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The Nerd Reich
I learned about Dolly’s passing on a Microsoft Teams. My hope is that was the most memorable Teams call of my life. It was a throwback moment to when deaths focus attention and something close to a shared experience happens. Dolly was unique in that hardly anyone has anything bad to say about her. The communists and DSA celebrated, and Ted Cruz did in his own way. The British monarchy did a stirring rendition of 9 to 5 and Irish nationalists saluted as well. Then again, what kind of a person would talk shit about someone who just died?
Dolly was a master at owning her narrative. It was an American story, even if she knew it wasn’t the only one. Famously born dirt poor in a one-room cabin, blessed with big talent, big hair and a bigger work ethic, she’s lionized for her kindness as much as her entertainment. She protected her big story from being co-opted by others, particularly politicians. When people made jokes about her déclassé accent and big boobs, she laughed along, outworked everyone and put up points. She was a Bucket. She didn’t apologize for who she was, and people respected that even if they disagreed. She built a theme park and named it after herself. She earned over $500 million and gave away much of it.
She had a lot of Dollyisms over the years. Americans love home-spun wisdom, especially from someone who made it. The American story is about striving, yes, but only as a retrospective from the position of success. One Dollyism is that Americans romanticize having been poor while treating being poor as shameful. Nobody begrudged Dolly for being rich because she earned it and somehow remained relatable. She wasn’t another American archetype: The rich guy born on third base who acts like he hit a triple.
My suspicion is the backlash against AI ties back to the feeling a very small group of people didn’t actually earn it. Sam Altman, fresh off human tutoring, went on David Senra’s YouTube show. Senra is a nerd’s nerd. His schtick, which is catnip for entrepreneurs, is that “history is leverage.” He’s Silicon Valley’s in-house monk who studies the entrepreneurs and business builders of history for the lessons that link their stories together. Importantly, Senra rarely strays into questions of morality. He’s only interested in finding alpha. He’s the nerd Rick Rubin.
Altman was given a layup to talk about how he became one of the leading figures of this grand project that by every measure is proving deeply unpopular with non-nerds. He couldn’t really articulate anything that drove him.
The problem for the leaders of the AI project is that people remember the social media era, when Zuckerberg peddled a narrative of a more open and connected world. I said on the last episode of PvA that social media is dead. Meta’s $17 billion settlement for addicting teens is a slap on the wrist for a company that generates $200 billion in revenue last year. Ever the opportunist – sensing a theme – Meta is trying to use the settlement as leverage against rivals. No use dwelling on the past when there are new commanding heights to conquer.
But wait a second, that’s not how it works. People understandably want to know who these people are, what they believe and how they want to remake the world. And over the past four years since ChatGPT ushered in this gold rush, they’ve failed to make much of an impression. Bill Gates, fresh off apologizing for palling around with Jeffrey Epstein, released a long essay that reiterated all the terrible stuff AI will likely bring forward while calling for a transnational regulatory regime. The long essay is a new CYA format. Nobody’s going to read it all because of the tech these guys created but the point is to have a record to absolve you from blame if things do go wrong. It’s no surprise there’s a book out with the excellent title, The Nerd Reich.
The All-In guys can sputter all they want about a CCP plot and blue-hair activists with septum rings, but that dog won’t hunt. The upside is the opposition will slow down this transition and give our politics time to be reactive. The idea that politicians would rush to proactively regulate was always a fantasy. The American system only changes under pressure.
I don’t know if this could have turned out any differently. People everywhere are unhappy with pretty much everything, all at once. And the AI story doesn’t have much for most people. It took Ben Thompson of all people to remind the nerdocrats that only nerds get that excited about productivity. Dario seems out of ideas for improving the public perception. He’s come up with: cure cancer. With AI propping up the economy, I have to think there’s a Plan B, right?
The insularity of Silicon Valley didn’t help. The unpopularity of what tech claims is a civilizational advance doesn’t speak great about the Go Direct strategy. Silicon Valley has spent the AI boom mostly talking to itself – and allowing a cast of cackling VCs to be its emissaries. Incredibly, Chamath Palihapitya – the growth guy from Facebook Chamath? – is lecturing Silicon Valley about losing the plot. The SPAC promoter bemoans greed. HBO has to bring back Silicon Valley the TV show.
I went on a mini-Senra kick this week. He’s an interesting character in the intensity he pours into his subject matter. He has no chill. He said during a friendly with Travis Kalanick that he doesn’t have any non-founder friends. Senra proves there is leverage in nerding out. He’s coiled up with unreleased energy during his conversations. He lurched forward during an interview with the Go Direct thesis originator Lulu Cheng Meservey in what she called “lock-in mode.”
He’s an example of a Stick Guy. The Stick Guy popped up on my timeline this week. He’s a guy who collects sticks. It’s an admittedly odd hobby, but this guy is passionate about it and delivers the goods with legitimately awesome sticks. People might make fun of him, but they’re forced to respect his dedication.
At the WSJ, Emma Camp is a star in the making as a free market economics nerd. She has a great video about why rent control is dumb and did another about why refrigerators are actually way better now. She’s refreshing in her nerdy good natured approach to dry subjects. She’s relatable.
This will become critical as information becomes more synthetic. The WSJ was at the center of the next chapter in sorting this all out when it published an op-ed by Stanley Druckenmiller that had the hallmarks of AI. The opinion piece itself was a shot at Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s bond market battles. Druckenmiller has an established reputation for not giving two shits as an old-school Wall Street BSD. He’s not out there doing TikToks or acting the fool on X like Bill Ackman. Stan was happy to cop to using AI to write the piece, saying it would be like doing math by hand instead of using a calculator. Axios is saying it’s now a “billionaire flex” to use AI for writing. It’s the new low talking.
The WSJ endorsed this approach. They had little choice. After all, they know that many of their contributed pieces from well-known people were not actually written by those people. Shocker, I know. I began my career at a speechwriting firm in Washington DC. I ghostwrote plenty of op-eds, letters to the editor, even Congressional floor speeches. We would sometimes run them in major newspapers with some ex-governor’s name on it for credibility. Everything is a hustle, but let’s not pretend it wasn’t always that way.
Most people will turn to AI for writing. Some because they’re busy. Some will claim they were “never good at writing.” And most will do it because it’s easier. A small group will be refuseniks. To be fair, Druckenmiller’s op-ed wasn’t what I would classify as AI slop. It had some of the annoying AI tendencies – “this wasn’t liquidity management, it was price management” – but it was an original if expected argument, even if it was produced with Claude or ChatGPT. That’s because the artifact matters less than Druckenmiller’s reputation.
That’s not the situation over on LinkedIn, where its “seems like AI slop” button was hit 1 million times in a three-week span. The only way out is to improve the slop.In that kind of environment, originality will become more scarce and therefore more valuable. Small businesses are marketing that they don’t use AI in marketing. Never doubt capitalism’s ability to assign value based on consumer preferences. I don’t think Dolly reaches her heights if she lost her accent and acted like she wasn’t from Sevier County.
TV advertising’s “major transformation”
Paul Jelinek, chief business officer at EX.CO, explains why he thinks agentic advertising hasn't fundamentally transformed the industry yet, how EX.CO's yield engine is now being ported to CTV and digital out-of-home, and why he believes CTV programmatic today looks like online video did eight years ago.
Thanks to EX.CO for underwriting this series
Although AI adoption is widespread, organizational maturity remains more measured. Just under one-third (30%) of respondents describe their organizations as advanced in AI readiness, while the largest share (44%) characterize themselves as moderately prepared, and more than one-fifth (21%) say they are still in the early stages of adoption.
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