Apologies to email newsletter subscribers who received this newsletter twice. I was not paying attention to my settings and accidentally sent my web-optimized post to my default email list. I am not trying to spam you; please forgive my human frailty.
Hello from Minneapolis! If you are part of this newsletter's Minnesota audience, this isn't for you. Keep resisting in your way, and if you need to vent or you want a direction for your anger, I am here.
It has been a couple of years since I've felt the need to write extensively about local goings-on, but here we are again. I also can't remember whether I've ever sent this newsletter on a Sunday before, but it's ready and now seems as good a time as ever.
This issue of The Content Technologist is for the American content professionals working in the age of algorithms, specifically those who have platforms and power of any kind. If you're a U.S. citizen over the age of (let's be kind) 25 and not already actively resisting, I am probably addressing you.
With kindness and fury, I beg you to prioritize your attention to the occupation of American cities by our federal government.
If you have five minutes: Understand what's happening in Minnesota right now
First, if you have not yet watched any videos, that's ok. But please take a few minutes on your Sunday to read the very good journalism from Minnesota that describes the shooting of Renee Good on January 7 and the ongoing terror campaign from DHS across the Twin Cities. I recommend keeping track of these news outlets if you are having trouble figuring out where to look:
- The Minnesota Star Tribune
- "Breaking down the videos" is an excellent piece of data-driven digital journalism based on various videos of Renee Good's murder from the past few days.
- If you would prefer to avoid video at all costs, there's "How a 40-second encounter led an ICE agent to shoot and kill a Twin Cities resident"
- The Minnesota Reformer - Start with "Defiant Vance scolds reporters over descriptions of Minneapolis ICE shooting"
- Sahan Journal - Start here: "Legal experts disagree whether use of force in ICE shooting was ‘unreasonable’" and consider, based on the content of the story, how much disagreement there appears to be. (I do not blame the Sahan Journal for the headline equivocation since, as an outlet that specifically covers immigrant communities, they are often a target from the "both sides" people.)
Understand that the above are not pieces of content created to feed the algorithm. While you may experience them through a screen or as part of a varied "media diet," they describe real events, real guns, real streets, real people. These are reported accounts of events happening in my neighborhood that may soon be happening in yours.
Experiencing a catastrophic event in real life is very different from the mediated experience. If you have never lived somewhere under military occupation, understand that saying "we're all experiencing it" isn't actually true, and that it is much worse when the major international news is in your backyard.
If you have ten minutes: Check your power and exercise your semantic muscles
For the last ten years, a refrain of "check your privilege" filled spaces of discourse and led a fair number of very smart people to stand down and listen. Most of the time, standing down and listening was a good idea! But in 2026, your mission is to check your power.
A fair number of the 850 or so regular readers of this newsletter are in positions of power. We manage and direct people, write for an audience on the internet, and own successful businesses. We create campaigns that large audiences see and pay attention to. We set AI systems up for success. We publish asset after asset after asset. We know how to make words stick.
Often, we're also shy and introverted and we need to recharge. We get the "Sunday Scaries." We want to perform at our jobs, and we don't want to get laid off. But as several of my college professors told me, directly and indirectly, your voice is only valuable if you use it at the capacity you are able.
If you're over 35, please understand that our peers are in charge of the violent invasion in Minnesota and in cities across the country. They are the classmates we avoided arguing with, but they were still in the same classrooms and study abroad programs. They are using the language of empathy, of anti-bullying, of equivocation to justify a federal officer's shooting an American citizen in the head for peacefully protesting (and then calling her a "bitch" after she died).
If you took any history or civics classes taught between the years of 1985 and 2015, you've probably learned that we have the right to free speech in the U.S. It's time to revisit the papers you wrote for those classes, at least mentally, and redevelop your vocabulary of free speech and protest.
After you've understood what has transpired over the past week, I need you to use your words and vocalize exactly what you perceive is "un-American" about this week's events. Not "it's so sad" or "this is not normal" or "this violence must end." Not "well it's been going on for a while now so I have nothing new to say." Or "well it's happening around the world."
