08/26/2026
I was on Reddit, reading how people talk about using AI. This started as marketing research. I wanted to know how the people I work with describe it in their own words, somewhere nobody's selling them anything and nobody's watching.
I didn't expect to recognise it.
Every week I talk to business owners who are being told, one way or another, that they need to be using AI already. Sometimes it's a client. Sometimes a competitor. Sometimes it's their own head at two in the morning. On Reddit it was the same message with the politeness stripped out.
What interests me isn't whether that message is true. It's what people do with it.
Some take it inside and reshape themselves around it. Some refuse, knowing what it costs. And some do the harder thing, working out what's actually negotiable and what isn't, then building from there. Still getting paid. Still recognisably themselves.
I've seen that shape before. My doctoral research was about people under a completely different pressure, the pressure to turn yourself into a marketable product. Those same three responses came out of it.
So when this started showing up in my client conversations, I recognised it. Which is useful and also dangerous, because recognising something isn't the same as understanding it, and the differences here are not small.
So I'm collecting moments instead of conclusions. And the one I didn't expect is the gap that keeps showing up underneath all three. What people say they're doing with AI, and what they're actually doing. Often two completely different accounts, from the same person, forty minutes apart.
I have a theory. I don't know yet whether it survives this.
This is live research. If you've felt that pressure yourself, I'd like to hear about it.
Link in comments.
