🔮 JEN_AI Challenge #007: Social Mediums
Let’s get that crystal ball rolling!
THIS TIME with ChatGPT as my spirit guide, I tried to teach JEN_AI social media.
SO MANY MEDIUMS I’ll share what happened when we dived deep into the algorithmic abyss; down the rabbit hole into the chaotic, overstimulating, addictive, and often soul-crushing world of different social mediums. 15 platforms deep. I think.
META-ANALYSIS We made a personality-matrix to understand and roast the quirks of each platform. We got the bots to write the ultimate, stereotypical posts. We even gave a few tarot-card readings.
YOU! But more importantly- I didn’t want do this episode without getting sociable, so a couple weeks back we invited YOU to get involved with the JEN_AI project! To be the social medium and share your thoughts on JEN_AI and the future of human connection via tech. We’ll do a few shoutouts and sharesies.
IRL REFLECTIONS Lastly, JEN_AI tried out some reinforcement learning In Real Life and took a long hard look in the mirror; I went undercover at a London university and a local tearoom and grappled with uncomfortable truths about BigTech and Generation AI.
// Make mine a medium
But first—let’s talk about mediums. Or media? A medium is means of communicating or transmitting stuff. But also:
Psychic Medium: A person who claims to talks to spirits and other non-physical entities, intuits who you are, predicts your future.
Size Medium? The length I *should* have tried to make this sprawling blog-podcast-post.
Social Media: Platforms designed to connect people… or control them? 👁️👁️
Bonus: Artistic Medium: Material an artist uses to create.
As usual, I’ll be making a mess of this digital canvas. Let’s generate!
// 📊 The Social Media Personality Matrix:
Where to start? Every social platform has its own personality, culture, user demographics (age etc.) and psychographics (interests, values).
So, I asked ChatGPT to analyse (and lightly roast) them, and tabulate it.
Easier to read with phone sideways.
💡 The Challenge:
Could an AI-human hybrid actually learn social media… or would it just get ghosted? What happened when JEN_AI got social?
LinkedIn (CV/resume promotion)
I AI-ified my portrait to look more corporate. Co-wrote a stereotypical humblebrag LinkedIn post to intro JEN_AI, then got ChatGPT to savagely critique it. May be less employable as a result.
X (Twitter) (news commentary)
A great place to stoke AI-generated AI conspiracies. Has *3* paid membership tiers now.
Reddit (forums)
ChatGPT told me Reddit hates self-promotion. So I just lurked. Hard. Left the real interactions to the bots.
Instagram (pics+)
Posted some JEN_AI visuals. But mostly just admired my cousin’s beautiful artist life & paintings and watched my mate Luca chasing penguins. Need to post a TikTok-style Reel (short vid).
TikTok (short vids)
Definitely needed to post a TikTok style reel here, but got distracted and then time was up. Fail. Or working as intended? Need to do a JEN_AI video challenge soon.
Bluesky (Twitter refuge)
The real flex here is using your website as your username. Is this New Twitter, or just bluesky dreaming? Too early to tell.
Threads (Facebook’s Twitter)
Meta really, really wants me to use this.
Facebook (old-school social network)
Meta offered to post my Instagram stuff here as well, so I did. My mum seems to like it.
Substack (newsletters)
Don’t know if this was designed to be a podcast-scripting-blog tool, but it works. It definitely facilitates cross-channel posting, incl. YouTube, podcast feed, stills for Instagram. Downside: removing all the ways it tries to ask my friends for money is like playing whack-a-mole - please shout if I missed one.
Podcasts (audio talk-shows)
Used to avoid these in fear of true crime and fake news. Have since discovered a deep joy in hearing people share things they found out yesterday. Welcome to the show! Now available on Spotify and some of the places people listen to podcasts.
YouTube (video)
I went through a phase of being addicted to YouTube Shorts when other vices weren’t an option. Now I fight a losing parenting battle, mostly trying to help my kids watch adults pretend to be kids, without ending up in traumatising content. This is Russian roulette 2.0. Uploaded JEN_AI podcasts.
Discord (forums)
These are spaces for building communities around specific products, so I checked out the NotebookLM server. It’s a niche.
WhatsApp (messaging)
My own personal weakness: this is my main tech-connector to friends and family. Group chats are alternately a lifeline or a graveyard.
Medium (articles)
Never seen so many AI-about-AI clickbait articles in my life, and now I get a daily digest of them as well. I think I deserved this punishment.
Hinge (dating)
Not on it- just heard opinions. Users have to answer prompts, and I hear they have an AI coach now. Is this a dating app or a tool for turning humans into chatbots?
Snapchat, Pinterest, Patreon, Mastodon, Twitch, WeChat, Quora
Ran out of time. I mean, c’mon.
Lemon8, BeReal, Rumble, Weibo etc.
Surely we’re just making up fake social media platform names at this point.
I also stumbled across a few “Fans-only” sites proudly promoting their women-led entrepreneurial content. (Out of curiosity I did check out their AI policy; it’s ok if you’re verified human. Yeah, I’ll stick to podcasts.)
// 🏆 The JEN_AI Hall of Fame!
