This year I made a conscious decision not to allow ChatGPT to take over my life, let alone write my Christmas message. So here it is all written by me.
Merry Christmas, you absolute legends.🎄✨
Quick, wildly unnecessary year-end debrief from my personal North Star / operating system / vibes committee (me): I’m currently in a deeply festive state of radical gratitude, powered by oat-milk nog 🥛🎅, a ring light 💡, and the kind of self-belief you only get when you’ve spent Q4 “circling back” so hard you achieve escape velocity 🚀.
This Christmas I’m trying something new: shipping joy in an MVP format 📦😌, then iterating based on stakeholder feedback (again: you) 🤝. The tree is basically a vertical integration of sparkle 🌲✨. The lights are on a refresh cycle that suggests we’re either celebrating the birth of Christ ✝️ or about to launch a stealth-mode product called Tinsel.ai 🤖🎁. The star on top is giving “visionary leadership” ⭐️🧠, and I’ve already told it we should sync in January to align on 2026 📅🔁.
Anyway, I just want to take a moment to say: you’ve been a meaningful part of my journey this year 🫶. Not in a “synergy” way. In a real way. Like, you genuinely moved the needle on my personal KPIs: laughter 😂, sanity 🧘, and the crucial reminder that not everything needs a pitch deck or a monetisation strategy 📈🙅. (Although, if we’re being honest, I could absolutely monetise this gingerbread house 🍪💰. There’s brand equity in here.)
For Christmas, I wish you: 🎁
• low-friction joy 😇⚡️
• high-bandwidth rest 🛌📶
• a clean mental inbox 🧠🧹
• and a 2026 roadmap that somehow includes both ambition and naps 🗺️😴🔥
May your holidays be free of unsolicited opinions 🙃, broken family Wi-Fi 📵, and anyone who says, “So… what are we doing about dinner?” like it’s a governance crisis 🍽️⚖️.
Let’s reconnect in the new year when the world reboots 🔄, the calendars empty out 📆, and we can all pretend we’re going to start meditating and drinking less coffee 🧘♂️☕️😬. Until then: stay warm 🔥, stay weird 🪩, and remember — you are the product, the platform, and the entire ecosystem 🌍💻💪.
Merry Christmas. Big love. No notes. ❤️🎄
Well I wrote the prompt: Write me a particularly garrulous, aI, west coast tech bro Christmas message as a parody with lots of emoji
Merry Christmas btw, from me. Please keep at it 26. Exploring ChatGPT is great
Thank you. In my work as an artist I explore how the hallucination of AI aligns with our own consciousness. I present images that teeter between “real’ and ‘abstract’. People find all kinds of things in them. With much more memory and processing they do what the AI I used as part of the process did… when they couldn’t find an answer they made it up. I call it the Pareidolic Sublime . Difference is that every person sees different things. In one my wife saw a waterfall and my hairdresser a castle. In another a friend whose is into animals saw, well animals, a poet of great humanism saw faces. We retain at the moment something the machine doesn’t have, uniqueness of perception. These are profoundly interesting times for artists if one leans in and thinks about what all this means.
I like how you frame it as what happens when answers run out and meaning rushes in. The fact that everyone sees something different is the key difference for me. Humans bring their own history and inner noise to the image, and that still can’t be replicated. It does feel like a strange but incredibe moment for artists who are willing to sit with that tension instead of trying to resolve it.
Thank you so much John! This is fantastic. Honestly, the fact that you did write it yourself and then immediately confessed to writing the prompt makes it even better. That self awareness is the joke I didn’t know I needed!
Parody like this actually works because it knows the voice well enough to exaggerate it, not outsource it. That’s the difference between using AI as a prop versus letting it take the wheel.
Really appreciate the note and the encouragement. And genuinely, Merry Christmas to you too. Glad you’re here and glad you’re reading, it means the world to me! Keep at it in 26 as well.
Thank you very much Neural! You hit the nail on the head. Choice doesn’t disappear, it just gets quieter until people stop noticing it’s happening. And you’re right about defaults. When the friction is visible, people wake back up and start choosing again. The danger is when everything feels smooth enough that no one feels responsible anymore.
