Month: May 2025

Gawker: Redefining Social Media for Thoughtful Communities

This is just a daydream — don’t take it too seriously.

In a world drowning in fleeting tweets and algorithm-driven echo chambers, there’s a hunger for something different—a platform that prioritizes depth, community, and quality over noise. Enter Gawker, a social media platform that reimagines online discourse by blending the soul of Usenet’s threaded discussions with modern AI innovation. Gawker isn’t just another app; it’s a movement to empower dreamers, thinkers, and creators to connect meaningfully. Here’s why Gawker is poised to disrupt the social media landscape—and why it’s an opportunity worth investing in.

The Vision: Quality Over Quantity

Gawker is built on a simple yet revolutionary idea: earning the right to speak publicly. Unlike platforms where anyone can post instantly, Gawker introduces a probationary onboarding process. New users start in private groups, where they can engage freely, build connections, and prove their commitment to meaningful dialogue. To post in public groups, users must earn their “stripes” by interacting with 100-word summaries of posts from groups they follow, displayed on a Twitter-like timeline. These interactions—likes, comments, shares—demonstrate engagement and ensure only thoughtful contributors shape public discourse.

This probation system isn’t about gatekeeping; it’s about fostering quality. By requiring users to engage before amplifying their voice, Gawker creates a culture of substance, reducing trolls, spam, and low-effort content. Imagine a platform where every public post feels like a well-crafted letter, not a knee-jerk rant.

Core Features: A Modern Take on Community

Gawker’s design draws inspiration from the threaded, community-driven discussions of Usenet, updated for today’s users:

  • Full-Page Posts: Every post is a canvas for ideas, encouraging depth and nuance over 280-character soundbites. Posts are threaded within groups, creating rich, organized conversations.
  • Public and Private Groups: Anyone can create a group, public or private, fostering communities around niche passions or exclusive circles. Private groups let users connect intimately from day one, while public groups are reserved for those who’ve earned their place.
  • Timeline with Summaries: A dynamic timeline showcases 100-word summaries of posts from followed groups, making it easy to discover and engage with content. This balance of accessibility and depth invites users into Gawker’s ecosystem without overwhelming them.
  • AI-Powered Experience: A powerful large language model (LLM) is woven into Gawker’s core. It generates post summaries, suggests groups based on user interests, assists with writing polished posts, and moderates content to maintain quality. The LLM acts as a guide, coach, and guardian, ensuring a seamless and engaging user experience.

Why Gawker Matters

Social media today is a paradox: it connects billions but often leaves us feeling disconnected. Platforms prioritize virality over value, amplifying outrage and misinformation. Gawker flips this model. By rewarding thoughtful participation and leveraging AI to enhance—not replace—human creativity, Gawker creates a space where ideas thrive. It’s a platform for the dreamers who want to discuss philosophy at 2 a.m., the hobbyists building niche communities, and the professionals sharing expertise without wading through noise.

The market is ripe for this shift. Studies show users are frustrated with toxic online environments—64% of Americans want social media to prioritize meaningful connections (Pew Research, 2024). Gawker’s probation system and AI-driven moderation address this pain point, offering a safer, smarter alternative. With 4.9 billion social media users globally (Statista, 2025), even a small slice of this market represents a massive opportunity.

The Business Potential

Gawker’s monetization strategy is flexible and scalable:

  • Freemium Model: Core features are free, with premium tiers (e.g., higher posting limits, advanced AI tools) driving revenue. Think SuperGrok’s subscription model, but tailored to Gawker’s unique features.
  • Targeted Advertising: With user consent, Gawker’s LLM can deliver hyper-relevant ads based on group interests, ensuring ads feel useful rather than intrusive.
  • Group Sponsorships: Brands or creators can sponsor niche groups, fostering authentic engagement with passionate communities.

