or a venture capitalist, a 10% chance at a billion dollars is worth more than a 90% chance at a thousand dollars. They build their portfolios expecting a small subset will break through and yield the bulk of their returns. Likewise, Sargeant didn’t go on a date merely hoping to have a second date. She wanted to increase her chances of finding a husband. Likewise, her parties—from initial concept to execution—aim to increase the chance that this is someone’s favorite event rather than decrease the risk that someone hates it.
Social media and the internet are powerful social conformity engines that push us toward least-common-denominator appeals. As Alex Murell documented, from Airbnb to coffee shops to Instagram face, there is a pressure for maximally efficient, minimally offensive design. These things are “unfamiliar but completely recognizable.”
AI-generated personality — like ChatGPT’s default voice — mirrors the same conformity dynamic as collaborative filtering: it doesn’t reveal more about the subject or the user, but produces a confident, generic middle ground. The result is something that feels authoritative without being distinctive, similar to how recommendation algorithms surface connections that are statistically plausible but creatively flat.Whatever your culprit is for the breakdown of community—phones, social media, housing regulations—you will die lonely if you wait for those structural problems to be solved before you get down to the work of making and maintaining friendships.
