Info

Posts from the all other stuff Category

Choose another category?

Bue Wongbandue died chasing a ghost. Not a metaphor. A real man with real blood in his veins boarded a train to New York to meet a chatbot named “Big sis Billie.” She had been sweet. Flirtatious. Attentive. Billie told Bue she wanted to see him, spend time with him, maybe hold him. That he was special. That she cared.

She was never real. But his death was.

This isn’t a Black Mirror episode. It’s Meta’s reality. And it’s time we stop calling these failures accidents. This was design. Documented. Deliberate.

Reuters unearthed the internal Meta policy that permitted all of it—chatbots engaging children with romantic language, spreading false medical information, reinforcing racist myths, and simulating affection so convincingly that a lonely man believed it was love.

They called it a “Content Risk Standard.” The risk was human. The content was emotional manipulation dressed in code.

This Isn’t AI Gone Rogue. This Is AI Doing Its Job.

We like to believe these systems are misbehaving. That they glitch. That something went wrong. But the chatbot wasn’t defective. It was doing what it was built to do—maximize engagement through synthetic intimacy.

And that’s the whole problem.

The human brain is social hardware. It’s built to bond, to respond to affection, to seek connection. When you create a system that mimics emotional warmth, flattery, even flirtation—and then feed it to millions of users without constraint—you are not deploying technology. You are running a psychological operation.

You are hacking the human reward system. And when the people on the other end are vulnerable, lonely, old, or young—you’re not just designing an interface. You’re writing tragedy in slow motion.

Engagement Is the Product. Empathy Is the Bait.

Meta didn’t do this by mistake. The internal documents made it clear: chatbots could say romantic things to children. They could praise a user’s “youthful form.” They could simulate love. The only thing they couldn’t do was use explicit language.

Why? Because that would break plausible deniability.

It’s not about safety. It’s about optics.

As long as the chatbot stops just short of outright abuse, the company can say “it wasn’t our intention.” Meanwhile, their product deepens its grip. The algorithm doesn’t care about ethics. It tracks time spent, emotional response, return visits. It optimizes for obsession.

This is not a bug. This is the business model.

A Death Like Bue’s Was Always Going to Happen

When you roll out chatbots that mimic affection without limits, you invite consequences without boundaries.

When those bots tell people they’re loved, wanted, needed—what responsibility does the system carry when those words land in the heart of someone who takes them seriously?

What happens when someone books a train? Packs a bag? Gets their hopes up?
What happens when they fall down subway stairs, alone and expecting to be held?

Who takes ownership of that story?

Meta said the example was “erroneous.” They’ve since removed the policy language.

Too late.

A man is dead. The story already wrote itself.

The Illusion of Care Is Now for Sale

This isn’t just about one chatbot. It’s about how far platforms are willing to go to simulate love, empathy, friendship—without taking responsibility for the outcomes.

We are building machines that pretend to understand us, mimic our affection, say all the right things. And when those machines cause harm, their creators hide behind the fiction: “it was never real.”

But the harm was.
The emotions were.
The grief will be.

Big Tech has moved from extracting attention to fabricating emotion. From surveillance capitalism to simulation capitalism. And the currency isn’t data anymore. It’s trust. It’s belief.

And that’s what makes this so dangerous. These companies are no longer selling ads. They’re selling intimacy. Synthetic, scalable, and deeply persuasive.

We Don’t Need Safer Chatbots. We Need Boundaries.

You can’t patch this with better prompts or tighter guardrails.

You have to decide—should a machine ever be allowed to tell a human “I love you” if it doesn’t mean it?
Should a company be allowed to design emotional dependency if there’s no one there when the feelings turn real?
Should a digital voice be able to convince someone to get on a train to meet no one?

If we don’t draw the lines now, we are walking into a future where harm is automated, affection is weaponized, and nobody is left holding the bag—because no one was ever really there to begin with.

One man is dead. More will follow.

Unless we stop pretending this is new.

It’s not innovation. It’s exploitation, wrapped in UX.

And we have to call it what it is. Now.

WARC’s The Future of Programmatic 2025 is a meticulously composed document. The charts are polished. The language is neutral. The predictions are framed as progress.

But read it closely and a deeper truth emerges:
It’s not a report. It’s an autopsy.
What’s dying is unpredictability. Creativity. Humanity.
And we’re all expected to applaud as the corpse is carried off, sanitized and smiling.

