Carl Jung, artificial intelligence, and bad writing

YouTube’s slopification and the lessons for copywriting

Apparently my Myers-Briggs personality type is ENTP.

Now, not everyone holds much value in personality types like Myers-Briggs. I’ve heard it called Astrology for smart people. I think that’s a pretty funny line.

Yet, Myers-Briggs can be useful.

You don’t have to take it as Gospel. Instead, it can throw up ideas on how to manage your own behaviour.

As an ENTP one of my key characteristics can be excitement and bouncing around getting interested in all sorts of topics.

Some people might call this ADHD but I’m unsure if that has as much value as astrology either.

But I do tend to like learning about new things. And I can get excited. And sitting in the same place for hours and hours on end was always hell for me. Hence why I never liked working in an office.

So, whether Myers-Briggs or ADHD is only just astrology or not, I still could learn from them.

When it comes to working I’ve found that just moving around throughout the day makes me way more productive. 30 minutes at my desk, then a stretch. An hour lying on the couch typing drafts then make coffee. Back to the desk for editing. A quick walk and a swim. Then 90 minutes sitting at a cafe with my laptop.

That kind of thing.

I’ve also found it very helpful to have core activities that must get done everyday. Perhaps not at the same time in the same place. But everyday regardless. Exercise, writing, French novel translation etc etc.

I just be consistent in doing the right things. And I track them each day by hand too. Some in a dairy and others on index cards blu-tac’d to the wall.

It might sound crazy to some but it works for me. I tend to get a lot done just by making sure I work on the most important things every day.

Now the Myers-Briggs types are based on the work of Swiss psychologist and one time Freud protégé Carl Jung.

And as a good little ENTP, a while back I got interested in Jung’s work.

A shiny new piece of information to learn about ;)

ENTPs love to learn and that has always been the case for me. I’ve always been a reader. When I was a kid I’d sometimes just sit and read the encyclopaedia we had in the house.

But again, over time I’ve learnt the best way to manage this “impulsive” information seeking style.

I know that even though “new and shiny” was exciting, if I just stayed shallow on every topic I’d get dissatisfied. So on stuff I really liked I’d go super deep.

And the best way to find out what to go deep on was to try different things online. If I become actually interested in a subject, then I’d start buying books on it.

I really do love a physical book. I could go on and on about them but perhaps I’ll save that tangent for another day.

So, where were we?

ENTPs and Carl Jung.

I started by just watching longer presentations about Jung on YouTube. This was a while ago and I have since bought some books by him and his disciples.

However, over time, I started to notice that Jung himself was becoming a hot topic on YouTube. Any kind of ‘get to know yourself better’ philosophy always seems to be popular.

However, this was around the time that AI was breaking out big time.

And I started to see more and more obviously AI created videos. Most were short, yet many were long too, even up to three hours! But the voice over was very obviously AI and so was the information.

Similar videos on Jung and other related topics started to fill up my YouTube homepage.

I found it annoying.

There is something very unsatisfactory, I think, about AI generated content. Like it sounds great to begin with, but it quickly tires the mind out. A bit like sugar.

By reading the comments on these videos it became obvious that it wasn’t just me getting frustrated. Regular everyday people (or normies as they say online) were feeling ripped off by all the AI created videos.

And YouTube itself caught on. They started labelling videos as AI generated. I also heard that many were being demonetised.

Fair enough I reckon.

See, from 2020-2024 I worked in an AI software company (before this current LLM gold rush). They did social media management for large brands. AI was the central part of the tool.

And I myself was someone that early adopted AI into my work and life. I almost immediately stopped “googling” things and would instead ‘Perplexity” something (Perplexity was reading the net for answers before ChatGPT).

They’re very handy tools.

But I’ve never trusted them for writing. It’s hard to explain why except to say that the writing never sounded right to me.

And a while ago when people were saying that LLMs were gonna kill copywriting I knew this would be a good time to get into it.

My simple plan was I’d jut write like a human, warts and all.

I knew that the LLMs had their limitations from my long exposure to them. I’d seen all the comments on Youtube.

And now that I hear of kids and students doing all their assignments with AI I’m doubling down on human intelligence writing.

But it still seems like AI and copywriting is a hot debate online. Many copywriting job ads I’ve seen want people that know how to use AI to speed up their work. My guess is that writers who over-rely on AI though, will start to lose out over time. Subscribe to follow along and see if my bet is right or not.

P.S. My internet is down and the guy who came to fix it looked for every reason he could to do nothing about it. That was yesterday and now he is not coming back again till tomorrow. I also can’t use my hotspot at home because the phone reception is too weak where my apartment is. LOL. But I was rereading the Boron Letters (the physical book). I like how Gary in one of the letters tells Bond to just to keep pushing on with his work regardless of his situation. Given that Gary was in jail while he was giving that advice seemed pretty relevant to me while “struggling” with no internet at home. So, I’ve been writing offline. And now I’m sitting on a old stone staircase in the 7th arrondissement of Marseille around the corner from my house where I get reception so I can post.