Marketing Went Off the Rails. I Stayed at My Desk.

Today's menu, any hour you check: someone talking straight into the camera, good lighting, influencer energy, explaining something that could fit in two sentences, stretched into five minutes for engagement. Multiply that by twenty on every feed, every day, and you have an accurate picture of the internet in 2026.

It seems that in 2026 every profession now has two specialties: the one you actually studied for, and the one where you make content about it. Farmers don't depend on the weather as much as founders depend on the algorithm, except the weather at least warns you before it turns.

I have nothing against the camera. I have a problem with the math.

A lawyer, a doctor, a developer, or a guesthouse owner who spent a decade becoming an expert in their field loses, say, two hours a day filming themselves. Two hours they could have spent drafting a contract, making a diagnosis, checking a technical spec, or simply resting enough not to make a real mistake the next day.

I have a theory I can't prove, which is exactly why I like it so much. I think the whole "post every day" obsession was invented by the people who sell courses on how to post every day. If everyone found out at once that it isn't actually required, half that industry would close by Monday morning.

Good news: every trend dies, this one included. You don't have to wait for it to die to get out of it.

We've also reached the fascinating point where people write content for algorithms, and algorithms show it to other people who don't feel like reading it. The internet is starting to resemble two AI systems having a conversation about a product neither of them will ever buy, the kind of scene you've already seen in a Black Mirror episode, except now it runs in real time, on everyone's phone.

History changes the scenery. Not the script.

In seventeenth century Holland, a single rare tulip bulb sold for the price of a house in the middle of town. People sold land to buy flowers that hadn't even bloomed yet. The market collapsed within a week, and everyone left holding a bulb was left holding, quite literally, a very expensive onion.

In the nineties, plush toys stuffed with plastic pellets were sold as an investment. People with serious jobs bought dozens of them and kept them untouched in boxes, convinced they'd pay for their kids' college someday. Today most of them are worth less than the box they sit in.

A few years ago, a digital image with no real utility sold for millions, because someone decided its uniqueness on a blockchain made it valuable. The market collapsed just as fast as it rose, and the people who bought at the top were left with a file anyone can copy for free with a single right click.

Three different eras, the same story: enthusiasm with no foundation, followed by a very real bill for whoever believed it too quickly.

If TikTok disappeared tomorrow, what's actually left of everything you built there? Short answer: your reputation, but only if it existed somewhere outside the app that just vanished. A Reel lives, with luck, two days. A well written page can bring in clients for years, without ever asking for a like.

People confuse visibility with trust. They are not the same thing, and the difference becomes obvious the exact day a platform you built everything on decides, without asking you, to change its rules or disappear.

Algorithms are tenants. Your website is the property. Invest in what stays yours, not in what can be taken away by an update.

Don't build a business that dies the moment you stop posting. Build one that keeps getting found, by people and by the AI systems now helping people search, even while you're on vacation, off the grid, the way a real vacation is supposed to be.

I'm not chasing attention. I'm building trust.

P.S. If you're reading this while editing tomorrow's video, that's fine, finish it. But maybe tomorrow you edit for twenty minutes less and write for twenty minutes more, on the page that actually sells for you.