329: Does Claude Have Charisma?
When we started this show, the charismatic influencers we covered had identifiable tactics of hard-selling, finding pain points, using disorganized attachment strategies like cult leaders do, to scare followers with sometimes real, sometimes fictitious stories that only they could understand and help solve.
Beyond the patterns shared by supplement hawkers, alien channelers, and New Age enema healers, each had something unique: a style, a manner of cadence, a particular intensity of intrusive eye contact. Are these not embodied, somatic skills that will outlast the AI jobs apocalypse? Can the chat bots really displace the guru economy?
We explore how we may be losing this precious resource to the brutal extractivism of our tech overlords.
Show Notes
A Dozen Misguided Influencers Spread Most of the Anti-Vaccination Content on Social Media
Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart — Nicholas Carr