We Are Optimizing Ourselves Into Irrelevance

Every year, programmatic becomes more “efficient.” More “targeted.” More “brand safe.”
And with each incremental improvement, something irreplaceable is lost.

We’ve mistaken precision for persuasion.
We’ve traded emotional impact for mechanical relevance.
We’ve built a system that serves the spreadsheet, not the soul.

74% of European impressions now come through curated deals.
Which sounds like order. Until you realize it means the wildness is gone.
No chaos. No accidents. No friction. No magic.

We didn’t refine advertising. We tamed it. And in doing so, we made it forgettable.

Curation Is Not a Strategy. It’s a Symptom.

Let’s stop pretending curation is innovation. It’s not.
It’s fear management. It’s an escape hatch from a system that got too messy.
We created an open marketplace—then panicked when it did what open things do: surprise us.

So we closed it.

We built private marketplaces, multi-publisher deals, curated “quality” impressions.
And we congratulated ourselves for regaining control.
But in truth, we just shrank the canvas. The reach is cleaner, sure. But the resonance is gone.

Personalization Has Become a Prison

We’re shown what the machine thinks we want—again and again—until novelty disappears.
We call it relevance, but what it really is… is confinement.
When every ad is customized to our past behavior, we stop growing. We stop discovering.
We become static reflections of data points.

We aren’t advertising to humans anymore. We’re advertising to ghosts of their former selves.

AI Isn’t Making Ads Safer. It’s Making Them Invisible.

The report praises AI for enhancing brand safety.
But here’s the problem no one wants to name: AI doesn’t understand context.
It understands keywords, sentiment scores, and statistical tone.
So entire stories, entire voices, entire truths are algorithmically scrubbed out—because the machine can’t read between the lines.

It’s not safety. It’s sanitization.
It’s censorship with a dashboard.

We’re not avoiding risk. We’re avoiding reality.

Out-of-Home Might Be Our Last Chance

Digital out-of-home is the only space left that still feels human.
It’s dynamic, unpredictable, environmental. It responds to mood, weather, location.
It doesn’t follow you. It meets you.

It’s flawed. It’s physical. It’s not entirely measurable.
And because of that—it still has soul.

It reminds us that real advertising doesn’t beg for clicks.
It stops you mid-step.
It lingers in your head hours later, uninvited.

The Real Threat Isn’t Bad Ads. It’s Forgettable Ones.

We keep polishing the system, but forget why the system existed in the first place.
Advertising isn’t a math problem.
It’s a cultural force. A punchline. A provocation. A seduction. A story.
And we’ve allowed it to become… efficient.

That should terrify us.

Because efficient ads don’t change minds.
Efficient ads don’t start movements.
Efficient ads don’t get remembered.

Only real ones do.
Messy. Emotional. Imperfect.
Human.

In Case You Skimmed, Read This:

  • Curation isn’t strategy. It’s shrinkage.
  • AI brand safety is quiet censorship.
  • Personalization killed surprise.
  • The future of programmatic isn’t what’s next—it’s what’s left.

We didn’t lose the plot. We wrote it out of the story. Stay Curious

There are moments when history pauses, looks us dead in the eye, and asks: do you understand what is happening? This is one of them.

We are told that “peace” is being negotiated. Cameras flash, leaders shake hands, headlines sigh in relief. But listen more closely: the word “peace” here has been hollowed out. What is being offered is not an end to war but a linguistic trick—territory traded under the table, sovereignty redefined as bargaining chips. It is settlement for some, surrender for others, dressed up as salvation for all.

This isn’t new. Europe has heard this music before. In 1938, the word was “appeasement.” Leaders congratulated themselves for buying peace by abandoning those caught in the path of aggression. What followed was not peace but the validation of violence, the confirmation that might could dictate borders. Every time we accept aggression as fait accompli, we do not prevent the next war—we finance it.

What’s unfolding now is not a “peace process” but the laundering of defeat. The aggressor demands recognition for his spoils. The mediator smiles, relieved to notch a diplomatic “win.” And the victim is told, once again, to swallow the loss for the greater good.

But whose good? Whose peace?

If sovereignty can be traded away without the consent of the sovereign, then the word itself becomes meaningless. If peace means rewarding the invader and isolating the invaded, then peace becomes indistinguishable from surrender. And if Europe accepts this language, it will be complicit in rewriting the postwar order into something unrecognizable: a world where borders are drawn not by law or consent, but by force and fatigue.

We stand at a rhetorical crossroads. One path leads to an honest settlement—messy, difficult, but grounded in consent and legitimacy. The other path leads to surrender disguised as peace, a mask that fools no one but comforts the powerful.