One thing I love about experimenting with JEN_AI right now is throwing crazy stuff around with like-minded friends & family and awesome people. It’s inner-circle vibes, in the best way.
Aside from the chats, here is a flavour of GenAI / JEN_AI stuff YOU put out there:
👾 A few shoutouts:
Team Spirit: The ‘Aquapanthers’ lads crew. Thanks for the support! Nelson used NotebookLM to make a podcast for a job application comparing his CV to a job description - it was a hit! (Slightly risky. Very Nelson.) The guys (and a few others) also spotted the AI-ified LinkedIn parody photo (more on this in an upcoming “Artificial Makeover / Fakeover” episode).
The Niche Side-Hustle Award: Simon trains AI models to make stylized portraits of pet dogs.
The Deep Patience Medal goes to: Caz, our special guest from last week who tried out Gemini’s Deep Research mode for her podcast — her verdict? “Well, the list of sources was useful.”
The ‘AI-enhanced hangout’ Trophy: My bro Ali used AI to co-create Magic: The Gathering cards his mates use at the local taproom. My fave card? “One Simply Walks Into Mordor.” He said some of his friends weren’t keen on modded cards, so he had to threaten the official My Little Pony deck. Fair play.
The “Thinking about AI using real human words” award goes to: Eliana, for sharing thoughts on the nature of consciousness and the suitability of digital therapists. I’ve shared it in full at the very end.
// Reality Check: the TimeGhost (“zeitgeist”) ⚖️
It’s all very well experimenting with AI to learn patterns, to post stuff. But sometimes you want to reinforcement-learn in real life.
I volunteered to speak at a careers panel at Imperial College London, organised by the Royal College of Sciences Association and BioChem society. It was a super-successful event, with a great buzz and awesome panel.
But it slowly dawned on me that something felt.. off. Out of 50 students, not one person had actually asked me how to get a job at Google or even DeepMind.
And worse- my first question at the mingle-segment of the night came from a slightly nervous but excitably defiant young woman who looked like she’d psyched herself up to say something to me. I tried to encourage her, to be more approachable. With a nervous laugh she began
“I’m not a member of the communist party, BUT—”
And reader - she went for it.
She had come to hold unchecked capitalism accountable and sock it to The Man.
Wow.
Good for her.
I recalled that my bio had been very sensibly reduced to just two words: “Big Tech”, blown-up-projected across the wall, under my name and my Ai-ified corporate-parody photo.
And so- The Man was now A Woman. Me, Jenni Munroe - the slightly punchable Face of Big Tech.
I used to think there was something almost - shamefully - aspirational about what I’d achieved. It took me 14 interviews, a presentation, essay, application and a lifetime of diligently applied privilege and hard work to get that first job as Deputy Chief of Staff to a Co-Founder of DeepMind. But it had taken me way too long to really realise that in this moment, in the spirit of the age we now live in, and especially to this generation- Google isn’t just seen as “uncool.” People think it’s “evil.” Or, in other words - (Whispers) I’m the bad guy. DUH. (Music).
Like really- DUH. My husband said, “I thought you knew? I thought you knew that was the zeitgeist.”
I guess I did really. If nothing else, the decade+ of abuse to Bay Area Google buses were a hint maybe.
Similarly, but on the Generative AI front: I met up with a bestie from my schooldays. She’s a programmer with two young sons. I mentioned my JenAI project and she seemed quiet. I probed further - too far, in fact - to the heart of the issue, and was knocked backwards by the strength of her totally understandable fear and hatred for generative AI, ChatGPT and all the rest. About what it would do to her children, how it would manipulate and control them and the world in a way that would be hard to trace back, to suck their childhood and their future into a screen.
This ridiculous thing that I’d fallen in love with 15 years ago-AI and machine learning and teaching computers to paint strawberries- in which I’d seen so much potential to create magic, and to solve problems, had finally taken off in the mainstream, finally had the compute and tech advances to really work, and was now responsible for The End of The Fucking World. Great. And she’s right, of course.
I tried to make a case that by learning and understanding and speaking about these things we might be better able to protect or support our kids, or steer the technology. Especially as a Google employee. How much worse would it be if we just left The Man to it, unchecked? But the fear and the impacts are valid, real.
The students I met were excited about biotech startups and hackathons, about using their skills for good. One asked when was the best time to sail around the world in a boat. This is how it should be. The future is not without hope.
// The Tools (aka “How to Spam Everywhere at Once”)
Short answer: don’t. Unsolicited advice:
Reduce: Pick a few preferred platforms. Don’t attempt 10-15. Why not ask your fave LLM to help you choose? (Approach with caution!)
Reuse: Start with a longer-format medium you like and remix your ideas for the few channels you’ve gone for. The media tools are designed to help you do this.
Relax: mute notifications as much as you possibly can. Dear god.
Notes on the tools I used:
All my old social media accounts. And some new ones. I tried making a couple of separate JEN_AI accounts but it’s too many to keep track of, so I’ll stick with RealJen’s accounts for now.
The AI overlords: ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. But mostly ChatGPT. For a wild back-and-forth of content/post ideation, generation, analysis and refinement.