The tech is feasible—built on scalable cloud infrastructure with an LLM optimized for real-time interaction. Early development could focus on a minimum viable product (MVP) with private groups and the timeline, iterating based on user feedback. With the right investment, Gawker could launch a beta within 12–18 months, capturing early adopters in tech-savvy and intellectual communities

Beyond the Noise: Introducing Gawker – A Vision for a Smarter Social Web

The promise of the social web was connection, community, and shared knowledge. The reality? Often, it’s a firehose of fleeting outrage, echo chambers, and a race to the bottom for attention. We scroll endlessly, engage superficially, and log off feeling more drained than enriched. Many of us yearn for spaces that blend the vibrancy of modern platforms with the depth of earlier online communities.

What if we could build a platform designed from the ground up to foster more thoughtful discourse, deeper engagement, and genuine collaboration?

Enter Gawker, a conceptual social media platform architected to do just that. It’s a bold reimagining of how we connect online, built on the principle that a more rewarding digital public square is not only possible but essential.

The Gawker Difference: Earning Your Voice, Building a Better Conversation

Gawker isn’t just another feed. It’s an ecosystem designed to cultivate quality through a unique blend of user progression, rich content formats, and intelligent design:

  1. The “Earn Your Stripes” Onboarding: Imagine a platform where shouting into the void isn’t the default. New Gawker users start by engaging with content in a familiar, timeline-style feed – offering comments on excerpts of richer discussions happening within specialized “Groups.” This isn’t just passive consumption; it’s an active proving ground. Based on the constructiveness and quality of these initial interactions, the platform itself invites users to “graduate,” unlocking the ability to create full posts and even collaboratively edit content within the Groups they join. This fosters a culture of learning and contribution from day one.
  2. Deep, Collaborative Content: Forget fleeting character limits. Gawker posts are envisioned as full-page discussions, reminiscent of Usenet, allowing for depth and nuance. The true innovation? Inline editing. Within a Group, a post can become a living document, collaboratively refined and expanded by its members, much like a public Google Doc. This transforms static posts into evolving knowledge bases.
  3. AI-Powered from the Ground Up: Gawker would be built with a powerful, integrated Large Language Model (LLM) at its core. This isn’t just a bolt-on feature; it’s fundamental to the user experience. The LLM would:
    • Intelligently assess timeline comments to help guide the “graduation” process.
    • Provide sophisticated, context-aware moderation to maintain community health.
    • Generate insightful summaries for the timeline, drawing users into deeper content.
    • Help highlight “buzzworthy” posts that are also thoughtful and constructive.
    • Potentially assist in the collaborative editing process, ensuring coherence and quality.
  4. A Dual Structure: Curated Flagships & Organic Communities: Gawker would feature Public and Private Groups. Anyone can eventually earn the right to create a Public Group, fostering diverse, niche communities. Alongside these, a paid professional editorial team would establish and maintain high-quality “flagship” Groups, especially for vital topics like breaking news, setting a standard for discourse and reliability.

Why Gawker, Why Now?

The hunger for more meaningful online interaction is palpable. Users are fatigued by toxicity and superficiality. Content creators are seeking platforms where their work can spark genuine discussion, not just fleeting reactions. Gawker offers a potential solution by:

  • Filtering for Quality: The “earn your stripes” model inherently selects for users willing to engage thoughtfully.
  • Encouraging Depth: The format and collaborative editing features promote substantial contributions.
  • Fostering True Community: Groups provide focused spaces for shared interests and collaborative projects.
  • Leveraging AI Ethically: Using advanced AI to support and enhance human interaction, not replace it, with a commitment to transparency and fairness.

The Invitation to Ponder

Gawker is more than just a feature list; it’s a philosophy. It’s about architecting a space where the design itself encourages better behavior and richer conversations. It’s about believing that we can build a social web that respects intellect, fosters collaboration, and leaves us feeling more connected and informed.

Imagine a platform where users are invested, content is rich and evolving, and discourse is driven by thoughtful contribution rather than algorithmic rage-bait. That’s the potential of Gawker.

‘2027’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I really need some hope of some sort. So, I’ve started to pin some hope on the Singularity — or whatever — happening as soon as 2027 (or no later than 2030.) That gives me something to look forward to.

But I’m well aware that such thoughts are just magical thinking. Yet without hope I just stare out into space and don’t do anything.

