Hype or Foundation?
The current wave of excitement around artificial intelligence feels familiar to anyone who’s weathered a tech boom or two. Failed tech booms are something of a rite of passage at this point— crypto, NFTs, VR Headsets and AR gadgets all flashed their promises across our collective screens and, for most, settled quietly back into the niche they probably belonged in.
Much like the initial fervor surrounding other world-changing innovations that ultimately fell short of their sky-high expectations, the newest one in a long line of failures appears to be AI which has spread all over the internet. In creative spaces, particularly the predominantly online entertainment-related content creation space, I often hear people lamenting, “I can’t wait for this [AI] bubble to pop”.
And to a degree, I get it. People who have grown up on the internet, have watched several of these failed techs that were going to “revolutionize the space” come and go, having failed to live up to the hype. The deluge of low effort, AI generated content has flooded those spaces. And even worse, if you have seen any ads on social media platforms, every low-effort and half-formed idea is being upholstered with a shiny “AI” tag and shoved into your face in search of a buck or a bit of attention. If folks are exhausted and have learned to be skeptical of the next big thing, I don’t blame them.
And for the record, I do think AI is currently in a bubble. But I also think it is the next big thing –- and it’s going to permanently rewire the fabric of how we relate, create, and consume—sometimes for the better, sometimes absolutely not. Those two
thoughts aren’t contradictory. If anything, the bubble is a direct result of the technology being too fundamental to simply “go away.” To dig into that, though, let’s back up to the Dot Com Bubble.
Reflecting on Past Bubbles: The Dot Com Era
To be honest, I didn’t live through the Dot Com Bubble directly—I was four when it popped around the year 2000. What I grew up with were its ripples. The internet, once a wild experiment, had quietly become the backbone of daily life by the time I was old enough to care about web browsers or email accounts. Everything I know comes from listening to my elders, digging through articles, watching documentaries, and piecing together what it must have been like to witness the first wave of a world-changing innovation.
During the late 1990s, conviction over the internet being the next big thing was absolute—and people were correct, though it didn’t help most of them. Between 1995 and 2000, venture capital investment in internet companies experienced a five-fold increase, peaking in March 2000. When the bubble burst in 2000-2001, the NASDAQ lost nearly 80 % of its value, and roughly half of all dotcom companies failed within the first few years.
The initial influx of ideas ranged wildly. Some were genuinely innovative—people with no previous avenue for outreach were able to capitalize on unique ideas that leveraged the new technology. But there was also a staggering amount of overvalued, overhyped garbage. Pets.com spent $300 million and famously collapsed nine months after its IPO. Webvan burned through $800 million trying to revolutionize grocery delivery before declaring bankruptcy. Kozmo. com promised free one-hour delivery of virtually anything with no minimum order—an unsustainable business model that predictably imploded.
The crash came suddenly, leaving digital debris everywhere. Not everyone made it, but the world that emerged— one I call home—was revolutionized by the winners and shaped by the lessons of those who didn’t survive. Amazon, eBay, and Google all weathered the storm and became the foundation of modern digital
commerce and information access.
After the Bubble: Imagining a Post-AI World
The main takeaway from the Dot Com Bubble is this: many people saw the tides changing, but let hype and fervor override sound judgment. We’re seeing the same proliferation of ideas now. Just as the internet revolutionized business and creative spaces, we’re witnessing an influx of AI applications—some transformative, some useless, and plenty of overvalued, overhyped trash.
But think back to the rising stars of the internet age and how they’ve completely changed society. I grew up watching niche websites become mainstays in American culture. YouTube, founded in 2005, now has over 2.5 billion monthly users. Reddit, launched the same year, has become a primary news source for millions—a 2025 Pew Research study found that a large majority of U.S. adults, 86 % , get their news from the internet, including 56 % who do so often. These platforms emerged from the post-bubble landscape and fundamentally altered how we communicate, learn, and entertain ourselves.
Post-AI bubble, what will stand the test? What will survive the bust? How can you position yourself to take advantage of the current boom? I’ll address this more at the end, but the pattern suggests we’re in for both consolidation and opportunity.
Cautious Pessimism: Learning from the Past
After the Dot Com Bubble, new tech stars took surprisingly little time to consolidate into the current tech giants that dominate the American economy and associated political interests—much like their predecessors, the original Blue Chip corporations. By 2010, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple had become the new power brokers. That’s likely the trajectory for post-AI bubble winners as well.
But that’s not to say the “little guy” can’t secure wins. Small businesses, while certainly challenged in the postinternet age, still managed to find footholds in the changing landscape. Etsy sellers, You-Tube creators, and independent software developers built sustainable careers by adapting to new tools and platforms. With AI, there are genuinely equalizing forces at work. Open-source technology has democratized access—models like Llama, Stable Diffusion, and various AI frameworks are free to download and use. This wasn’t true in the early internet era, where infrastructure costs were prohibitive for most individuals.
My call to action for creatives and entrepreneurs alike: experiment relentlessly. Learn what you can. Think critically and figure out what parts of this field are genuinely valuable and what parts are overhyped trash. Don’t fall behind—there were many businesses that refused to learn or even touch the digital space until they found themselves so far behind the curve that catching up became impossible. Blockbuster’s refusal to take Netflix seriously is the classic cautionary tale.
But here’s the critical warning: don’t lose touch with the real world. Don’t let optimization for algorithms replace human judgment. Which brings me to the growing problem of AI slop.
Grappling with “AI Slop”: Where Effort still Matters
“AI slop” refers to the low-quality, mass-produced content flooding the internet— generic blog posts, soulless social media captions, repetitive images, and recycled ideas with no original thought. It’s cheap to produce and clutters every platform. The temptation to lean into this is real, especially when you see engagement metrics rewarding quantity over quality.
But here’s what the data is starting to show: audiences are getting better at detecting AI slop, and they’re tuning it out. Despite the influx of purely AI-generated content, most of it gains no traction in Google’s SEO rankings—the majority, or 8 1. 9 % of top-ranking pages analyzed, offered a blend of AI and human input, while only 4. 6 % were fully AI-generated (making fully AI-generated content, underrepresented in terms of Google search results). Social platforms are experimenting with ways to label and differentiate authentic voices from synthetic content. Many subreddits are implementing rules to reduce pure AI submissions in sites like Reddit. Platforms like Pinterest and YouTube (@are)rolling out changes to require creators to disclose when AI
was heavily used in content creation. Many users are celebrating these curation options as we collectively adjust to the new flood of mostly low-effort drivel.
What will survive this phase is work that demonstrates genuine effort, expertise, and humanity. AI should be a tool that enhances your unique perspective, not a replacement for having one. Use it to handle tedious tasks, brainstorm ideas, or accelerate research—but the final product needs your fingerprints on it. Readers, viewers, and customers can feel the difference between content created with AI and content merely generated by it.
The businesses and creators who will thrive postbubble are those who use AI to amplify their strengths while maintaining what made them valuable in the first place: original insight, genuine connection, and irreplaceable expertise.
