SWL Week in Review - Outrage (and Figma)

From:

sam lessin <s@wlessin.com>

To:

Hidden Recipient <hidden@emailshot.io>

Date:

8/1/2025, 5:37 PM

More or Less :: Outrage!

What connects Sydney Sweeney ‘gene’ ad commercial with the South Park Trump shenanigans… ? The key marketing strategy of the moment is to generate ‘outrage’, ideally from people you don’t care about but who are going to care a LOT about you / talk about you a bunch and spread your word (and motivate others to come to your defense) — Where does outrage end? … it probably doesn’t — the goal is just to make the move more and more extreme… until no one knows what is real outrage vs. just really smart marketing? And then where are we… well, we are in an era of inverse-war-of-the-worlds… if before hysteria would be caused by people over-believing broadcast media, the future doom / hysteria will come from no one believing anything is real anymore.

Hot Takes

AI inverts the broadcast era risk around ‘war of the worlds’ — in the 1950s the broadcast of ‘war of the worlds’ (NJ alien invasion) scared people to madness thinking it was real because they trusted the radio so much (and missed the parts where they kept saying it was made up) — the real risk of AI today is the opposite — believing in nothing, because the ‘medium’ is so easy to fake with AI / totally untrustworthy. In War of the Worlds era the Russians took notice that this was an important tactic for attacking America — I wonder who will come up with plans (who has) to exploit the AI flip as it really is (no one believes anything) vs. what people thought it would be early (belief falsehoods)

The American ‘Plastic Surgery’ Dream is good, natural beauty bad — back to Sydney — turns out I think the narrative of th moment is It is OK for beauty to come from Kardashian plastic surgery but NOT ok for it to be genetic. This is a super interesting inversion of historical reality / culture — where plastic surgery was verboten but hot was hot. I think this has to do with the availability and comfort of everyone with photo-filters on the internet AND that if you want to spend time and money you can be as ‘beautiful as you want’ (very American) vs. you are either born with it or not / regardless of how rich and committed you are the beauty caste system is cast (un-American) —

The Smartest AIs learn to run the Nigerian Prince Scam — this is just funny to me… in human scams the strategy is to be dumb not smart — classic sales / screen for what you want upfront (and in the case of scams you want to find dumb people) — maybe the AIs have figured out the same trick and they aren’t so stupid after all but intentionally filtering for the idiots who reply…

Why companies really are spending on AI? What are the REAL incentives of buyers… no link yet — but there is this dual narrative running around of ‘number go up’ on AI sales, but also majority of corporate buyers don’t understand where the ROI is on productivity / aren’t seeing it — so why do they spend? Incentives. Companies are doing well, have profits to spend… dividends are weakness, and buying infra / other assets in our uncertain era and with red-tape feels unwise… but AI, well with AI you can sink money somewhere and if the probability of meaningful positive impact is NON-zero, and magnitude of impact if true is HUGE then it justifies itself. Look at AI spend not as necessarily strength but more as weakness with no better ideas on where to invest money (except ads)

Buy FM Radio Stations, Add Grok — I am actually really only half kidding here… people want to build these AI characters that have meaning / real world currency? Well radio stations are on fire sale and having your AI be broadcasting (and probably running their prank of the day on air well tbh) … seems like not only great novelty but probably good business.

Have I made the point to Just buy Meta and Go Home Before? — as the kids say ‘let’s go’ — congrats to the meta team… I will victory lap getting the story right on the ‘easy’ way to make a ton of money on AI (ads acceleration being a lay-up that can just keep giving / follow the curve as AI improves predictably and very very profitably) — but real props to the people actually doing it. Beyond the ads case? Well when you have a profit machine that keeps growing, you get infinite shots on goal.. and it really doesn’t matter if all your siege tanks get taken out from time to time.

The New Phenomenon of Intentional Billionaire Employees — there have been accidental billionaire employees before (many more than Forbes knows about) — it is just math at this point, for a 2T company, if you had $50K of equity at a $100M valuation and the balls to hold… congrats you are a billionaire! (Same story with bitcoin btw, and that one anyone could have done!) — that said, it will be interesting to see socially how this plays out. Even athletes don’t earn at that level from their contracts vs. being ‘entrepreneurs’ in their own creator-influencer-products.

ICC AI talk in DC — just a note this was fun and glad to have spoken to ~700 students at this event. For those really interested, message me and i will send you the bootleg recording…

The AIs are All in on Blondes in Denim - ok one more on Sidney — is anyone else feeling like the AIs are picking up the message re blondes and denim? Is the future AI just fast following instantly all memes?

Sunset, Moonset, Sunrise — it is great to sit at a place where you get to see all three without changing position.

“In times of change the learners will inherit the earth” — great quote, obviously true - good news I was pretty good at school / that learning thing…

POS, point of sale, proof of stake, or piece of shit, lol and Congrats Figma and Team…, great people... but no SaaS is not back - that is just wishful banker (and late stage VC) thinking.

Best,
Sam

P.S. Stand with Alan (Dershowitz), Martha’s Vineyard 2005 — instant classic summer t-shirt — The republic of Chilmark has gone too far with this one, these people look so silly… think what you will of Alan, it is unamerican to not sell him a pierogi … you can’t make this stuff up.

Similar newsletters

There are other similar shared emails that you might be interested in: