WTF #6

WTF No Code

Welcome to the 27 new subscribers who have joined since the start of the year! I'm truly grateful to have you along for the ride and can't wait to hear what you think about WTF No Code and the little bits of commentary I publish. My goal is to spark thought and help flatten the access to information needed to help you build consciously.

Now, let's get to it –

I hate-read this Twitter thread:

It's not that I hadn't been filled with any Christmas spirit.

It's not that I'm not a Doc Williams fan.

It's just that it all felt so... cheap..?

So... unoriginal?

So derivative!?

Yeah. It was derivative. Actually, very truly derivative. Because it was pieced together after analyzing hundreds of thousands of thoughtboi Twitter threads we're so lucky to have out there in the wild!

At least there isn't a Youtube thumbnail for it.

But, with as little as a few dozen keystrokes, Doc probably chuckled as he mused about the internet caving in on itself. Classic.

Mitch Hedberg had a great joke about limiting the number of times you could honk your car's horn. Three honks and you're done until the 1st of the next month. I'd love for something like this to exist for Chat GPT3. We'd end up with prompts that are much more thoughtful and outcomes that have a little more substance.

But, that's not likely to happen so while we face a deluge of content generated by anyone with a keyboard and we – the lowly consumers of content – are forced to rely on pattern recognition; which most humans suck at.

So while the overlap of no code and AI continues to grow, I'll be doing my best to train myself to recognize the patterns created by GPT3’s outputs and improve my media literacy skills.

If you’re questioning what has me categorizing an emerging technology (or more accurately, a fully emerged technology on a crash course with humanity’s collective id) as a facet of media, I ask what about this whole thing isn’t related to the media?

From mid-December on, there has been a flurry of new AI-powered apps that purport to:

• make it effortless to up your ranking on the Internet's media market

• make it effortless to generate content that can be used as media in the market

• make cursory detail a thing of the past so you can focus your time on creating or consuming – you guessed it – more media

And no code tools make it all the more easy to throw things together. An idea can become a first-to-strike business in the span of a week.

So with how ubiquitous this AI stuff is bound to get, it really can’t hurt to improve your media literacy skills. I fully expect AI to be Trojan horsing around thanks to the help of no code tools that make it easier to go from idea to fully-functional product.

I also expect people to continue chasing some of that everlasting relevance. The next Tweet thread or blog post you come across is increasingly likely to have been put through the AI rinse cycle a few times in the hopes that it catches your attention.

I make a point to keep that to a minimum, so what you're getting from me here is artisanal, hand-crafted content put together with intention and with conscious thought. This way, I get to say things like "I vow to avoid writing about AI in the next edition of WTF No Code" and mean it.

I mean it.

🆗 Simple $%!#

My latest project update or feature release. That's it. That's the $%!#.

The Need

Multiple Instagram posts scheduled to be published daily.

The Stack

• Airtable

• Make

• OpenAI

• Placid

The Result (ELI5)

I adapted my existing social media scheduling stack so that it supports Instagram alongside Twitter and let the regular workflow run as-is:

1. harvest content (in this case podcasts on Apple Podcasts or Spotify)

2. approve select content and assign it a scheduled date

3. pull in images and AI-generated summaries to fit within character counts, etc.

4. create custom images via Placid and stage for publishing in Airtable

5. daily Make scenario checks specific view in Airtable at set intervals, publishes eligible content

Instagram's API is somewhat restrictive in that it won't let you outright schedule posts so that's why I'm using Airtable to stage content for publishing.

The Extended Version

With Twitter and Instagram posts crossed of the list, my impulsive thoughts take me to video content and getting things setup for stories and reels, and hey – maybe even TikTok.

Got ideas on how to pull that off? Let me know in a reply to this email!

🌶 Spicy Takes

This gets your attention today but won't mean much in a few months.

There's a revolving door to this narrative but like any revolution, this trend isn't going to take us backwards.

This chart shows that since the start of the pandemic, a staggering number of people have filed a business application in the US and that number seems to have normalized at nearly twice the historic rate. Whether that leads to functionally operating business is another thing but there's a signal to be synthesized nonetheless.

Slowly but surely, people will find that returns of employer-based work are diminishing and hard-lined policies around things like remote work are ultimately a deal-breaker.

I'm not sure what horse is the right one to bet on, but there does seem to be some pressure on major cities to adapt to a new normal. Here's a good and albeit slightly alarmist read on how things are shaping up in the US.

Who knows? Maybe this megalomaniac was onto something with WeWorkLive.

🌶🌶🌶(out of 5)

🎲 Dicey Makes

Every one deserves some criticism. I'll share some unsolicited feedback in a sentence or two and I'll try to keep it constructive.

On the docket today is @NOScode which we'll file under Just Because You Can, Doesn't Mean You Should.

Twitter's API offers powerful search functionality but that can easily be exploited to spam people. Even if it comes across as being informative, it's still spam.

Bots and Elon's bullshit aside, there's not a whole lot to be gained when you do this, so for the love of all things natural and wondrous, don't.