Reach out and say thanks

More and more people I deeply respect and have learned a lot from over the years feel like they are speaking into a void, to the point where they are losing motivation to continue making content.

And I know it’s not only people making content, either. While some people are embracing the changes that are currently happening within our industry, many feel things have changed and that their jobs are no longer what they signed up for, leading them to lose the passion for the web they once had.

Seeing talented people lose motivation bums me the hell out.

We are finally getting the features we need for creativity to thrive on the web, and instead, we have more content than ever being produced, with so much of it simply piles of barely curated AI slop.

It’s great that Google can put out a Modern Web Guidance to help an LLM stop spewing out old techniques, but that doesn’t actually make those tools better, it just means that now it won’t be able to solve the issue with the inline-size of a component that it cooked up, instead of the width 🫠.

But we can do more!

We keep being told we can use these tools to do more, but why is more always the goal? Oh, right, because the giant corporations that are pushing these have to keep making more to drive up their valuations.

More products.

More output.

More users.

What’s that, you care about quality? What a silly concept. More is clearly better.

There are startups in these spaces as well, but they propogate the same nonsense as they hope to be purchased by said giant corporations.

It’s not always the big boys, or those hoping to get some of that big boy money though. There are some creatives that I’ve followed for a long time and deeply respect that have fallen down this path as well. Instead of focusing on a single quality product, what about making a lot of products quickly and cheaply. You can make more money from 50 products in a day than from 1 product in a year!

Don’t waste your time trying to learn how to do things, just prompt your way there!

What happens when no one knows what they’re doing?

As more and more people who create educational content burn out or simply no longer see a point in what they are doing, what then?

There has always been some level of churn with educational content creators, whether that’s blog post writers or people who make videos. Over time, their interests change, or they land new jobs and simply don’t have the free time to continue.

For a long time, new people would come and fill their shoes, but will that continue to happen now? With the current state of things, I’m honestly not that sure… unless you want to be talking about AI. For those who are already making content and trying to keep their numbers up, the solution is to pivot to AI afterall.

And I think there is a place for education around them. They are a tool that, for better or for worse, look like they aren’t about to go away. And yes, talented people are out there doing amazing things with them, which I don’t think should be dismissed (though the signs of an impending bubble aren’t going away).

As far as I’m concerned, though, we need more baseline education now than ever. More and more people are using AI in one capacity or another, but if they are going to start to use these new tools in meaningful ways, they need some baseline knowledge first.

AI tools are improving all the time, but as much as the companies that are creating them want us to believe they’re essentially replacing junior-level employees across so many industries, that’s only when they are being driven by people with senior-level knowledge and skills. Without those skills, you don’t see the mistakes and problems they make, and things go off the rails without you even knowing it.

Like the machine revolution a few centuries ago, things are changing. Up until now, we’ve essentially hand-crafted websites. We’ve had templates and frameworks that have essentially been the same as the simple hand tools of the labour-intensive jobs in the past. That is changing now, with new automated tools at our disposal… one big difference, though, is that if you use a circular saw without any training, you might take your hand off, while if you vibe-code an app without any, the biggest risk is probably your customers’ data.

But if the people who are trying to provide that baseline education stop educating, then what happens?

Maybe the new wave of people making content around using AI are filling in that void? But even there, there is a gap. The base level is flooded with AI-generated content on how to use AI-generated apps to create AI-generated content (sigh), and the high-level content is for people who already know what they are doing.

So again, what happens when those teaching the baseline skills we need are gone? Even if “well, we can learn it from AI” is the answer, who’s going to provide the data for those to scrape?

That’s one reason I have no ambition to stop. I enjoy what I do, and even if views, and income are down, as long as it’s viable, I will keep it up.

I did feel a nice motivation reading Mat Marquis’ recent article as well. In it, he talks about why he’s writing more than ever, with this rather long quote from it because the entire paragraph is great:

I’m doing this because I also want to take a swipe at these garbage machines, and this is the only infinitesimally small way that I think I could: by helping people to learn and improve out of spite for the people who’ve foisted these machines upon us, and would see the world burn to fuel them. I want us to want more — more than “press the button to generate the thing,” more than a life of “junior-level.” I want to chip at the wall they’re trying to build between you and “more.” I want new voices sharing what they know and what they’re learning — they’re doing so against unfathomable odds, in a climate far more difficult than things were back when I first clawed my way here.

I think some people want to fight the way Mat is, but are also so burnt out and exhausted by everything that’s going on, and I get why.

Let someone know they’re appreciated

Now, more than ever, I think the best thing you can do is reach out to someone who makes content that you appreciate, and let them know about it.

Don’t worry about me. I have a big audience compared to many others, and I know there are a lot people reading this and watching my videos who appreciate what I do. Go reach out to others, whether it’s just a comment on a blog post or video, or send them an email or a DM. Something, anything, to let them know there are still real people out there who value what they are doing, and help give them the motivation they need to keep on making it.

And as a bit of a different type of thanks, I am going to say thanks to Mat for also saying it’s okay to use em-dashes 😅. I used to use them and stopped as AI-writing went over the top with them because I didn’t want people to think my writing was AI-generated, but they’re too good to let go of.