The Extraction Machine is Running Hot
... and your creative instincts are its fuel
You can smell it if you pause long enough. That faint, scorched scent behind every trend-chasing post, every viral video that feels just slightly hollow? That is the extraction machine—running hot, turning once-vivid creative minds into content mulch. Churning originality into sameness and attention into dollars.
And the tragedy?
Most creators blame AI.
Or ignorance to copyright.
Or lazy lawmakers.
What if the real problem isn’t out there at all? What if it’s us—still clinging to an outdated economic fairytale about how creativity is supposed to function?
We were taught that originality would shield us. That if we worked hard, made something truly “new,” poured in the hours, we will be rewarded. That our content had moats. And that moats mattered.
But now we live in a world where moats are filled with cheap recombination. Where every new idea is a prompt away from becoming infinite. And where the true currency is not originality—it is flow. Control of flow. Control of narrative. Control of attention.
That is the real shift. It hurts—but it also opens the door to something radically new.
A Misaligned System: Why the Old Creative Economy is Collapsing
AI is not killing creativity. It is killing the illusion that creativity, on its own, was ever fairly valued.
When machines can synthesize your best ideas in milliseconds and re-package them at greater scale than you ever could—the economic value of effort collapses. Time, novelty, even craft… all trend toward zero in market terms unless wrapped in a controlled context.
We have seen this before: MP3s unbundled albums. Social feeds unbundled authorship. And now, AI is unbundling the act of creation itself.
If you are still measuring your creative worth in units of originality, you are holding a map to a landscape that no longer exists.
Designing for Leverage: The Strategic Creator’s Mindset
Copyright is a ghost—a legal tall tale built for printing presses and vinyl, where scarcity was physical and traceable. It has likely always only worked in favor of the distributors and it certainly does not work in a probabilistic world of latent diffusion.
Yes, reforms may come. But even perfect legislation cannot rewind what culture has already normalized: recombination is the default, authorship has blurred beyond recognition, and infinite content as backdrop.
The smart move is therefore not defense of the hypocritical past—it is design!
Creative leverage now comes from how well you design systems of meaning. Your workflows. Your aesthetic. Your taste filters. Your human context adds the value.
Creators who thrive will not just “produce.” They will architect experiences. They direct flows. They become cultural routers, not just artists.
AI-native creators are no longer a victim. They are orchestrators. They build with the machine, not against it.
Platforms are Parasites: Addictive, Fragile, Dependent
Here is the part the billionaires owning the platforms will never admit to us, their investors and the lawmakers: Without creators, they are empty shells. Algorithms are no culture. They remix culture. But what they remix comes from us!
If creators disappear, platforms collapse. Remember Friendster, MySpace, Google+, Vine, Twitter? Their value lies not in code—it lies in the illusion of relevance. And relevance only survives if someone still shows up with something new to say.
This means you have leverage. But only if you stop behaving like a commodity.
Fighting Back: Creator Strategies in the AI Age
Identity over Output
Your brand is your moat. AI can fake your style, but not your story.Community as Firewall
Build micro-audiences. Trade virality for intimacy. Treat access as a privilege, not a funnel. Do not let platforms restrict your access to your audience!Curation as Power
Be a sense-maker. The world doesn’t need more “content,” it needs guidance. Interpretation. Taste.AI as Scale Engine
Use it to leap formats, batch ideas, cross mediums. Create once, deploy everywhere.Treat Platforms Like Tools, Not Homes
Never forget: they rent you visibility. Don not build your creative life on rented land.Build Creative Infrastructure
Embrace federated tools, smart licensing, provenance layers. Your creative stack matters as much as your message. Own your stack!
Treat platforms like airports, not homes. You use them to take off—not to live inside!
From Regression to Reconfiguration
This is not the apocalypse of art. It is the end of one particular economic container for it. And this is maybe the greatest chance in decades! It is the chance for creative minds to thrive under new paradigm and to build better models for prosperity.
The future will belong to creators who think in systems. Creators who understand that value is no longer just in what they create—but in how it moves, how it is felt, and how it connects humans.
The battle is not against AI.
It is against invisibility.
Against platform-led flattening.
Against becoming replaceable by acting replaceable.
So let the machine run.
Just don not feed it passively.
Instead, learn its gears—and build your own.
The creators who thrive will not be the ones who shout the loudest. They will be the ones who build ecosystems that are louder than any single post.
And maybe, if enough of us get this right—That smell in the air?
It will no longer be the fumes of the extraction engine, but a real fire, burning.
This time, it burns for us, not burning us out.
Andreas, What a fantastic article! I am so thrilled to have read it, and I read it multiple times.
I love your emphasis on creating ecosystems, and also on this idea of de-coupling our sense of creative 'worth' from 'originality.'
“Treat platforms like airports, not homes. You use them to take off—not to live inside!” Love it! Great information here this one’s a keeper. Thank you 🙏