Thinking On Paper Technology Podcast Enshitification: Marketing, Brand Building And How To Avoid The Silicon Valley Cult │ Nick Richtsmeier
How do brands build trust when the internet has decayed into into AI-driven slop and tripe? The systems that once promised connection now work as mirrored cages, feeding your biases, hiding your real customer, and distorting the truth.
Nick Richtsmeier, founder of CultureCraft and writer at Damns Given, argues that brands now live inside engineered distortions. Funnels collapse. Neutrality is impossible. And AI is being layered onto a system already built to extract rather than empower.
In this conversation, Nick joins Mark and Jeremy to Think on Paper about:
Why brands operate inside algorithmic cages
How information distortion shapes every customer interaction
Why mass neutrality fails and perspective becomes strategy
How modern marketing hijacks curiosity
Why platforms hoard customer insight inside black boxes
How influencers stand in for trust
Why network-based growth outperforms funnels
Why analog tactics and patient capital are becoming competitive advantages
This episode tracks the widening distortion gap, the limits of AI-driven marketing, and the slow, analog tactics required to build something real inside an internet optimised for extraction.
If platforms are collapsing into noise, where does trust come from?
Please enjoy the show.
And remember: Stay curious. Be disruptive. Keep Thinking on Paper.
Cheers, Mark & Jeremy
PS: Please subscribe. It’s the best way you can help other curious minds find our channel.
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Timestamps
(00:00) Trailer
(01:00) Disruptors & Curious Minds
(02:00) Mark Has A Trust Issue
(02:42) What Is Trust?
(07:14) How Deep-Tech Brands Build Trust?
(09:38) Steve Jobs And Selling A Feeling
(10:00) The Cult Of Silicon Valley
(10:35) Was the Internet Ever Not Shit?
(15:05) What Is The “Distortion Gap”?
(20:11) Reducing Your Digital Marketing Spend
(21:45) Analog Marketing
(23:40) Why the Marketing Funnel Never Really Existed
(25:08) VCs, Capital And The Comfort Zone Of Risk
(27:04) Analog vs Digital: What Actually Creates Meaningful Connection
(28:40) How the TikTok Generation Uses the Internet Differently
(32:40) Your Curiosity Is Being Hi-Jacked
(35:22) What Are Load-Bearing Inefficiencies?
(40:47) The Importance Of Resilience in a World Of Entropy
(42:29) What Do We Want Humans To Be?