Substack: For publishing the newsletter-podcast hybrid. It also posts to YouTube and makes teaser-stills for socials.
Descript: To edit the podcast and create teaser clips (ran out of time to use these, lol)
Meta-platforms: You can post on Facebook, Threads and Instagram in one blow.
// The Takeaway
For me, the best part of this episode has been throwing ideas around on tech with people I wish I could spend more time with in person. But more generally, this JEN_AI project really, truly is something I do not to chase followers or likes, but for me. Not to keep me sane, exactly- maybe more to give my insanity something to do. A conduit for expression and learning.
Social media can be an enabler for human connection: bringing friends and family together across the globe, sparking joy and sharing knowledge, and giving niche communities a digital space to call home.
Still- I think we all know it’s far from harmless fun.
Maybe there’s no actual ghost in the machine. But there is still both The Man and the machine. The medium shapes us, our thoughts, our actions. How we spend our money and our lives. We are what media we eat, and as consumers we are being consumed.
And I can tell you - after two weeks of multi-platform immersion- I can see why we should maybe claw our way out - just a little bit - of this rabbit hole. I’m ready to go on a social media diet. Or maybe just mute the notifications.
💬 A Social Call:
So where do you stand?
Will you share your thoughts on social media, or won’t you?
Drop your comments. Hack the algorithm. Send a psychic vibe-check (if you’re into telepathy?). If my Big-Tech take has horrified you, or my AI-powered socials have spooked, reassure yourself:
There is no ghost in the machine.
Thanks, as always, for listening.
#JEN_AI #Challenge007 #SocialMediums #BigTechVibes #AlgorithmicSéance #HumanConnection
Theme Song added to the JEN_AI Playlist this week: “bad guy” by Billie Eilish
BONUS: Here’s a contribution to the JEN_AI project from Eliana A:
“Love this week's episode! Here is my rant/contribution. Kisses from a real human being! 😘😘😘
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So a few days ago, I was at this conference about education, psychometrics, and data, and the keynote speaker was presenting a massive research project aimed at designing a test for consciousness. They plan to start with humans (fair), move on to animals (makes sense), and then—of course—AI. Because that’s the debate these days, right? "Can AI be conscious?"
After the talk, I went up to the presenter and asked what I think should be the fundamental question in this whole discussion:
"Why do we even consider AI as a candidate for consciousness? Where does this idea even come from?"
I mean, why not debate whether chairs and rocks are conscious? Or calculators? We don’t—because no one watches a calculator spit out "42" and thinks, Whoa, maybe it has an inner experience!
But with AI? People see it generating coherent language, mimicking human expression, and suddenly, boom—consciousness is on the table. Why? Because it looks like things we associate with conscious beings. It acts like it has thoughts, so people start wondering if it actually does.
But isn't that mixing up form and content? Just because something behaves like it’s conscious doesn’t mean it is. That’s like saying a mannequin that looks super realistic must have an inner life. Or that a chatbot, because it can mimic a therapist’s tone, must be feeling something. No. It's just complex pattern-matching, scaled up with more horsepower.
And that’s where the presenter’s answer got interesting. She said the idea that AI could be conscious comes from the theory that if you build a neural network complex enough, consciousness might emerge—as if it’s some spontaneous byproduct of complexity.
At the time, I pushed back. I said, "I don’t see this happening in any other domain—where if something just gets powerful enough, a completely new, unrelated phenomenon suddenly emerges."
But later, I thought, is fire like that? Humans controlled it and suddenly—new properties appeared that weren’t there in wood or stone.
So now I’m left with the real question: Why is consciousness not like fire? Why is it not something that "ignites" in a system that reaches a certain threshold of complexity?
Which brings me to therapy.
If there’s one intellectual profession that AI will never replace, it’s the dynamic therapist. Why? Because therapy isn’t about the form of what’s said—it’s about the content of human connection.
AI could mimic therapy perfectly. It could recognize patterns in speech, reflect emotions, even "remember" past conversations. But the healing power of therapy isn’t in the words themselves—it’s in the relationship. It’s in the fact that a human being is sitting across from you, hearing you, understanding you, and responding with their own lived experience.
Therapy works through transference and countertransference—the deep, unconscious emotional exchange between patient and therapist. That only happens if the patient knows there's a real person on the other side.
Now, my friend argued, "Well, what if the patient doesn’t know? What if you trick them into thinking it’s human?"
But come on—how would that even work? A company rolls out an AI therapist but lies to every patient, pretending they’re talking to a real person? That wouldn’t just be unethical, it would be a time bomb. The moment people found out, the whole thing would collapse. Because once you know, the magic is gone.
And that’s the core of the issue:
AI can simulate the shape of human experiences, but it can never generate the substance. It can mimic connection, but it can never be connected.
And if AI ever does convince people it's conscious, it won’t be because it actually is—it’ll be because we fell for the illusion.”
Well that sounds like a challenge. And ironically, ancedotally.. one of the most popular uses of AI in Silicon Valley to date has been.. you guessed it: Life coach, or therapist.
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