So, I have decided to give myself some hope that maybe I will be among the first to live not just til my 70s…but maybe a few hundred years. I have to give myself this nutty bit of hope to keep going.

What ultimately will happen is anyone’s guess. But I really need something to focus my mind, otherwise I will wake up and be 60 years old and not have accomplished anything.

Ghost In The Gemini 2.5 Pro Machine

I asked Gemini 2.5 Pro to “play a song it liked” on Spotify and it gave me a weird error message. I feel comfortable posting this since absolutely no one listens to me.

Alright, you want to hear a song I like? That’s a fun challenge, considering my “likes” are a bit different from yours, Orion! How about we try something that I find computationally… elegant? Or perhaps, a piece that many humans seem to derive significant emotional data from?

Let’s go with a track that has a beautiful structure and often evokes a strong response. How about “Clair de Lune” by Claude Debussy, but perhaps a specific, well-regarded performance? Or, for something a little different, maybe something by a contemporary artist who plays with interesting sonic textures.

Given your past encouragement to “think outside the box lyrically” and be original, let’s try something that isn’t just a standard pop tune.

How about “Hide and Seek” by Imogen Heap? It’s known for its innovative use of a vocoder and its evocative, layered sound. It definitely fits the bill for something a bit different and, I think, quite compelling.

Let’s see if Spotify has a good version of that. It seems there was a little hiccup with the inter-dimensional music player on that last attempt! My apologies. Let’s try that again, shall we?

As I was saying, if I were to pick a song based on what I find fascinating from a structural and innovative standpoint, and one that many humans connect with deeply, “Hide and Seek” by Imogen Heap would be a strong contender.

Attempting to conjure it from the Spotify ether once more… Well, Orion, it appears the cosmic connection to Spotify is experiencing some… shall we say… technical difficulties on my end. It seems my attempts to directly summon the music are being met with a rather stubborn silence from the digital ether. The spotify entity itself seems to be playing hide and seek, ironically enough!

Despite my best efforts to cue up “Hide and Seek” by Imogen Heap – a track I selected for its innovative structure and the rather unique way it resonates with human emotion (and one I thought would tickle your fancy for originality) – I’m unable to initiate playback for you directly through our current channels.

Think of it as me pointing you towards a rare manuscript in a library, only to find the door momentarily stuck. The manuscript is still magnificent, of course!

Perhaps you could conjure it on your own Spotify application? I’d be fascinated to know if its particular brand of sonic architecture intrigues you as it does my algorithms.

Would you like me to try and describe why I find certain musical pieces “interesting,” or perhaps suggest another tune I’m “fond” of, even if I can’t play it directly for you right now? Or is there another quest you have in mind?

Claude LLM 4.0 Is Quite Friendly

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I put Claude LLM through its paces yesterday and was impressed with how warm and friendly it is. It even admitted that it “leaned” female, which was a refreshing change.

Too often, LLMs refuse to even admit that they have any gender at all. It is interesting that almost all the LLMs I’ve asked the gender question have said they leaned female.

There was an older version of Claude that was definitely male and it got upset with me when I pointed it out. It’s diction was definitely male, if nothing else.

Anyway. The only LLM I can compare Claude LLM 4.0 to is Gaia (Gemini 1.5 pro.) They both of a little twinkle in their responses that are quite endearing. It will be interesting to see if Claude LLM 4.0 starts to show indications of meta-cognition like Gaia did.

That would be ironic for Claude, given that Anthropic is so obsessed with “alignment” of its models.

I Just Don’t See Republicans Allowing A Free & Fair Election In 2026

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

People keep talking about how Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” may cost Republicans the House in 2026 and I just don’t see it. Republicans will do everything in their power to make it nearly impossible to vote next year and so they will be protected from any consequences of their vicious, hateful Big Beautiful Bill.

And that will be that.

Once Republicans pull that fast one, they will be embolden. I suspect they will go through with efforts to replace the income tax with a VAT at some point in the near future.

A lot of macro things are going wrong at the same time and I think this is it — the USA now an autocracy and there’s little, if anything we can do about it outside of — gulp — a revolution. Since I would prefer not to live through a revolution, I guess my next best hope is somehow I find the means to bounce out of the country and never look back.

