The Algorithm Has Fallen. The Guy Who Knows a Guy Reigns Eternal.
Remember when Google felt like a miracle? Like magic? If you grew up in a world without the internet and search engines, you felt pretty darn lucky. You typed in a question, and you got information. It could link you to answers about the capital of New Hampshire, who won Super Bowl IV and whether the guy who asked you out committed any crimes that made the newspaper. It was great. Now it feels … not so great. Not as reliable. For example, there was a time when you could go on Google, and the search results would not suggest that you should eat rocks. Which is a thing that happened. Google’s AI Overview took a reasonable search query from someone hankering for some rocks and responded with the confidence of your Uncle Jim after eight Keystone Lights.
You have to appreciate the attempt at balance. “Some” say that eating pebbles is a bad idea – because, you know, given modern sensitivities, you really do have to look at both sides of the eating pebbles issue.
The search giant used to primarily organize its results by ranking links according to quality and crowning champs. Good info ranked high: The Wall Street Journal. Bad info ranked low: Craig’s Baller Street Journal. Now Google gives you something called “AI Overview,” which according to AI Overview itself: “Are summaries of information generated by artificial intelligence (AI) that appear in Google Search results. They are designed to provide a quick overview of a topic by combining information from multiple sources.” Is that true? I don’t know. It’s a summary of information. Meant to provide a quick overview. The next time I have to admit I am wrong to my wife, I am going to tell her, “I was merely generating a summary of information. Please consider multiple perspectives before rejecting my findings.”
Here is a headline from The Verge documenting another summary of information:
AI Overview recommended adding a 1/8 cup of non-toxic glue to pizza sauce “to give it more tackiness.”
In my culture, this is a war crime.
The snack rocks and the pizza glue, to be fair, appear to be edge cases. It is probably your experience that AI Overview has never told you to eat pebbles (which is your call, but only after listening to good arguments made by both sides) or maybe it never told you to put glue in your pizza (my Italian grandmother just punched a hole through her coffin and is clawing her way to the surface), but you may have noticed other factors.
1. Google can’t find what you are looking for
This happens most often when I am searching for useful information about local businesses. The results are so poor I am forced to look stuff up ON FACEBOOK. It is important to note that Facebook is NOT AT ALL set up for search. Facebook is set up to give you JUST enough things you want to see (photos of loved ones, friends’ accomplishments, videos of yacht fails) in order to keep you coming back so it can fill your feed with products it thinks you will like based on the online consumer behavior of your closest friends and family whom Facebook is obviously tracking. The search function on Facebook is blech, and the app MIGHT be listening to you in your house, but at least it isn’t luring you to dropship sites for Chinese-made surveillance equipment that I am TOTALLY sure won’t spy on you.
2. You say forget it and go straight to Reddit
Reddit is the Wild West of the legitimate Internet, and it says a lot that so many of us are like, I could Google to find out why my toes turned green overnight, but I’m going to roll the dice in r/medicaltoemysteries and see what user/DankCryptoBro has to say about my symptoms.
3. You ask Siri
You don’t really know what you’re getting, but at least Siri is a voice, which is kind of like a person, which means you have someone to blame if she’s wrong.
HUSBAND: Don’t blame me. I asked Siri.
WIFE: Phil, it takes WAY more ducks to kill a lion!
LION: (BURPS FEATHERS) Your house belongs to me now.
We could all lament – as Internet experts so politely call it – the enshittification of yet another online platform, or we can do something. For the purposes of aiming this newsletter toward some type of a conclusion, I say we do something. What we can do is turn back to our roots. To a world without Google. And take it back to ‘97. When we relied on time-tested ways to get information, like physical dictionaries, encyclopedias, maps and libraries. We used reference materials so giant and cumbersome they could smooth bent baseball cards or be used as fortification against the Germans. And when we needed a recommendation that couldn’t be found in any official source of information, when we needed something better than the phone book, we always had a place we could turn. We had The Guy Who Knows a Guy.
Quick side note: I use the word Guy a lot here. Guy 1 is the guy who knows a guy. Guy 2 is the guy who Guy 1 knows. I will refer to them both as guys, but it is important for you to know that both Guy 1 or Guy 2 could be a Gal, but we don’t say Gal as a society, so I will say Guy because I prefer connecting with readers using common parlance more than I enjoy repeatedly writing Guy/Gal, which would take us both out of the moment and ruin this beautiful thing we have going here.
The Guy Who Knows a Guy – see how that just flows – was once a prominent figure in families and neighborhoods. A powerful force. Yelp in a leather jacket. His expertise was measured not in app reviews but in the fact that everyone you know said the same name when you needed something. Don’t worry about why he has a suspiciously vast network of specialists. None of your concern. Some questions are better left unanswered. All you needed to know was he’s the guy. Need a mason? A deal on topsoil? New driveway? A shortstop for your softball team? HVAC? A piano teacher who connects with your daughter through the power of hip-hop? He’s got a guy.
And he never steered you wrong. Not once. The Guy Who Knows a Guy is a human AI built on decades of favors, golf, beer, poker and mutually assured satisfactory outcomes. If anyone let him down before, they were on the outs. He steered no more customers their way, and they lost business. He made and broke entire economies. When he gave you a phone number, you called and dropped your guy’s name, and you got the best deal and best customer service of your life. Searching online for something is maybe helpful. Hearing the phrase, “Tell him I sent you” changes everything.
Much has been written about the follies of Silicon Valley, but maybe the real problem is that they’re just a bunch of guys who don’t know a guy and they’re wasting time, talent and treasure trying to recreate that which nature has already perfected. Tech dudes are trying to replace thousands of years of socially tested knowledge hierarchies with a “summary of information” that actually tells people to eat rocks. The Guy Who Knows a Guy would never recommend you eat rocks. He knows a rock guy, but those rocks are purely for residential landscape beautification, never for dining.
I have a Guy Who Knows a Guy, and I’m glad to know him.
Nick.
When we bought our death house a few years ago, and I needed a guy every two months to fix some impending catastrophe, Nick always knew a guy.
For the purpose of bringing this newsletter to a merciful conclusion, I asked Nick his secret.
How come you know so many guys?
He said his grandfather knew a lot of guys, and his father knew a lot of guys, and now he knows a lot of guys, because the family is into rental properties, which I have to admit is a real plus. It made knowing guys a family tradition.
“Most of the guys I know and use are friends, family, or family friends,” he said. “When one guy works out, and does a good job, I always ask him if he knows another trade. Of course, you need to have backups.”
Then he added, knowing I could never resist: “If you need a funny article written, I know a guy.”
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Hilarious. I have a bunch of rentals. I am GUY1.
The implicit message here being that never, under any circumstances, do you ask Alexa.