Day 123 six-second beats · about 3 min · The problem is being seen.

I lied and said I was in rehab because content creator felt worse.

Okay, it’s like creator bootcamp day one and I think it’s going really well,

which is humiliating because I do not want to be the kind of person who says creator

bootcamp day one and means it.

We’re on this sprawling Berkeley campus and everyone is smart and charismatic and dressed like they’re about

to found a monastery with seed funding. We get room and board and food and mentors and

AI people and vibes, and the catch is that we have to post one shortform video every

day. Fifteen seconds minimum. Miss a day, you’re out.

Which is insane because I have spent my whole life trying not to become content,

and now my housing situation depends on whether I can turn myself into a post by dinner.

I keep having this authenticity-panic where I’m like, am I in AI safety because I care about

extinction, or because extinction gives me a morally serious backdrop against which to be weird online?

And I know that sounds bad, but at least I’m asking.

Most people are just putting the doom graph behind their face and calling it a thesis.

The embarrassing thing is that someone recognized me and I panicked and said I was in rehab.

Not because rehab is embarrassing. Rehab would be dignified. Rehab has structure. Rehab has a narrative.

But saying I’m here to become a content creator made me want to leave my body.

And yet I love slop. I really do. I believe in slop.

Slop lets me be someone else for twenty-three seconds. Slop is like trying on a personality in

bad lighting and realizing it fits better than your actual one.

So to the best of my recollection, I’m not a content creator.

I’m an artist using the phone.

Which again, is not a phone. It’s a camera.