Being a citizen of the United States and of the world means not falling for "omg what do we doooo about the broken internettttt" or "the culture is flattennneddd I hate all the feeds" or "no ethical consumption under capitalism" whining columnist bullshit. If some armchair media theorist says "We are in a war of attention," please respond with something to the effect of, "we are in a war where citizens are shot and killed for speaking up." If someone says, "Oh it's all rage-bait," respond with, "Yes, getting shot in the head and terrorizing cities, citizens, and immigrants is enraging, but I think we need to do something with that rage."
Being an adult means understanding that your actions and the words you use affect, in practical ways, the world around us. Being an adult means understanding that violent localized crackdowns across the country may one day affect your ability to freely write a newsletter and run your start-up. Yes, make sure you're healthy, fed, rested, but once you are feeling good, direct your energy toward more pressing conversations than whether Taylor Swift is a feminist.
This week, please plan to register your discontent in the spaces where you have the most power and influence. Get ready for the real life version of contrarian commenters. Practice your arguments for people who say "I see both sides!" You don't get to beg off on this one, and unless your family is in dire straits and desperately needs your income, please overcome your fear of layoffs. (You took the salary.)
If you fear losing followers because you're writing about "politics," take some time to evaluate your priorities. Your peers, who include your colleagues, should know where you stand and know that there's power in publicly expressing dissent right now.
Unless you are talking with a child, do not be afraid of being "mean" when you talk about what happened last week. Get comfortable with your anger and meanness (without being abusive to people who do not deserve it, of course). We all need to become accustomed to hearing others' opinions on our work, on affairs of civil rights, without caring whether we are "nice" or "mean" or "good" or "bad." We need to be able to take criticism of our work and our words because we are adult citizens of the world. Hurt feelings from an uncomfortable conversation are not an excuse to stop moving or a reason to injure someone.
If you do not like someone's tone or self-expression, please understand why they are mad and acknowledge it. But let them have their anger without correcting them. You can give them a hug, if they need it, and if it does not feel creepy or patronizing.
Spend a few minutes practicing your arguments. Try making a couple of withering looks in the mirror for when someone else has the floor and is defending anything about the current situation. There is nothing impolite about a dirty look during a time of semantic warfare.
Remember to breathe. And find the spaces for rejuvenation you need (yoga, breathwork, exercise, etc.) so you can keep up the argument. We have years of work ahead of us. Understand that, to some extent, you are not powerless.
Model discontent, if not dissent. If you would like practice in arguing effectively, would like to vent, or would like to share resources, I will be setting up a Discord on Friday, January 16 at 2PM to do so. Please comment on this post or fill out the contact form if you are interested and I will share the information.
If you have 30 minutes: Reevaluate your strategic priorities
If it is your job to read strategy statements, or to do content strategy, or if your title is strategy of any kind, let's say you just got a new client. Here's their strategy statement:
What do you think about it?
If your first reaction is "Wow, it's overwritten and probably AI! Send it back for a new draft," guess what! It's the final policy, and you have no choice but to read it. Whether it is AI or not doesn't matter. It is functionally a strategy statement. You can dislike how it is written as much as you want, but it's what we're using.
(Does being forced to use this statement without editing it piss you off? Too bad! It's your job to read and understand the tactical plan for the strategy statements you are handed.)
Do you need a summary? Woof, really? Your job is strategy, my friend. Have you lived through the past two decades of leadership training? Pretend you have to execute on this strategy, exactly as it is written because that is the documentation you have.
What's that, recent grads and Taylor Swift fans? This sounds like the answer to this Jeopardy question might be "What is Machiavellianism"? Sure does.
Do you want further context? Well, lucky for you, we have a multi-page PDF with an extremely "SEO content" introduction.
If you are not feeling the portable document format right now (totally get it), let's just get to the next paragraph:
They're not wrong! Strategies determine priorities. So, based on the events of the past week, what do you think "the protection of core national interests" means? You went to college. You understand words. You can figure this out.
Why yes, it is Orwellian! It's extremely creepy how they're using the language of empathy and anti-bullying rhetoric to justify a supervillain plot to rule the world. It also doesn't stray far from speech patterns that domestic abusers use.
