Lately I’ve been blocking or unfollowing a bunch of my friends and loved ones on Instagram.
—But wait, why would you even do that? They’re your friends.—
Ah, indeed! A common mistake I made myself as well. I felt really conflicted about this. I love these people, I’m supposed to follow them!
But a profile is not a person.
Just because you like me (Pep, the human being), doesn’t mean you like my twitter profile (also called Pep, but not a human being).
In most cases, the 2 are linked of course. If you enjoy talking to me in person, the chances are higher that you’ll enjoy these emails and vice versa.
So why did I decide to block those profile?
Because the person and the profile were no longer linked that way.
It still had their face on it, but the writing was done by someone else (usually Chat-GPT or Claude).
Now, I don’t think it’s wrong to use AI for writing.
I think it’s a good thing that people who previously couldn’t make content can now generate it and grow their business. And I think it’s amazing that instead of having to read a fluffy book that repeats the same idea in 100 different ways, you can just ask an LLM to explain it.
It’s just that, when I read your stuff, I want to feel you in it. I want to hear your voice. Recognize your quirks. Love the little ways you use language that some might call imperfect and others charming.
What I don’t want is to read your stuff and feel something else talk about you or the things you’re interested in. To recognize the same cadence every other AI-generated profile has. To see my friend’s face with a perfectly crafted hook that doesn’t hook me because it doesn’t have their energy. To read about your transformational trip to Disneyland and see the same conclusions and arguments that Claude would come to if I told it about my transformational trip Disneyland.
Social media, to me, is a conversation. And what I want, is simply for the person to be in the conversation with me.
I’ve been pondering the impact of AI on human interactions quite a lot lately.
There’s a lot of good and a lot of a bad stuff and it’s truly fascinating.
For example, we are now able to have conversations with anyone from any language and culture, in a way that goes much deeper than direct translation. AI can help us understand manners of speech, obscure proverbs and bridge the difference in cultural context.
On the other hand, we have people asking LLMs to psychoanalyze someone they’re dating based purely on sharing their own interpretation of that person, actually believing what they read and having it steer their decisions.
And we have one of the most common use cases: Telling it what to reply to emails from your boss or texts from your lover.
Which is an absolutely wild change of societal standards if you think about it.
Because if 2 people matched on Tinder and are each asking AI what to respond, instead of having 2 people in a conversation, we have some kind of strange dildo-in-fleshlight situation.
Yes, all around us, there are conversations with no people in them.
But I’m not pondering this from a perspective of AI-doomerism.
I think that, much like I believe money and power don’t “change” people but amplifies who they already are, technology doesn’t change humanity but amplifies what it already does.
You see, before the invention of AI, we were already having a lot of conversations with no people in them.
Small talk is a great example.
It’s a polarizing topic because a lot of people despise it, but on the other side, a world without small talk would leave us vulnerable to a lot of harm.
If the cultural norm was to wear our heart on our sleeve wherever we go, that also means making it visible to any skilled manipulator or person with bad intentions.
Small talk is a ritual that helps us test the water. It helps us have some “empty conversation” during which we can get an impression of each other’s presence and energy before deciding whether we want to be more intimate with that person or not.
Similar to how a handshake is a ritual that allows us to demonstrate to strangers that we didn’t hide any knives inside our sleeves, and a toast is a ritual that demonstrates nobody is trying to poison each other up in here (because by toasting, we each spill a little of our drinks in each other’s cups).
Human interactions are full of such rituals.
Like the one where you both say sorry during small frictions like bumping into each other, to show mutual humility and dissolve the tension.
Or the one that goes “remember when…” and you both recite a shared memory to reinforce the solidity of the friendship even though you already know how it goes.
Perhaps my favorite example is the “escalating hospitality ritual”:
Host: Do you want coffee?
Guest: If you already have a pot brewing, sure, but you don’t need to make a pot just for me.
Host: Oh but I was just about to make one for myself, no worries at all.
Guest: Are you sure? Because I don’t want to be a burden.
(and so on)
The scripts of these rituals aren’t formalized anywhere. But they do exist. And there are so many that it’s common to spend years interacting without doing anything other than this.
