Matt Wurst

YouTube video by Point Symmetry Key Lesson From Week 40, 2025: When the Traditional "Hype Cycle" No Longer Applies

Everyone wants to slap AI onto the Gartner Hype Cycle. 📉
But AI isn’t slowing down. It’s not in a “trough of disillusionment.” It broke the curve entirely.

Some people call it hype because their experiments failed.
But your learning curve ≠ the market’s growth curve.

youtube.com/shorts/zAgK1...

It always applies. And it's the theme of this week’s 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗣𝘀:

⚡ The “zero-click trap” draining publishers & brands.

⚡ The rise of AI-fueled workslop that looks like productivity but isn’t.

⚡ The indecisiveness of Gen Alpha.

⚡ The broken illusion of checks and balances.

PPPProof and Illusion - Four Ps #270 What Feels Abundant vs. What’s Actually Real: Online, in Real Life, in My Home, at Advertising Week, and in the World Beyond

Illusion is cheap. Proof is hard. Both matter.
Whether it's family, work, society, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘢𝘳 𝘰𝘯 𝘊𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘨𝘰, or even Advertising Week New York, the big question isn't what's real...

It's "𝙒𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙘𝙖𝙣 𝙬𝙚 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙫𝙚?"

👉 Read all four before you start your week:
thefourps.substack.com/p/pppproof-a...

𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗧𝗮𝗹𝗸 𝗦𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗱𝗮𝘆: How I feel about generative AI content, in one post.

Big Social had a good run.
But when 3.3 million users engage across the Genuin network in 30 days… that’s a signal.

Not “engagement.” Not “reach.”
Real people.

The center of gravity is shifting.

It’s time to actually OWN your own community.

🤟

Genuin Connections | iHeart Video conversations with our community of brand marketers, innovators, creators, media mavens, and commerce-minded thought leaders.

Smart. Spicy. A little scary. But damn, it’s the future.

🎧 Full episode here ⬇️

- iHeart: www.iheart.com/podcast/1323...

- YouTube: youtu.be/JqvAaxDMlfc

We got into it on the latest Genuin 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀:

👉 Why retailers are down to their “last chance” to matter

👉 How personalization ≠ “Welcome back, Eric” pop-ups

👉 Why use cases crush hype every time

👉 And yes… why neuroscience belongs in your marketing plan

Beyoncé’s trainer. Rihanna’s stylist. A NASA astronaut.
No, this isn’t the setup for a bad joke.

It’s how Eric Sheinkop built The Desire Company into a machine for real content, not influencer fluff, not rented audiences, but actual expert-led storytelling that converts.

Anew Genuin Connection

The FTC wants want receipts: how these companies actually mitigate harms, track and monetize engagement, and monitor risks before and after deployment.

At least one part of our government isn't totally broken.

ICYMI, here’s the full FTC letter 👉 www.ftc.gov/system/files...

YouTube video by Point Symmetry Key Lesson From Week 39, 2025: Kids, the Internet, and Urgent Truths Parents Need To Know

Protecting kids online isn’t optional anymore. 🚨

The FTC just told seven of the biggest AI players (Alphabet, Meta, OpenAI, Snap, xAI, and more): show us how you’re keeping children safe.

Not someday. Not in a press release. Right now.
youtube.com/shorts/0Ri33...

Maybe it clicks for power users. (I haven't forked over the $200 yet).

Maybe it matures fast. Maybe it is the "𝙈𝙚𝙩𝙚𝙤𝙧" we've been thinking it will be.

Anyone else test-driving Comet? Whaddaya think?

Is it the future… or just hype with nice fonts?

❌ CPU usage balloons when the AI is running.
My laptop fan sounds like it’s prepping for takeoff.

I've even restarted my laptop when it froze 2-3x yesterday.

So here’s my sticking point... For all the AI bells and whistles, nothing yet redefines how I browse.

❌ No onboarding. No tutorial, no “here’s how Comet is different from Chrome=," so still no clear reason why I should ditch Chrome (yet).

Search feels faster, but not always smarter. Great for quick hits, less great for nuanced context.

𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀:

❌ Accuracy still feels… questionable. I find myself fact-checking every response with links. Years of conditioning make it hard to just “trust the AI.”

I want better transparency on how answers are generated. Confidence without clarity isn’t trust.

𝗣𝗿𝗼𝘀:

✅ Setup was frictionless. It integrated all of my Chrome settings instantly.

✅ Sidebar AI is handy: tab comparisons, quick summaries, even writing feedback.

✅ It looks cool in dark mode, and the widgets are fun.

I (finally?) got access to Perplexity’s new 𝘊𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵 browser. I've used it non-stop for the past 24 hours.

Because in theory, AI in a browser sounds awesome. In reality... more like beta vibes.

Here are my first impressions:

That gap between hype and reality is where the risk sits.

Half-right AI means half-baked outcomes:
• Automation without orchestration
• Projects without ROI
• Speed without safety

This isn’t a hype cycle.
It’s a collision between speed & maturity.
The brands that win will be bold, but protected.

Normally new tech follows a pattern: hype, crash, then slow adoption.
But AI isn’t playing by those rules.

The money is massive. The breakthroughs are daily.
And yet most companies are still just tinkering.
Lots of pilots, very little production.

YouTube video by Point Symmetry Key Lesson From Week 38, 2025: Silencing Dissent is the Fast Track to Authoritarianism

When voices are silenced, when the media is forced to bend to government pressure, when people stop speaking out, freedom doesn’t disappear overnight. It erodes piece by piece.

Freedom is fragile. It only survives if we protect it.

Speak up. Silence is never neutral.

youtube.com/shorts/dC9GP...

Now with Genuin, we’re betting everything on preserving that memory. Building tools so it never fades.
It’s the core of our contextual continuity.

Because just like with our real communities in & across society, if you lose the memories, you lose the meaning.
And without meaning, you have nothing.

Without memory, you’re not a community.
You’re just a chat thread. A crowd resetting to zero.

I believed we could do this with early internet connections.
Then again with social media.

It’s the stories, the rituals, the shared scars.
It’s why a team reunion feels like family dinner.
It’s why a single song can take you back years.
It’s the collective record of shared experiences, inside jokes, milestones and wins, the hard lessons.

They remember who showed up first.
Who stayed when it got hard.
The inside jokes only they get.
The nights we stayed up building.
The failures that made us better.

Community Memory is the emotional glue.

Far too many of us have forgotten what “community” really means.
Why it matters. How it works.

We turned it into a buzzword.
Overused it. Drained it of meaning.

Community is not a Slack channel.
Not a Discord server.
Not an audience you blast updates to.

Because communities have memory.

Communities don’t die out from lack of interest.
They die because they forget.

Forget who showed up.
Forget why they came.
Forget what they built together.

Physical, digital, religious, whatever…

What is Community Memory?

I just made it up. Maybe it’s nothing. But I think it’s… something.

For marketers living in a product-centric world, his perspective is gold… grounded advice on scaling, experimenting, and actually building things people want.

It’s a reminder: the best brand you build might not be your company’s. It might be your own.
www.lennyrachitsky.com/newsletter

And in the process, he built something bigger than any feature launch: 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆.

Not just from what he shipped, but how he thinks.

I met him briefly at the tail-end of his run at Neustar like 15 years ago, and have been following from afar ever since.

I'm willing to bet VERY few people in my network here have heard of Lenny Rachitsky. But if you’ve ever touched product, you know exactly who he is.

Lenny went from leading product at Airbnb to running one of the most practical, data-rich newsletters in tech.

The other side knows we can’t abandon kindness. Because if rage fuels change, kindness keeps us anchored to a moral compass.

Far too few people seem to understand or even care about moral values anymore.

Anger is justified. But decency is non-negotiable.

YouTube video by Point Symmetry Key Lesson From Week 37, 2025: Finding the Balance Between Anger and Kindness

I feel split in two this week.

The dichotomy of anger AND kindness. Wanting to retreat inward while needing to resist outward.

One side wants to vent some targeted, productive rage.
To call out the hypocrisy, to shine a mirror on misguided, misinformed misanthropy...

youtube.com/shorts/Lbu9A...