Made Just for You and No One Else

Lately I’ve been thinking about personalization. Not the fun kind where you get to pick your wallpaper or theme color. The algorithmic kind. The kind that quietly tunes everything in your feed to be just for you.

And yeah, I know that sounds great on paper. We all get something tailored to our tastes. Better recommendations. Higher engagement. But what happens when everything becomes so personal that there’s nothing left to share?

If AI starts generating entire shows or videos unique to each person, what happens to that shared moment? The one where we all watch the same finale at the same time and argue about it the next day. I can’t even remember the last time that happened. Maybe Game of Thrones in 2019? And even that ended in flames (pun intended).

Streaming already fractured everything. Everyone’s watching something, but no one’s watching the same thing. The closest we get now is live sports. Even award shows and elections feel fragmented across different apps and echo chambers.

It’s starting to feel like we’re trading the cultural glue for tailored dopamine hits. That hyper-personalization might feel good in the short term, but I think it’s going to leave us with fewer shared moments, and a lot more distance.

From a design perspective, this isn’t just a content issue. If every experience is customized, every brand identity starts to blur. There’s no “voice” if it changes from person to person. There’s no message if it’s split across millions of micro-messages.

I’m not saying we hit pause on AI or personalization. But I am saying we need to be really clear on what we’re giving up. And once we lose those cultural touchstones, I don’t think we get them back.

Are we okay with that?