Jennifer Mueller

I’ve been watching w much amusement the recent trend of companies running from ai-produced content bc it turns out folks aren’t interested. It turns out ai, being an algorithm designed to spit out configurations of letters in similar patterns to the way literate humans spit out configurations of letters, can’t write anything that anyone wants to read. It also turns out that, like many hack human writers, ai has latched onto a goodly number of tics that render its writing instantly recognizable and therefore avoidable. It’s amusing to me bc I’ve watched the SEO/content marketing “industry” develop since its infancy, and I’ve seen the focus shift from good content to content that’s specifically designed to match specific searches, which is to say that I’ve seen, relatively quickly in the grand scheme of things, what happens when an industry eats its own tail. Folks search to find information that answers their question, not to find tangentially related products and services. In 2026, most folks have the Amazon app on their phone. They’re not confused abt how to find a product if that’s what they’re looking for. And they keep reading based on how the actual writing flows, not based on how it looks. If each sentence keeps pulling you forward to read the next, you’re never scrolling to see how long it is. Folks used to read whole novels in one sitting—they are not now suddenly squeamish abt reading five paragraphs of text. The trend of having “paragraphs” be no more than a brief sentence, no more than 2-3 lines of text on a mobile screen, is a way to trick ppl into reading more of your bad writing bc they assume it’s short. It’s never short, and all that white space between paragraphs means it takes longer to read bc your eyes have to move more. If you’re in the content business, you want readers. Not folks who will buy tangentially related stuff by clicking a link and leaving, but folks who will get lost in and engage w your content, who will share it w others. Now, most content a reader could get lost in like that is behind a paywall, making it unreadable and unsharable for the bulk of folks who might wander onto your site, rendering it useless. The rest of the content on the internet is pure marketing fluff produced by an industry more interested in exploiting than informing. Why am I bothering to share this on a forum for capitalist propaganda? Bc when you shed the suit, you’re still human. It’s time to start acting like one.

I unleashed my latest writing venture, Weaponized Empathy, on Monday. Click the link to read and subscribe: https://lnkd.in/eiwcaGhr

Tomorrow, I’m officially launching my substack, Weaponized Empathy. The title comes from the interview highlighted in this meme. The billionaire class is an enemy of the ppl (if you’re not quite w me on that don’t worry you will be) and the enemy just showed their hand. The richest man in the world just told y’all they were terrified of empathy, and y’all still sitting around wondering wtf to do. Come along w me bc why the hell not. That’s my pitch. You have nothing to lose, except maybe money, but that’s your choice and we’ll get to that later. Weaponized empathy is a war of attrition and I want all y’all in my mfing army. If you’re wondering what you should be doing rn and you’re feeling like you should be doing something, the thing you should be doing is reading my substack. I’ll be putting up fresh content every day. I imagine this project as something of a garden. All of the pieces are interconnected to each other in different ways so you can go down rabbit holes of your choosing. Most are essays, some are fiction, you’ll get some poetry, some humor, basically all the written entertainment and enlightenment your little heart desires, in daily doses, for free. That’s right, I’m not putting a fucking thing behind a paywall bc I think paywalls are shitty and part of the reason we are where we are today tbh. I’m a good writer, researcher, and thinker—these are my strengths. I’m putting those strengths to work for y’all bc this is the best way I can serve the people rn. I don’t really care abt money either but the capitalist society in which I live demands that I use it to buy things that fulfill my basic needs, so there are subscription tiers. There’s even a “bestie” tier, bc Substack wanted me to call it “founding member” and that felt weird. I won’t unfriend you or look at you sideways if you don’t subscribe and nobody gets more content if they do. I’d rather have readers. If you subscribe, it enables me to write more and do more for the community, but you’re not hurting me in any way if you don’t bc I’m gonna do it anyway.