zohran’s nonbinary praetorians
plus geo, the wing, robocop dogs and fitbit for farts
*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•by your best friend erin griffith•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•
EGTttHoB™ is a semi-regular dispatch of stuff happening start-up land that interests me. Thanks for coming along.
Here’s a story I wrote about marketing. Random topic for me, but basically, SEO is DEAD, long live GEO. In this regime, vibey branding is OUT, detailed information to feed the chatbots is IN.
🤖 🤖 🤖 Chatbots are the new influencers to woo 🤖 🤖 🤖
in other news
Three pieces getting lots of social media screenshots and groupchat debate this week.
A Wired piece about tech’s “gay mafia” which has some truly wild art and some amusing blind quotes. It hints that there is a dark side to gay men mixing business and pleasure, and indeed such things have been whispered, gossiped and memed about for years. It doesn’t wind up delivering much evidence. The bar for a story like this feels high, given how easily it could come off as homophobic. The art tho, whew!
A Harpers essay connecting the nihilism of Gen Z with AI rationalists and San Francisco’s money boom. I was nervous about this one because it starts out with two cliches of Silicon Valley parachute journalism: tech billboards and homeless people. But the piece delivers, articulating why it seems like the closer AI comes to taking over the world, the more we seem to elevate substance-free hype and meaningless noise. A few killer lines I highlighted while reading:
AI can’t function without instructions from humans, but an increasing number of humans seem incapable of functioning without AI.
As far as I could tell, being a highly agentic individual had less to do with actually doing things and more to do with constantly chasing attention online.
Everything was a means to an end, a way of fortifying his ability to do whatever he wanted in the world. But there was a great sucking void where the end ought to be.
And one of many spittake quotes from the Twitter chaos artist Donald Boat:
“I just want Zohran’s nonbinary praetorians to march across the country and put all these guys in cuffs.”
Lastly a New Yorker profile of Anthropic that I have had open in a tab for over a week but not yet read because it is very very long (72 min if you listen to it!. The consensus, though, seems to be that it is GOOD, and it really landed at a moment of Anthropic white hotness, so.
2016
Ever wonder what happened to beautifully decorated offices of The Wing, that physical embodiment of late 2010s feminist optimism packed with curvy jewel-toned velvet chairs, pale pink walls and whimsical Vernon Panton flowerpot lights?
In San Francisco, I learned this week, The Wing’s old spot is now an event space for Perplexity. Some of the furniture is gone and the labels of the phone booth rooms (named for female cartoon characters like Patti Mayonnaise and Carmen Sandiego if I recall), have been removed. An incongruous foosball or pool table has been added.
But little else about the space, from the entry to the cafe to the lights to the floor-to-ceiling library shelves packed with books exclusively by and about women, has changed. I felt a tinge of surreality as I listened to three guys explain the future of agentic web browsers at a press event. The heyday of The Wing wasn’t that long ago, but given the triumphant return of Silicon Valley bro culture of recent years, it certainly feels like another lifetime. I guess it would have been even stranger if they had remade it into a hyper-masc man cave.
Important Business Matters
Startup everyone’s into: The sequel the OpenAI and Anthropic Superbowl ad feud is out. It’s a 22 second will-they-won’t-they buddy comedy.
Startup everyone’s over: Pinterest is drowning in AI slop :(
Reason to go on living: Is Prince Andrew’s ‘Scream’ ultimate royal portrait?
Reason to take up residence under your weighted blanket: The robot dogs are cops.
Latest sideeye: Zuck’s entourage wore Meta’s camera glasses into court and the judge did NOT like it.
Latest shock: OpenAI employees read alarming chats about a mass shooter and chose not to report him before he acted.
Latest thing the kids are into: Stretching the definition of ARR to ever greater levels of absurdity.
Latest thing the olds are into: Fitbit for farts.
an ai image of this newsletter:
zohran’s nonbinary praetorians handcuffing (with friendship bracelets and apple watches?) the same guy in 4 different shirts, plus 2 more guys
*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•the end•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•
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