And in contrast to the avalanche of slop we are currently enduring, the pre-commercialization era of Internet was wild, in a fun way. Yes, we had slop back then too, but it was naïve, gorgeous, hand-crafted slop.

Importantly, the dot-com reaction ranged from “wow this is cool and revolutionary” to, at worst, “ehh… I don’t get it, seems pointless?” No one would have booed someone for praising the good old “information superhighway” back in the day, but many might have scoffed.

For the GenAI, people just actively despise it. It amplifies slop-happy humans to insane degrees, the infrastructure build-out strains local grids and water. Even as a community comes out to say in unison they don’t want a datacenter, somehow community governments green light it anyway, over their objections. And so many people are swearing up and down it’ll get rid of jobs.

For a new graduate from an Arts and Humanities college especially… There’s like zero reason to cheer and only reason to boo.