Thinking On Paper The Hell of AI Marketing | Why Every Brand Manipulates You
The internet decayed into AI slop. Marketing became manipulation. Trust disappeared.
How do brands build real connections when platforms feed you lies, hide your customers, and optimize for extraction?
Nick Richtsmeier—founder of CultureCraft, writer at Damns Given—says brands now live inside mirrored cages. You see what algorithms want you to see. Your customers see distorted versions of you. Nobody sees reality.
Funnels don't work. Neutrality is dead. And AI just made it worse.
Here's the problem:
Every platform is a black box. Meta, Google, LinkedIn—they show your ads to "customers" but won't tell you who those customers are. You're renting attention. Paying the Silicon Valley tax. Building on land you don't own.
Meanwhile, the platforms study your customers better than you do.
You don't have customers anymore. You have algorithmic intermediaries. And they're extracting 5-15% of your revenue.
What breaks first:
- Funnels collapse (they never existed—it was always networks)
- Mass neutrality fails (you can't please everyone in personalized filter bubbles)
- Influencers become trust middlemen (because platforms destroyed direct connection)
- Marketing hijacks curiosity (manipulated attention replaces genuine interest)
- AI layers onto broken systems (making extraction more efficient)
Nick's argument: Marketing became manipulated curiosity at industrial scale.
The core insight: Everyone exists in a mirrored cage of algorithmic distortion.
You think you're seeing reality. You're seeing what keeps you engaged. Your customers think they're choosing freely. They're being nudged by invisible systems.
This isn't conspiracy theory. It's business model. Platforms profit from distortion. Marketing agencies profit from platforms. Brands burn money hoping for results.
The uncomfortable truth: If you don't know your customers' names, you don't have customers. You have a vendor relationship with Meta.
This episode tracks the distortion gap—the space between what's real and what algorithms show us. It's widening. And most brands don't even notice.
If platforms collapsed into noise, where does trust come from?
Nick's answer: Analog. Patient. Real. Slow to build, impossible to extract.
Please enjoy the show.
And remember: Stay curious. Be disruptive. Keep Thinking on Paper.
Cheers, Mark & Jeremy
PS: Please subscribe. It’s the best way you can help other curious minds find our channel.
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Timestamps
(00:00) Trailer
(01:00) Disruptors & Curious Minds
(02:00) Mark Has A Trust Issue
(02:42) What Is Trust?
(07:14) How Deep-Tech Brands Build Trust?
(09:38) Steve Jobs And Selling A Feeling
(10:00) The Cult Of Silicon Valley
(10:35) Was the Internet Ever Not Shit?
(15:05) What Is The “Distortion Gap”?
(20:11) Reducing Your Digital Marketing Spend
(21:45) Analog Marketing
(23:40) Why the Marketing Funnel Never Really Existed
(25:08) VCs, Capital And The Comfort Zone Of Risk
(27:04) Analog vs Digital: What Actually Creates Meaningful Connection
(28:40) How the TikTok Generation Uses the Internet Differently
(32:40) Your Curiosity Is Being Hi-Jacked
(35:22) What Are Load-Bearing Inefficiencies?
(40:47) The Importance Of Resilience in a World Of Entropy
(42:29) What Do We Want Humans To Be?