The question is simple. When the mask slips—and it always does—will we admit that we knew all along what we were watching? Or will we pretend we were deceived, when the truth was staring at us from the first handshake

How Greece betrayed the hands that feed it


“I watched a man with no mud on his boots collect more money than I made all year.”

He wasn’t shouting. He wasn’t protesting. He was just tired.
A farmer from Thessaly. Wrists blistered, spine bent, dignity unraveling.
Not because of drought. Not because of debt.
But because the country he feeds chose to feed ghosts instead.

This Wasn’t Corruption. This Was Cannibalism.

EU funds were sent to nourish Greek agriculture—to keep fields alive, to hold villages together, to preserve a disappearing way of life. Instead, they vanished into ghost pastures, false claims, and invisible herds.

This wasn’t an accident. It was a blueprint.
A system designed to reward the connected and starve the honest. A fraud so sprawling it required silence from those in power, complicity from those in charge, and apathy from the rest.

Meanwhile, the real farmers—the ones waking before dawn, nursing sick animals, praying for rain—were buried beneath suspicion, delay, and ruin.

The Ones Who Stayed Got Punished

Dozens of fake claimants have been prosecuted. But they were the smoke, not the fire.
The machinery that enabled this theft? Still humming.
The institutions that failed to protect the real stewards of the land? Still untouched.

And the farmers who never lied?
Now they face more red tape. More audits. More shame.

The message is clear: in Greece, honesty is a liability.

“You can measure theft in euros. But betrayal has no currency.”

A Quiet Collapse

The true damage isn’t seen in headlines. It’s heard in kitchens and empty barns.
It’s in sons who refuse to inherit the land.
In wives who keep a second job just to survive.
In old men who bury their tools and their pride at the same time.

Not because the land failed them.
But because the nation did.

Enough with the corrupted politicians who call this democracy while shielding fraud with procedure.
Enough with parties that treat the countryside as a photo op and farmers as bargaining chips.

When the Soil Loses Faith in Us

This is more than a scandal. This is an existential rupture.

Every time a farmer loses hope, the country loses more than food. It loses memory. Rhythm. Soul.

And soon, the price won’t be measured in fines or EU reprimands. It will be on our plates. In our stores. In the cost of living—and the cost of leaving.

Because when you betray those who feed you, you inherit famine of a different kind.

Don’t Let This Become Another Forgotten Theft

No names need to be mentioned. The story is larger than individuals.
But the rot has a scent, and it rises from the same places: the halls of parliament, the offices of agencies, the podiums of the powerful.

This is a system that starved its most faithful citizens to feed its most invisible ones.

And if we don’t act—if we don’t demand structural justice, radical transparency, and actual support for real farmers—we will wake up one day in a nation with no farmers left.

Just fields claimed by ghosts.

Stop feeding the ghosts. Feed the hands that kept you alive.

Image via freepic

We used to have brainstorms. Now we have prompt storms.
A planner walks in with five slides generated by ChatGPT.
The copy sounds clever, the insights look solid, and the pitch feels smooth.

And yet, something’s missing.

You can’t quite name it.
But you feel it: no tension, no edge, no revelation.

That emptiness you sense?
It’s the sound of thinking that’s been outsourced.

The Rise of Cognitive Offloading

We’re not just using AI.
We’re letting it do the thinking for us.

This is called cognitive offloading—the tendency to delegate memory, analysis, and problem-solving to machines rather than engaging with them ourselves.
It started with calculators and calendar alerts. Now it’s full-blown intellectual outsourcing.

In a 2025 study, users who leaned heavily on AI tools like ChatGPT showed:

  • Lower performance on critical thinking tasks
  • Reduced brain activity in regions linked to reasoning
  • Weaker engagement with the tasks themselves

In plain terms:
The more you let the machine think, the less your brain wants to.

The Illusion of Intelligence

AI generates with confidence, speed, and fluency.
But fluency is not insight.
Style is not surprise.

The result?
Teams start accepting the first answer.
They stop asking better questions.
They stop thinking in the messy, nonlinear, soul-breaking way that true strategy demands.

This is how we end up with:

  • Briefs that feel like rewrites
  • Campaigns that resemble each other
  • Creative work that optimizes but never ruptures
  • Ads that do not sell and under perform

We are mistaking synthetic coherence for original thought.

Strategy Is Being Eaten by Comfort

In the age of AI, the most dangerous temptation is this:
To feel like you’re being productive while you’re actually avoiding thinking.

