trying to steal my readers with an AI slop book on jazz. Since that time, I’ve fought back aggressively, calling attention to the destructive “flood the zone” approach of slop sellers—which is the most well-funded aesthetic movement in the history of culture.
Can you imagine it? We finally get a trillion dollars invested in the arts, and its sole purpose is to destroy the livelihood of artists. Count me old fashioned, but I prefer the old days when rich people were patrons of the arts, not parasites.
Even as the public sickens over this surfeit of crap, I just heard a tech apologist boast that, within a couple years, nobody will care if writing is AI generated. Can that really be true?
I take pride in my skill as a forecaster, but my next prediction is so obvious even a Silicon Valley CEO should have figured it out by now. Here it is: People hate AI more and more with each passing month. There’s no way they will swallow this tsunami of slop with a smile on their faces.
Do you think I’m exaggerating? Then please explain these survey results from Substacker Ruth Gaskovski.
Not even a single person (out of 231 respondents) was totally in favor of AI writing. And more than three-quarters of those surveyed, never want it under any circumstances.
You think these people are going to change their mind if they keep getting slopped? As they say hereabouts, that dog don’t hunt.
Of course, it would help if human writers supported other human writers. That’s not always a given.
Just in the last week, the AI cartel lost more allies. Consider the case of LinkedIn, which has been a happy home for sloppers. But even that AI-infested swamp has finally agreed to give users a anti-slop button.
According to the Wall Street Journal:
In addition to adding a slop button, LinkedIn last month said it was phasing out an “enhance your post” feature that encouraged the use of AI tools for proofreading and rewriting…..
The company plans to introduce a “nudge” feature alerting people when others flag their posts as AI-like.
And earlier this year it released a switch to hide comments from unverified users as a way to minimize mass-produced AI replies.
LinkedIn is already deleting 200,000 AI-generated comments every day. And nobody misses them.
This is more than mildly ironic—because LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft, one of the biggest AI hypercalers. But that’s a measure of how powerful anti-AI sentiment has become. Even Microsoft can’t ignore it anymore.
The same is true over at Alphabet, which is now in the awkward position of implementing anti-AI measures at YouTube. But what other option do they have? Even YouTubers who previously embraced AI are now issuing public apologies.
What’s going to happen next? If you’re a forecaster, this is another easy call. Slop is toxic and nobody wants it. So we are now embarking on the stage where there’s pushback even inside the slop companies. As the above examples make clear, that’s already started—but the backlash now is nothing compared to what we will see in 2027.
That’s why stories like this are so amusing. Didn’t the fools in Bayreuth know how the audience would respond?
But, in all fairness, this isn’t the only time that Wagnerians have demonstrated a lapse in judgement.
I don’t know if any of you are history buffs, but….
The inside jokes here are for a tiny number of readers. If you get them, all the better—you are part of the happy few, our band of brokers. And if not, that’s okay too.
Back in July, I made a plea to the identity police—begging them to let individuals define their own identities and group affinities, instead of imposing them via entrenched bureaucracies that operate without accountability or transparency.
I’ve now learned that I’m not the only person who feels that way.
This is another issue that won’t go away. It’s rare that a public figure will make such a bold declaration—BTS pays a price by walking away from a prestigious award. But for every person who complains openly about this, a hundred gripe in private about a power structure obsessed with assigning people to groups that the institution gets to name and choose.
We will see more people pushing back against this. Of that, I’m certain.
Finally, let me introduce a new genre. It’s called music to confuse AI by.
It’s based on a simple rule of reciprocity. If they insist on polluting the culture, the victims do the same to their training data.
I don’t condone this, but I can’t say I’m surprised. The technocracy has massively underestimated the smarts and determination of people in the creative culture. And, frankly, they ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Ted, as a musician I have always been completely anti-AI in my work. However, lately I've come to feel that the backlash against fake music and art will be so great that it will start driving folks back from screens to live music and arts, which cannot be faked. So AI might benefit us in the long term by the repulsion people will feel against it.Thoughts?