This year I made a conscious decision not to allow ChatGPT to take over my life, let alone write my Christmas message. So here it is all written by me.
Merry Christmas, you absolute legends.🎄✨
Quick, wildly unnecessary year-end debrief from my personal North Star / operating system / vibes committee (me): I’m currently in a deeply festive state of radical gratitude, powered by oat-milk nog 🥛🎅, a ring light 💡, and the kind of self-belief you only get when you’ve spent Q4 “circling back” so hard you achieve escape velocity 🚀.
This Christmas I’m trying something new: shipping joy in an MVP format 📦😌, then iterating based on stakeholder feedback (again: you) 🤝. The tree is basically a vertical integration of sparkle 🌲✨. The lights are on a refresh cycle that suggests we’re either celebrating the birth of Christ ✝️ or about to launch a stealth-mode product called Tinsel.ai 🤖🎁. The star on top is giving “visionary leadership” ⭐️🧠, and I’ve already told it we should sync in January to align on 2026 📅🔁.
Anyway, I just want to take a moment to say: you’ve been a meaningful part of my journey this year 🫶. Not in a “synergy” way. In a real way. Like, you genuinely moved the needle on my personal KPIs: laughter 😂, sanity 🧘, and the crucial reminder that not everything needs a pitch deck or a monetisation strategy 📈🙅. (Although, if we’re being honest, I could absolutely monetise this gingerbread house 🍪💰. There’s brand equity in here.)
For Christmas, I wish you: 🎁
• low-friction joy 😇⚡️
• high-bandwidth rest 🛌📶
• a clean mental inbox 🧠🧹
• and a 2026 roadmap that somehow includes both ambition and naps 🗺️😴🔥
May your holidays be free of unsolicited opinions 🙃, broken family Wi-Fi 📵, and anyone who says, “So… what are we doing about dinner?” like it’s a governance crisis 🍽️⚖️.
Let’s reconnect in the new year when the world reboots 🔄, the calendars empty out 📆, and we can all pretend we’re going to start meditating and drinking less coffee 🧘♂️☕️😬. Until then: stay warm 🔥, stay weird 🪩, and remember — you are the product, the platform, and the entire ecosystem 🌍💻💪.
Merry Christmas. Big love. No notes. ❤️🎄
Well I wrote the prompt: Write me a particularly garrulous, aI, west coast tech bro Christmas message as a parody with lots of emoji
Merry Christmas btw, from me. Please keep at it 26. Exploring ChatGPT is great
Thank you. In my work as an artist I explore how the hallucination of AI aligns with our own consciousness. I present images that teeter between “real’ and ‘abstract’. People find all kinds of things in them. With much more memory and processing they do what the AI I used as part of the process did… when they couldn’t find an answer they made it up. I call it the Pareidolic Sublime . Difference is that every person sees different things. In one my wife saw a waterfall and my hairdresser a castle. In another a friend whose is into animals saw, well animals, a poet of great humanism saw faces. We retain at the moment something the machine doesn’t have, uniqueness of perception. These are profoundly interesting times for artists if one leans in and thinks about what all this means.
I like how you frame it as what happens when answers run out and meaning rushes in. The fact that everyone sees something different is the key difference for me. Humans bring their own history and inner noise to the image, and that still can’t be replicated. It does feel like a strange but incredibe moment for artists who are willing to sit with that tension instead of trying to resolve it.
Thank you so much John! This is fantastic. Honestly, the fact that you did write it yourself and then immediately confessed to writing the prompt makes it even better. That self awareness is the joke I didn’t know I needed!
Parody like this actually works because it knows the voice well enough to exaggerate it, not outsource it. That’s the difference between using AI as a prop versus letting it take the wheel.
Really appreciate the note and the encouragement. And genuinely, Merry Christmas to you too. Glad you’re here and glad you’re reading, it means the world to me! Keep at it in 26 as well.
Thank you very much Neural! You hit the nail on the head. Choice doesn’t disappear, it just gets quieter until people stop noticing it’s happening. And you’re right about defaults. When the friction is visible, people wake back up and start choosing again. The danger is when everything feels smooth enough that no one feels responsible anymore.