So what’s the difference between having Chat-GPT tell you what to text, or having pre-existing social scripts tell you what talk about?
It’s just a new tool for the same instinct.
When we fear that the reply we’re about to send to our boss might rub them the wrong way, we shield ourselves from that vulnerability by putting an LLM between it.
When we fear that our content won’t lead to sales, we ask an LLM to write it in a way that (theoretically) would convert better.
When we fear that showing up fully from the get-go will make others judge us as weird, we put a little social script in between that makes us talk about the weather.
There’s a time and place for all of this, but the common thread is that these moments, we are having conversations with no people in them.
(Note that I’m not saying the people aren’t in the interaction of course, just not in the conversation aspect of it.)
Part of the reason many interactions can feel empty is when we are stuck in one of these social scripts and don’t know how to transition out of them (here’s an article specifically about how to move from small talk to deep conversation).
But it’s also worth noting that you can bypass the scripts entirely if you want to.
So why don’t we?
Why do we keep performing script conversations long after knowing each other?
Because demonstrating that we know which social rituals matter in which situation is in itself a ritual to create safety in relationship.
You see, I haven’t met many people—though they do exist—who don’t have profoundly weird aspects to their inner personality.
But as humans we must coordinate with each other to survive, so we create a set of shared social norms that our behavior all converges on.
By following those norms we show “you can trust that if you coordinate with me, things will unfold in a fairly predictable way” .
The reason people so often do show their weirdness to close friends, is because once a friendship has been established, this trust is present regardless of whether we follow social norms or not.
(As a side note: This is also why the least secure people often bully people for being weird. When we feel secure in life, we no longer need others to conform to the norms in order for us to trust.)
One way to be openly weird while also being accepted by everyone is to simply find ways to signal your trustworthiness or awareness of social norms.
A particular example I often cite is a time when I was negotiating payment for a concert for the band I was playing in.
The organizer opened the negotiations with:
“So how much do you guys charge? I propose you say a much higher number than is true. Then I’ll act offended and you can pretend to give me a painfully large discount and then we both feel like we won.”
A similar example would be:
Host: Do you want coffee?
Guest: I know I’m supposed to politely pretend I don’t need it but yes please, I’m dying lol. I like mine black.
But the most impactful way of replacing social scripts with your real feelings is while mingling.
Notice little moments when, say, at a party, you reach for the default questions:
- “So how did you meet (host)?”
- “What brought you to (city)?”
- “Have you tried the (appetizer) yet?”
Then check in with yourself: Did this question come from you or the script?
I find that the scripts often exist for a reason. I do want to tell people about the appetizer and share our delight of it. I am curious what brought them to the city.
If I ask those questions at times when they really arise for me, the conversation has me in it. But other times, I ask these same questions out of habit. I am not there. My words are merely performing the ritual.
Similarly, when someone asks me “What do you do?” I often give one of my stock answers. It answers the question but it didn’t come from me checking in with myself: “How would I describe it right now, in this moment?” It was a recital of something I said before.
Notice this difference. You can have entire conversations at parties without people in them.
And this is not because of the content of the conversations (as I mentioned, I often authentically do want to know the answer to small talk questions), it’s because of who came up with it.
What do you, in your heart of hearts, genuinely want to know about this person?
What do you, in your heart of hearts, genuinely want to share with them?
That’s the difference between an interaction with a human and one with an LLM. The LLM is arguably better at verbal conversation in many scenarios. But the human can feel things and express them.
It’s also the difference between small talk that bores and small talk that acts as foreplay. The former is an empty shell of scripted conversation, the latter is 2 people having fun playing a well-known game together and getting to know each other in the process.
What makes the difference is:
1) Bringing awareness to what’s happening inside you during a conversation. What brings you joy to talk about? Which questions feel invasive? Which ones feel exciting to answer? Which banter feels fun and which feels grating?
2) Tracking what makes the other person come alive. Which questions make their eyes light up? Ask more! Which answers make them close off? Slow down. Which topics lead to interesting interactions between you? What has you laughing together or relaxing around each other?
Practicing this is one of the easiest ways to bring more connection into your daily interactions without changing anything else.