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you can’t put the genie back in the feed

signull.substack.com · 502 words · saved by 1 readers

the internet has a funny way of breaking things, quietly, irreversibly. it takes something scarce like knowledge, attention, intimacy, creativity & floods the system. what was once precious becomes ambient. accessible. abundant. and once that happens, in most cases there’s no going back. this is a hard truth most product people still haven’t internalized is that once the internet makes something abundant, you will likely not succeed by trying to make the same thing scarce again. but they keep trying. desperately. one profile a day. one post. one chance to reply. “designed scarcity” is the go to strategy for anyone hoping to recreate magic in a system that now feels cheapened by scale. the thinking is that artificial constraints will restore focus. bring back meaning. but the truth is brutal. the human mind doesn’t respond to artificial scarcity after it’s tasted abundance. it’s like giving someone oxygen for years, then locking them in a vacuum & saying: “breathe better.” they won’t th

you can’t put the genie back in the feed signull Mar 31, 2025 27 1 Share the internet has a funny way of breaking things, quietly, irreversibly. it takes something scarce like knowledge, attention, intimacy, creativity & floods the system. what was once precious becomes ambient. accessible. abundant. and once that happens, in most cases there’s no going back. this is a hard truth most product people still haven’t internalized is that once the internet makes something abundant, you will likely not succeed by trying to make the same thing scarce again. but they keep trying. desperately. one prof

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