A submit about AI blew up this week. Like, large time. How do I do know? Even my dad was sending me emails about it. This was no peculiar viral AI stunt. This was mid-2010s Buzzfeed-exploding-watermelon-on-Fb ranges of on-line mindshare. A giant a part of the skilled mainstream media ecosystem has been freaking out about this submit ever since. So my mind did a mini-Tim and Eric Superior Present supernova once I found that the writer of this viral AI submit was the identical man who tried to get everybody hyped a couple of genAI Tom Clancy slop fever dream sport final yr.
The submit in query was titled “Something Big Is Happening.” It acquired over 100k likes and 75 million impressions in accordance with X’s completely correct engagement trackers. It was written by AI with the assistance of Matt Shumer, a man on-line behind totally-not-made-up corporations just like the “direct to consumer sports lifestyle brand” FURI, “groundbreaking medical virtual reality” healthcare supplier Visos, and the “applied AI company building the most advanced autocomplete tools in the world” utilizing different corporations’ expertise, referred to as OthersideAI.
“Think back to February 2020,” begins Shumer’s viral AI submit. “If you were paying close attention, you might have noticed a few people talking about a virus spreading overseas. But most of us weren’t paying close attention.” It proceeds to speak about how most individuals have been fully caught off-guard by the once-in-a-century pandemic. Fools! It proceeds to argue that an important many are equally unprepared for what’s taking place with the speedy tempo of advancing AI tech.
https://t.co/7CXcLtc0GC pic.twitter.com/KxQSoOZecL
— Megan Fritts (@freganmitts) February 11, 2026
It begins by speaking about AI changing coders and ends with a thought experiment about new international locations showing in a single day through which everyone seems to be smarter than a Nobel Laureate. The vibe is someplace between the existential panic of Ebenezer Scrooge being proven his grave by the Ghost of Christmas Future and a frantic, smiling Ron Popeil attempting to promote rotisserie ovens inside a hen home. Don’t get left behind! Resign your AI skepticism earlier than it’s too late! Change into a Nobel Laureate for simply 4 straightforward funds of $29.95 a month!
This broke a lot of people’s brains. Fights broke out across social media about how journalists have to take off their Luddite blinders and stop ragging on genAI on a regular basis. “AI CEO warns AI’s disruption will be ‘much bigger’ than COVID,” declared Business Insider. “AI insiders are sounding the alarm,” trumpeted Axios. “The biggest talk among the AI crowd Wednesday was entrepreneur Matt Shumer’s post comparing this moment to the eve of the pandemic,” it reported. “It went mega-viral, gathering 56 million views in 36 hours, as he laid out the risks of AI fundamentally reshaping our jobs and lives.”
Axios co-founder Jim VandeHei sounded his personal alarm with a double siren emoji. “In 30 years of journalism, I’ve never witnessed a bigger gap between the most consequential story – insane AI advancements and investment – and Washington and mainstream media attention…shocking # of people think AI is clunky AI of mid-2025,” he wrote on X. All of this explosive nervousness unleashed by what was primarily a type of mid-aughts chain letter emails your aunt whom you hadn’t spoken to in years used to flood your inbox with.
AI video games are going to be wonderful
(sound on) pic.twitter.com/66aOdWJr4Y
— Matt Shumer (@mattshumer_) October 23, 2025
Clearly, all of those folks have been unfamiliar with Shumer’s previous work, however we at Kotaku covered it last October: an AI online game prototype educated on nightmare gasoline. “AI games are going to be amazing (sound on),” he posted on October 23. What the footage confirmed was an on-rails shooter through which all the things from the bullets to the enemies flickered in and across the logic of physics and linear time. The principle gimmick is that “the game” would pause at discrete factors to allow you to select a immediate, after which instantly hallucinate a brand new part of melting 720p PS4 footage for “players” to ostensibly navigate by means of. It was evocative and terrifying and rapidly ratio’d for sucking.
That is the man who desires you to get your grandma a one-way ticket to Gas Town earlier than her social safety will get become crypto kitties by a rogue Anthropic vending machine AI or one thing. May tens of hundreds of retweets and tens of millions of views actually be flawed? Absolutely the self-perpetuating velocity of algorithmic engagement bait would by no means lead us astray, simply as AI hyped by corporations that may need a massive government bailout if their wildest guarantees don’t come true would by no means lie. That goes in opposition to the primary rule of robotics or one thing, proper?
The actual motive AI slop man went viral is as a result of secretly everyone seems to be afraid that the bottom is slipping out from below them, they usually’ll as soon as once more be swept away by forces past their management. Will it’s the hollowing out of democracy and the rise of authoritarian fascism? Will it’s a whole reshaping of the economic system by a chatbot that flirts with you whereas attempting to upsell you on sponsored search outcomes? Can AI secretly be the way in which you lastly empower your self to unyoke from a damaged political system and a Ok-shaped economic system? Or will it’s the way in which tech giants cement their stranglehold over a weakened and demoralized populace?
“The only thing Big Tech is selling us is their own unprocessed trauma back to us,” Ryan Broderick writes at Garbage Day. “It’s not a revolution. It’s a comfort blanket for a managerial class that still can’t fathom that all their tech and wealth couldn’t protect them from the pandemic.” I believe it’s one thing extra self-interested: the worry of a platform shift that can destroy Silicon Valley’s present monopolies. Microsoft, Meta, and Google are so freaked out about changing into the following IBM or Yahoo that they’re prepared to guess the home on a future fully reshaped by expertise they management as a result of being flawed about that’s cheaper than being the final to determine it out.
All I can say with confidence is that the AI slop sport man positive as shit has no particular perception into what’s coming subsequent.
