crypto dabbler 🧪 & snark extraordinaire / web3 marketer @distractivexyz / all glorious opinions are mine
Boston, MA
Joined September 2010
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I accidentally stress-tested AI customer support last week.
I wasn’t trying to; I just needed to cancel a subscription.
2 AI bots. 1 FTC report. 3 days. Zero resolution.
A thread on what happens when there are no more humans left to help. 🧵
crypto: "mass adoption! digital money is the future!"
also crypto: "okay but not like, institutional adoption"
Katie Butler retweeted
The best thing ANY engineer/programmer can do right now is learn how to become a top 1% marketer
For 20 years, the engineer was the most important person in the room. They had the rarest skill. They could build the thing. Everyone else had to wait for them.
Claude Mythos and the models coming after it are ending that era
The new scarcity is the person who can look at a human being and understand exactly what they need to hear to take action. What makes someone click buy at 11pm. What makes someone tell a friend. What makes a stranger feel like a product was built specifically for them
That is a completely different muscle than writing code or architecting systems
Study why TBPN built a brand silicon valley is obsessed with. Learn why the headline is 80 cents of every dollar. Figure out why one subject line gets 40% open rates and the next one gets ignored
Most engineers have never trained this muscle. They are world class at clearly defined problems. Marketing is the opposite. Fuzzy. Emotional. Irrational.
The engineer who trains it becomes the most dangerous person in any room
The CTO/CMO combo is the most valuable human in tech right now and almost nobody has both
Computer Science school in 2026 should basically be part technical knowledge/part marketing knowledge
I really think that...
The best thing any engineer can do right now is learn how to become a top 1% marketer
The Vanity Fair article was the most fun I've had reading about crypto since CoinTelegraph's Jay Pegs Auto Mart/Kia Sedona article
We've outsourced customer support to AI that can't actually resolve anything — it can only answer FAQs and loop... Which chat bots were already able to do pre-AI, btw.
When it fails, there's no human backstop. There's just... nothing.
And the hidden cost gets quietly transferred to your credit card company, your time, and your sanity.
the definition of PMF that has always stuck with me is:
is this a problem
that [audience]
is willing to PAY to solve
->NOW<-
if the answer is anything except yes, start again
Katie Butler retweeted
McDonald's CEO has been posting talking-head & review content for the last 4 years
Most have averaged around 20-40k views, nothing crazy
A lot of executives would have seen that as a waste of time and given up
But then BOOM, one video gets 14 million views, almost 500x his average view count
Completely dominates the social media landscape for a couple weeks
Probably drove tens of thousands of people to eat McDonalds for the first time in ages
Big lesson in consistency there
AI should be a weapon for moving faster. why do i keep getting the feeling it's going to be a new excuse to demand a ridiculously high output from marketing on a shoestring budget?
we've gotta stop underfunding growth.
does anyone else remember migrating from dedicated hosting to AWS and it felt like sorcery? cheaper, faster, no more 'oopsies' at the office to take our web server offline.
then the $30k/mo bills starting showing up.
it feels like we're in the early euphoria with AI right now. it's cheap, fast, and magicaaaal.
but once we're wholly dependent on Anthropic and OpenAI, they're gonna jack up the rates.