AIGC Is Not the Original Sin — Garbage Content Is
Lately I keep seeing this sentiment:
"If I know it was written by AI, I won't read it."
Every time I see this, I find it a bit strange.
Because many people who say they hate AI content happily hand over their time to various platforms every single day.
They think they're actively choosing what to consume.
But more often than not, the content is choosing them.
The real genius of platforms isn't producing content. It's exploiting human weakness.
People are wired to crave novelty, fear missing out, love instant feedback, and get easily pulled by emotion.
One recommendation after another, endlessly refreshing feeds, bottomless content pools — all of it keeps stimulating these primal instincts.
And so many people, knowing full well there's nothing rewarding further down, still can't stop scrolling.
Because the human drive for short-term gratification almost always overpowers the commitment to long-term value.
This is also how people unwittingly become the platform's laborers — trading their attention for the platform's profit, while thinking they're just killing a bit of time.
In reality, most people have no idea who wrote what they consume every day.
WeChat articles, short video scripts, news summaries, marketing copy, product descriptions, search results, social media posts...
Behind so much of this content, AI was already there.
And that's only going to increase.
The real question has never been:
"Was this written by AI?"
It's always been:
"Is this worth my time?"
If an article has insight, value, real information gain — if it genuinely expands my thinking — why should I care whether AI helped create it?
Conversely.
If an article is hollow, patchwork, clickbaity, manufactured emotion...
Even if the author typed every single character by hand, it's still garbage.
Garbage doesn't become gold just because a human wrote it.
And gold doesn't become garbage just because AI was involved.
A lot of people are conflating two different things.
They think what they hate is AI.
What they actually hate is low-quality content.
In the past, producing garbage was relatively expensive.
Now AI has driven the cost to near zero.
So garbage floods out like a deluge.
And everyone jumps to a conclusion:
There's more garbage now, so it must be AI's fault.
It's not.
Garbage has always been there.
It was just produced in limited quantities before.
What's really changed isn't content production.
It's the competition for attention.
Before, the hardest part for a creator was producing the work.
Now, the hardest part is being seen.
And the future will only intensify this.
Because content will grow infinitely.
But human eyeballs are forever finite.
Infinite supply.
Limited demand.
This is the destiny every content industry eventually faces.
So the scarcest resource of the future isn't content.
It's curation.
Not generation.
But selection.
Who can find you that one article worth reading among ten thousand?
Who can find you those ten truly valuable minutes among ten thousand videos?
That's who holds the new leverage.
Some people are still stuck on the question:
"If AI produces all the content, won't only AI be left reading it?"
But that's asking the question backwards.
Who cares whether it's AIGC or human-generated content?
What you actually care about is the content itself.
Just like you wouldn't refuse a good meal because you don't know the chef's name.
And you wouldn't refuse to eat because the chef used a rice cooker.
The tool was never the point.
The result is.
Here's what's even more interesting.
Those who most fiercely oppose AIGC often default to the assumption that human creation is inherently nobler.
But reality says otherwise.
Throughout human history, the vast majority of content was never read by anyone.
Most books sell fewer than a few hundred copies.
Most WeChat articles get dismal readership.
Most videos sink without a trace after publishing.
Being seen has always been a probability game.
In an age of information explosion.
A carefully crafted work — whether AI-assisted or not — has an overwhelming probability of being buried.
While a piece meticulously engineered to harvest attention can easily rack up millions of views.
Because the people who truly understand virality don't understand technology.
They understand human nature.
They know your weaknesses.
They know your curiosity.
They know your anxieties.
They know your anger.
They know exactly which headline makes you stop.
Exactly which content makes you reluctant to scroll past.
Exactly how to turn your time into their revenue.
That's the real attention economy.
AI is just a new production tool.
It was never the problem.
The problem has always been:
Whether we still have the capacity to choose.
Whether we can still tell what's worth watching.
Whether we're willing to spend our finite lives on things of genuine value.
AIGC is not the original sin.
Garbage content is.
And what's more dangerous than garbage content.
Is knowing it's garbage.
And still being unable to stop consuming it.
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The greatest challenge of the future may not be that AI is too smart, but that humans are too easy to please. The real competition may not be between models, but between high-quality information and low-quality dopamine.
by Tuya
