Note: this article was adapted from a newsletter I sent on September 20th, 2025. You can subscribe here.
To my surprise, my last emailreceived more responses than any I’ve ever written before.
The basic premise was that, after six months of obsessively working with it, I finally realized that ChatGPT is not just incapable of helping me with real business, but it was also massively hindering my creativity, success, and entire brain.
I cover most of that and more here: The ChatGPT Illusion Paralyzing Your Mind And Success
The consensus of nearly 100 replies was, I’ve been thinking the same thing. I thought I was going crazy and just not getting it.
A Bigger Shift
But there’s something bigger going on that I’ve been thinking about.
Something you don’t pick up on by scrolling X or reading any other number of self-promoting, often narcissistic, creators and platforms.
You pick up on trends and opportunities in the trenches: talking to normal people, keeping your mind open, and piecing things together based on human psychology, sociology, and history.
This article is all about where I think the Internet is heading – and, by extension, future opportunities.
Back to an Earlier Internet
First, I want to go back in time to an earlier Internet. One that I believe is going to return to us relatively soon.
My first website that allowed me to stop working for other people and build a bit of a nest egg received a lot of direct traffic.
Around 80,000 people visited the site daily by typing it into the address bar. It was actually more than that because thousands more came by just Googling the brand name.
Back then, circa 2008, people went directly to websites a lot more often.
When Hubs Took Over
But then, the big Internet “hubs” started to dominate.
If you wanted information, you went to Google.
If you wanted entertainment, you went to Facebook or YouTube.
If you wanted to shop, you went to Amazon.
If you wanted to fap, you went to PH.
The last one, while seemingly a joke, is probably the most relevant of them all.
Basically, human needs consolidated into central platforms rather than spread out all over the place.
They were convenient, clean, and brilliant. They grew their audiences (quite literally for one of them) because they were just a better experience.
Distribution Became King
But this is where things started to get messy, and a new era began.
With these massive platforms effectively promising free traffic to websites, everyone started shifting their strategies to start building for those platforms.
Content and even business itself became second to distribution.
The possibility to receive an ongoing flood of free traffic changed the Internet forever.
People built websites based on Google’s gaps and their algorithm.
People launched Facebook pages as a priority over their own website.
Distribution truly became king. A drug-dealing king promising you another hit if you just keep on feeding him.
Honestly, it seemed not only mandatory but also just impossible to ignore. But, like actual drugs, this new era came with a huge risk:
Dependency.
Digital entrepreneurs got hooked on easy traffic much like subprime lenders before the financial collapse in 2008.
We foolishly felt this Internet was here to stay. It seemed like everybody was winning after all.
But honestly, why were we so confident?
The entire concept of making money online, quietly behind the scenes, was pretty new while big tech companies’ market values continued to soar.
And much like the subprime lending fiasco, in hindsight this was all really easy to see coming.
We’ll look back on the era of Facebook pages, SEO, Pinterest traffic, and whatever other traffic spigot we could find with a lot more clarity some day.
What Happens in the AI Era?
Now, as we enter a new era where content is created with AI, search results are delivered with AI, an increasing number of comments you read on social media are AI, and people are turning to AI for companionship… what happens next?
Think about this logically. Let’s go back to my bullet points above about the central platforms and expand on them.
If you wanted information, you went to Google. And clicked on a website that was full of personality.
If you wanted entertainment, you went to Facebook or YouTube. And watched a video or clicked on a website.
If you wanted to shop, you went to Amazon. And bought something from a small business.
Now, we have Google AI mode, Facebook/YT AI slop, and Amazon Basics.
These are being pushed because large platforms will do anything to keep users on their sites so they can report higher engagement numbers and revenue growth to shareholders.
As a shareholder, I’m not complaining and I fully realize this is how public companies have and will always operate.
Everything Is Getting Boring
But what is painfully obvious here?
- AI Mode (and AIOs) are insanely boring. Yes, it’s faster and cleaner, but they’re so boring.
- AI Slop is an embarrassment and even my mother is beginning to notice when it’s not actually Jesus riding a T-Rex into a battle to save the day.
- Amazon literally called their brand Basics. Very fitting.
My point is that everything online is getting so boring.
Everything looks the same now. How people write, how content is delivered, the comments, everything.
It’s like the Internet went from this vibrant, messy, chaotic wild west of drinking whiskey, gunslinging, and visiting brothels to some sort of stale, predictable land of gray decay littered with more “stuff” than ever while actually meaning less than ever.
It kinda sucks here now.
Back to the Roots
In October, 2023, nearly two years ago, I wrote a predictions article.
Reviewing it, while certainly not a claim to be the second coming of Nostradamus, it all seems to be playing out.
And, to me, the Internet can really only go one way:
Back to its roots.
Everything you see today will remain, but in a new form. Imagine these big tech platforms as city utilities like water, electric, and gas.
They’re not going anywhere, and we’ll still use them. But much like city utilities, they’ll be used to power the Internet rather than be the Internet.
If you consider information is and will continue to be boringly commodotized (ie, I just want an answer or a quick task) and that the abundance of AI slop is, before our very eyes, rotting social media from the inside, the humans that remain on the Internet will return to what made the Internet great in the first place.
Small communities of passionate people. Weird blogs with content you’ll never find anywhere else.
Other humans.
A Natural Cycle
I don’t believe I’m romanticizing the past – or even being nostalgic at all.
It feels like a very natural cycle is taking place:
- Cars replaced horses and now, for most of us, cars are really boring necessities while horses are magical creatures we love to see, ride, feed, and own.
- The camera replaced painted portraits. Now photos are endless, filtered, cheap, and we barely care about them while paintings remain as valuable as ever.
- The light bulb replaced candles and, based on my wife’s purchases, candles are selling and appreciated more than ever before in all kinds of styles and scents.
- Central heating replaced fireplaces and now fireplaces are considered a luxury and even a must-have when some people are looking for a home.
- Industrial farming replaced gardening in your backyard as a means to eat, but nobody cares about where a majority of their food is coming from, yet will spend thousands on their gardening hobby.
- Artificial intelligence is swallowing the everyday web, the one built on the backs of human labor. But like horses, paintings, candles, and fireplaces, the human touch may very well follow suit – and go from utility to luxury.
Technology as Infrastructure
This, in turn, creates brand new businesses we never thought would exist.
Ones built alongside and on top of technology.
Much like nobody cares about the car you’re driving to go ride horses, the technology will be reduced to boring infrastructure. Background noise.
Exactly where it belongs.
Perhaps, rather than fearing the rhetoric that AI will replace humans, we should remember that what machines take over in utility, humans reclaim in meaning.
Signals of the Shift
I already see so many signs of what’s to come.
The rise of group chats. The resurgence of newsletters. Even landlines and dumb phones. And I’m sure my entire social circle and I aren’t alone in the adoption of voice notes, the perfect middle ground between texts and phone calls.
They’re all signs of a shift, not to the past, but to a new future where curated meaning and connection among a few is far more valuable than chasing scale and numbers.
As someone who has done the latter, I welcome the future.
What I’d Build Today
The question I get asked the most is, what business would you start if you were starting one today?
Well, I can answer that because I’m in the process of figuring that out myself.
And while I still haven’t decided on the exact business itself, I can tell you that its priority will be meaning.
One where scale is not only unnecessary but would actually destroy it.
In this world increasingly filled with vanilla, robotic output and desperate human content, it feels like the natural evolution of the Internet.