But it's super real! It's a gunshot to the head for mouthing off.
If you create content about strategy or write about content or strategy or content strategy or digital strategy or business strategy of any kind, especially if you are active on a large opinionated social network where adults hang out, do me a solid and read and respond to this document, not in terms of its effectiveness as a definition of strategy, but in terms of the violence it implies. You don't have to write about it right this moment. But you do have to know it.
You know leaders ask questions like, "What does the best outcome look like for this strategy, and how can we make this happen?" Please think of, "What does bad look like for this strategy, and how can we stop it?" The cruelest people you've ever met are in charge.
And this time, my friends, one of those things you can do is talk to other people about what they see, with their eyes. However you can best direct your power right now is the priority.
Suggestions for long-term growth and ongoing influence
Some activities that feel more productive than calling Amy Klobuchar and are more sustainable than accidentally self-immolating because you tried to use a flame-thrower:
- Learn to structure information for semantic systems to value and process content. If you are interested in "influence" over "popularity," knowing how LLMs store and retrieve data is not a bad idea. If there's a realistic scenario in which AI as it is disappears entirely, feel free to describe how that would work, practically, but I'm pretty sure it's here.
I believe it's coincidental that LLMs are maturing at the same time as an autocrat is in power, but regardless, the autocrats love gen AI. And they will build models. We know that once a model is widely accepted (as Google is for search engines), it becomes the foundation for quality. If you can help it (and you can!), try not to let the autocracy determine America's Top Large Language Model. For the sake of language. - Collective action has more impact than individual stewing. Remember that "collective action" can just mean "find people you like working with" or "build a team." It does not mean "collective bargaining," which is for union labor negotiations. Building something alongside other people you trust, even if it's not directly related to resistance, is immensely recharging and rewarding.
- Get all up into the comments. I don't know if you heard: massive technology companies are training their large language models on the content on the open web. Crawling the open web, flawed as it is, is the best way to access a wide variety of structured textual data to train language models. Training data loves brotastical social networks like Reddit, HackerNews, and YouTube, and a healthy amount of contrarianism gums up the works when autocracy is the norm. Make a burner account if you must (although posting under your real name is liberating).
- Stop suffering fools for the sake of keeping the peace. Argue with Bari Weiss and people who manufacture consent along with her. Argue with people who admire Bari Weiss because she made it big in the creator economy. Be extremely pedantic about how The Free Press neither produces original reporting (as far as I can tell) nor controls its method of distribution and, based on its content strategy and operating model, is not a "free press."
- Tell people that they sound like sentient botulism toxins when they could write/talk about literally any subject and choose to have strong opinions on flaws in fast-casual salad eateries. Argue with people who repeat J.D. Vance and Kristi Noem, who ask us to empathize with the guy who shot her like that.
- It is ok to get angry, but the longer you can sustain productive energy for several days in a row, the better. If you do not know how to argue with these folks without getting emotional, consult a trusted leader. Or try breathwork, yoga, any of the relaxing things.
- Currently the federal government is illegally occupying Fort Snelling, the site of a historic genocide. Go use a search engine, a chatbot, and observe what shows up when you ask it questions about Fort Snelling and the word "genocide." I can't currently spend time on the semantics of how LLMs are writing history, but someone, please, observe how it changes. I'm happy to help you organize and understand the data, but my energy is best spent in other places at the moment.
- It is okay to repeat ideas you have heard elsewhere, at other points in your life, in your own words, over and over again, even if someone has had a similar idea before. No one owns that idea, and you don't have to cite that idea. You only need to be able to articulate your point of view.
They're hurting, arresting, and deporting your friends and neighbors. I am saying this as a champion of strategy: you have more power than you think to read and interpret what's happening. And these are your peers, the ones who created this ridiculous strategy. If you're in the U.S. and you're working in the media, in tech, and on the internet, it's in your backyard.
Stay safe and be loud.
Also, credit where credit is due: I've not been much of a fan of our mayor for the past 8 years, but this time Jacob Frey seems to get it.