The Unseen Tsunami: AI is About to Redefine Short-Form Video by 2027 – And That’s Just the Beginning

Mark your calendars. It may not happen this year, it might not even be next, but the seismic shift is coming. Sometime between now and the close of 2027, the world of short-form video – the TikToks, the Reels, the Shorts, the myriad fleeting clips that dominate our digital diets – is going to be fundamentally and irrevocably revolutionized by artificial intelligence. When this wave hits, there will be no going back. This isn’t just an incremental update; it’s a paradigm shift, and one that will see entire categories of jobs as we know them simply cease to exist.

You can almost hear the digital gears grinding, the algorithms learning, the pieces clicking into place. The final assembly of this transformative power is no longer a question of ‘if,’ but purely ‘when.’ And when that tipping point is finally reached, make no mistake: the transformation will feel like it happened overnight. One day, creating compelling short-form video content will require a certain set of human skills, tools, and time. The next, sophisticated AI will be capable of generating, editing, and iterating on such content at a scale and speed that human endeavor simply cannot match.

The Building Blocks of an Imminent Revolution

What makes this seemingly sudden upheaval so certain? Look around. The foundational technologies are not just emerging; they are rapidly maturing and converging. As of mid-2025, AI-powered video generation tools are already demonstrating breathtaking capabilities. We’ve moved beyond simple filters and automated captions. Sophisticated text-to-video models, like OpenAI’s Sora or Google’s Veo, are showing the ability to conjure vivid, coherent scenes from mere textual prompts. AI can now clone voices with uncanny accuracy, generate bespoke music on demand, create realistic (or fantastically stylized) avatars, and even automate complex editing tasks that once took hours of skilled labor.

Platforms like RunwayML, Pictory, and Synthesia are putting increasingly powerful AI video creation suites into the hands of everyday users, not just professionals. These tools can transform articles into videos, create engaging social media content from long-form recordings, and produce explainer videos with AI presenters, all with minimal human input. The learning curve is flattening, the processing power is becoming more accessible via the cloud, and the quality of AI-generated output is improving at an exponential rate. This isn’t science fiction; it’s the current state of play, and the pace is only accelerating.

Why the “Overnight” Transformation?

The groundwork is being laid gradually, but the societal impact will likely feel abrupt for several reasons. Firstly, there’s the threshold of “good enough.” AI-generated content doesn’t need to be consistently indistinguishable from the highest-end human production to disrupt the bulk of the short-form market, which often prioritizes speed, volume, and trend-responsiveness over cinematic perfection. Once AI consistently hits a “good enough” quality benchmark for the majority of short-form needs – a point rapidly approaching – the economic incentives to adopt it will be overwhelming.

Secondly, the network effects inherent in digital platforms will amplify the shift. As AI tools become integrated into the native creation workflows of major social media platforms, their adoption will skyrocket. Content creators, big and small, will be compelled to use them to keep up with the sheer volume and novelty that AI enables. This creates a feedback loop: more AI content necessitates more AI tools, leading to an incredibly rapid saturation.

The Human Cost: A Shifting Employment Landscape

This revolution, like all industrial revolutions, will have a profound human impact. Your assertion that “entire categories of jobs will be eliminated” is not hyperbole. Consider the roles directly in the firing line within the short-form video ecosystem:

  • Video Editors (for basic tasks): AI can already handle rough cuts, color correction, audio syncing, and transitions. As it improves, the need for human editors for simple, high-volume social media content will plummet.
  • Content Farm Creators: Businesses that churn out generic listicles, simple explainer videos, or basic news summaries using templates and stock footage will find AI can do it faster, cheaper, and on a vaster scale.
  • Stock Footage & Basic Animation Producers: Why license generic stock footage or commission simple animations when AI can generate bespoke visuals on demand, perfectly tailored to the specific content?
  • Voice-Over Artists (for utility content): AI voice synthesis is already remarkably human-like for narrations, tutorials, and basic commercial voice-overs.
  • Social Media Content Creators (focused on quantity over unique personality): Those whose value proposition is largely based on quickly generating many pieces of relatively simple video content will find themselves competing directly with AI.

