What can you trust when nothing takes effort?
I spend a lot of time telling my mom that some of what she is sharing online is fake. I’m not unique in this and neither is she. Sometimes it’s a funny video, but other times it’s a news story or even a podcast. Some entire accounts are just fake avatars hawking goods. I work in tech and it’s getting hard to decipher the real from the fake.
Because the tech world is an AI arms race, and its winner take all. We are all racing against the clock to be the most efficient and intelligent versions of ourselves. Every day something is done faster. What once took months or weeks takes hours. In a month it will be done in minutes.
As a marketer I spent the first few years of this new AI age with a healthy dose of skepticism. I often said I would start to be impressed when AI could build me a perfect landing page or design a presentation.
And well…those days are here.
This new and impressive age is one where effort is being removed from our lives at a startling pace. And it’s creating a massive trust gap. You’ll see it in droves online, commenters slinging accusations of AI generated content. The worst part? They are often right. Text, audio, images and video can all be created in mere seconds.
And it has crossed into our careers. AI has made it easy to fake your professional presentation to the point of uselessness. Everyone now has a polished résumé, a tailored cover letter, and even personal websites with a few clicks. The signal that used to distinguish the exceptional from the mediocre is gone.
But like anything, the ascent of AI will have a counter reaction. The pendulum of favor and trend is constantly swinging (think low rise jeans coming back. We said never again!). If what used to take effort is no longer a commodity, we know the opposite will soon be in favor. And that opposite is friction.
Which brings us to something called friction-maxxing. Coined by The Cut columnist Kathryn Jezer-Morton, it means choosing less convenient, more difficult, higher friction options in daily life to counter the extreme ease offered by modern technology.
And that makes sense. Because in many ways friction is what guides our life. Some things take more effort than others, more time, more energy. We evaluate and choose which things are worth that expected effort.
Which things are worth the friction.
That friction implicitly leads to trust. When someone takes the time to truly do something, create something, recommend something, we know that they care. We know they mean it. It’s a clear signal.
So in a world of seamless creation, we are drawn to things that show effort, and even a bit of mess.
I voiced to a few people that I now find it comforting when I see a typo in a book. Human error envelopes us in a hug.
The implications are everywhere. I imagine we’ll spend more to see concerts or musicals live, just to see the rough edges of someone performing in person. I expect to see more time shared without sharing on social. Privacy and interactions without screens will gain favor. The handwritten note will mean more than ever.
And there will be implications for business. The technology that makes us better at our jobs is also creating a failing of trust in our colleagues. The answer isn’t to stop using AI. It’s to be intentional about where friction belongs.
Good friction will become an obvious and deliberate choice. It will be built into the core of our products and our interactions. In careers it will look like having another human who was there, who saw the work, reviewing and approving what you did, staking their reputation on your words. That takes effort. It’s friction. And we need that signal more than ever in a world where anything can be faked.
The reward for that friction is simple. It’s the only thing that breaks through the noise. Not because it’s louder, but because it’s real.