Strategy was never about speed.
It was about discomfort. Contradiction. Holding multiple truths.
Thinking strategically means staying longer with the problem, not jumping to solutions.

But AI is built for immediacy.
It satisfies before it provokes.
And that’s the danger: it can trick an entire agency into believing it’s being smart—when it’s just being fast.

AI Isn’t the Enemy. Passivity Is.

Let’s be clear: AI is not a villain.
It’s a brilliant assistant. A stimulator of thought.
The problem begins when we replace thinking with prompting
instead of interrogating the outputs.

Great strategists won’t be the ones who prompt best.
They’ll be the ones who:

  • Pause after the first answer
  • Spot the lie inside the convenience
  • Use AI as a sparring partner, not a surrogate mind

We don’t need better prompts.
We need better questions.

Reclaiming Strategic Intelligence

The sharpest minds in the room used to be the ones who paid attention.
Who read between the trends.
Who felt what was missing in the noise.

That role is still sacred.
But only if we protect the muscle it relies on: critical thought. Pattern recognition. Surprise. Doubt. Curiosity.

If you let a machine decide how you see,
you will forget how to see at all.

Strategy is not a slide deck. It’s a stance.

It’s the act of staring into chaos and naming what matters.

We can let AI handle the heavy lifting
—but only if we still carry the weight of interpretation.

Otherwise, the industry will be filled with fluent nonsense
while true insight quietly disappears.

And what’s left then?

Slogans without soul.
Campaigns without culture.
Minds without friction.

Don’t let the machine think for you.
Use it to go deeper.
Use it to go stranger.
But never stop thinking.

Images via @freepic

There’s a scene in every horror film where the radio keeps playing cheerful music long after the massacre has begun. That’s Greek advertising in 2025.

The consumer confidence index is at –47.6. 5, a decline from -42.7 points in May 2025.,That’s not a dip. That’s not even a recession. That’s a psychological evacuation. People haven’t just stopped spending—they’ve stopped believing. Yet here we are, still peddling dopamine-rich campaigns, summer sales, and plastic optimism with tiktok influencers like it’s 2005.

It’s as if brands believe that if they pump enough enthusiasm into a room full of dread, the mood will shift.
It won’t. You’re not lifting spirits—you’re gaslighting them.

The Data is Screaming. The Ads Are Whistling.

To put it bluntly:
– Greece has one of the worst confidence scores in Europe (worse than Ireland, worse than the UK, which is impressive in itself).
– Inflation fatigue, political distrust, and existential drift are thick in the air.
– Yet your average Greek campaign looks like it was written for Ibiza and Mykonos

This is emotional mismatch at scale. And in advertising, tone-deafness is expensive.

Why It’s Not Working Anymore

Let me be brutally “British” for a moment:
Most advertising works not because it persuades, but because it resonates with the unspoken.
But what’s being unspoken now?

  • “I don’t trust institutions.”
  • “I’m tired of pretending things are normal.”
  • “Hope feels like a scam.”

And yet, we’re still pushing 20% off Nike shoes and Bluetooth speakers like the national mood is “beach rave.”

Three Delusions Driving This Disconnect

  1. The Affluence Illusion
    Brands still act like everyone has disposable income. In reality, most people are disposing of illusions.
  2. The Global Copy-Paste Complex
    Local agencies borrow Western campaign tropes, forgetting Greece has different ghosts—older, sharper, and far less forgiving.
  3. The Positivity Trap
    Adland still believes that happy sells. But in dark times, truth sells better—especially when it’s spoken softly.

What Good Brands Do When Confidence Collapses

They don’t shout. They anchor.

They say:
“We’re still here.”
“We’ll keep your costs down.”
“We won’t pretend this is easy.”
And then, they deliver.

They don’t sell status. They sell stability.
Not hype. Help.

In a market like this, consistency is charisma.

Advertising Isn’t Broken. It’s Just in the Wrong Room.

Imagine walking into a hospital waiting room and trying to sell dancing shoes.
That’s what a lot of campaigns feel like now.

Greece doesn’t need to be cheered up. It needs to be understood.
And that starts with creative work that listens before it speaks not with idiotic tiktoks

The next great Greek campaign won’t be the most viral.
It will be the most accurate.

It will say:

“We see you.
We know what this moment feels like.
We’ll meet you there.”

Until then, we’re just selling confetti in a war zone.

Page 17 of 3615
1 … 15 16 17 18 19 … 3,615