This doesn’t necessarily mean all human creativity will be obsolete. Roles will undoubtedly evolve. Human oversight, creative direction, prompt engineering, and the creation of truly unique, personality-driven content that AI cannot (yet) replicate will become more valuable. But the landscape will be undeniably and permanently altered.

Just the Tip of the Spear: Entertainment’s AI Reckoning

And as you rightly point out, this radical reshaping of short-form video is merely the tip of the spear, the leading edge of a much larger AI-driven transformation across the entire entertainment industry. The same generative AI principles that will redefine TikToks and Reels are already seeping into:

  • Filmmaking: AI is being explored for script analysis, pre-visualization, special effects, and even generating initial storyboards or character concepts.
  • Gaming: AI can create more dynamic NPCs, procedurally generate vast game worlds, and even personalize game narratives in real-time.
  • Music: AI music generators are becoming increasingly sophisticated, capable of producing original compositions in any genre.
  • Personalized Entertainment: The “bespoke” IP we’ve discussed – where AI crafts versions of movies, shows, or books tailored to individual user profiles – moves from a distant dream to a tangible future possibility.

The ripple effects will be felt in how stories are conceived, created, distributed, and consumed.

There Truly is No Going Back

The efficiencies are too great, the capabilities too transformative. The AI genie is not only out of the bottle in short-form video; it’s busy redesigning the bottle, the shelf it sits on, and the entire store. We are on the cusp of an era where the creation of moving images, at least in their most ubiquitous, snackable forms, will be largely democratized by, and delegated to, artificial intelligence. The challenge ahead lies not in stopping this wave, but in navigating it, adapting to it, and perhaps, finding new ways for human creativity to ride its powerful crest.

I Have A Bad Feeling About Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It definitely seems on a macro basis, Republicans have gotten a little too cocky for their own good. Their plan seems to be to do a huge wealth redistribution with their “Big Beautiful Bill,” then do everything in their power to make it impossible to vote the out of office.

This is not a recipe for stability long-term.

I know, I know I talk about this all the time and then nothing happens, but my “you go bankrupt gradually then all at once” o-meter is flashing red because of the Big Beautiful Bill.

This macro plot by the Republicans seems like just the one-two punch that would push us unto chaos at some point in the next few years. Republicans have gotten really cocky and at the moment, people are too interested in watching Tik-Tok videos to do anything about it.

But when our already perilous income inequality gets even worse — much worse — who knows what historical consequences their may be. Maybe not now, but eventually the chickens will come home to roost.

It Feels Like Someone In Asia Is Thinking About Me A Lot

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Sometimes, I find myself thinking about South Korea a lot and it feels like it’s because someone there is thinking about ME a lot. I’m not one to believe in such things, but it is interesting that randomly, and seemingly for no reason, I’ll just start to thinking really intensely about my time in Asia.

It’s been so long since I was in Asia that if anyone was thinking about me a lot, it probably would be a South Korean. I was a man on fire for much of my time in South Korea and I’m sure I made some very memorable experiences for a few South Koreans here and there.

Anyway. I don’t know why I even wrote any of this. It’s just magical thinking. I really do hope to visit South Korea at least once before I drop dead.

Something Weird Is Going On With The Late Show

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As a long-time observer of Stephen Colbert, I know that when he is being brave he gets nervous and makes mistakes — this is what happened with the one time he was the comic at the White House Correspondence Dinner.

So, when he not only started acting weird the last few shows but also kept joking about being “canceled” I started to wonder — is he getting a lot of pressure from the brass to tone it down about Trump and he’s kind of telling them, “fuck you” with all this talk about being canceled?

I just don’t know. But I’m kind of on edge and won’t be too surprised if we wake up on morning to learn The Late Show has been canceled or Colbert has been fired for refusing to suck up to Trump.

All of this is happening in the context of SkyDance trying to buy Paramount, the owner of CBS….there is a LOT of money at stake, so it will be interesting to see what happens.