>"You escape competition through authenticity." - @naval
Except none of this is authentic. Its just another form of marketing and it should be illegal to go around spamming posts advertising a product. Or the accounts should be marked as sponsored or promotion accounts so they can be filtered out accordingly.
> Its just another form of marketing and it should be illegal to go around spamming posts advertising a product
I think this is the dogma that holds a lot of devs back, the belief that sharing your work, the product, the thought process, the journey, the mistakes, the wins etc is “spammy”. Would save your rhetoric for those who actually spam - ai slop generators, bots, link farmers, paid shillers etc. Not indie devs on HN trying to build something for the world.
I'd consider cold DMs to be spam. What if every business did this? This b2b call center stuff happening on peoples social media accounts. Its gross and I dont like it. Please keep advertising within advertising channels. You arent authentic by spamming people's DMs.
Yes, by all means, build and promote your product.
Planning out interactions according to 3 fake personas is still fake though. Not that I have any better ideas, we all have to engage with this nonsense and waste our lives producing it. It would be nice to somehow not have to.
The whole parasocial aspect of it is what feels fake, distasteful, and icky.
The very idea of gaining power in the modern world is through parasocial relationships. Think Taylor Swift: her fans follow every single one of her updates even though they are highly scripted to engage exactly their "user persona", and present a Taylor who has nothing to do with the real one, another persona. Whoever can be at the top of this pyramid (i.e. make enough people believe that an Instagram-mediated relationship with a fake media persona is real) - wins the game.
I don't claim to have an answer, however, consider this. A few years ago it was considered impossible to win the battle against Big Food. They would continue to shove increasingly fake food simulacra down our throats and we'd be doomed. There was a backlash. With parasocial relationships, I feel that AI has tipped the scales into "enough is enough" category and people will demand real connection over personas.
And maybe we are just talking past each other. Maybe.
