Generic Is Getting Expensive

I keep thinking about how many things are getting easier to make and harder to care about.

That's the part people keep skipping.

We talk constantly about how AI lowers the cost of production. Faster drafts. Faster design. Faster edits. Faster everything. And that's true. The tools are compressing execution time in a way that would have felt absurd not long ago.

But cheaper production does not mean cheaper differentiation.

Actually, I think the opposite is happening.

As content gets easier to produce, generic positioning gets more expensive.

Not emotionally expensive. Economically expensive.

Because if you sound like everyone else, look like everyone else, and make roughly the same promises as everyone else, then all the efficiency in the world just helps you mass-produce irrelevance.

That is not a workflow win.

It's a distribution problem, a trust problem, and eventually a margin problem.

Cheap Output Changes What the Market Rewards

When good-enough execution was scarce, being polished gave you an edge.

If you could write clean copy, make decent visuals, publish consistently, and look organized, you were ahead of a huge percentage of the field. Professionalism itself was differentiating.

I don't think that's true anymore, or at least not in the same way.

Now a lot more people can hit the baseline. They can generate something competent. They can spin up landing pages, write email sequences, create brand visuals, and ship an acceptable version of an idea without a big team.

That means the baseline rises.

And when the baseline rises, the premium shifts.

It moves away from execution alone and toward judgment.

What are you choosing to say? Why this angle? Why this audience? Why this tone? Why this promise? Why does this feel like it came from you instead of from the general atmosphere of the internet?

Those questions matter more now because the old signal, basic competence, is easier to fake at scale.

Generic Used to Be Safe. Now It's Just Easy to Ignore.

A lot of people still treat generic as the low-risk option.

Use familiar language. Follow category norms. Smooth off the weird edges. Say the thing the market already knows how to process.

I understand the instinct. Generic feels safer because it minimizes the chance of rejection.

But minimizing rejection is not the same thing as creating preference.

And preference is where the money is.

If your positioning could be swapped with five competitors and nobody would notice for three paragraphs, you're not reducing risk. You're giving up pricing power, recall, and momentum before the conversation even starts.

The cost shows up everywhere.

You need more paid reach because people don't remember you. You need more repetition because nothing sticks. You need more explanation because your framing isn't doing enough work. You become easier to compare, which means easier to commoditize.

Then people call the market crowded, when really the messaging is crowded.

Those are not the same problem.

Distinction Is Starting to Behave Like Infrastructure

I don't think brands, creators, or companies need to become louder. I think they need to become more legible.

There's a difference.

Louder means more output, more channels, more urgency, more performative certainty.

More legible means I can tell what you believe, what you're for, what you're not for, and why your work takes the shape it does.

Legibility lowers decision friction.

It helps the right people identify themselves faster. It gives your ideas a spine. It makes your work easier to remember because it has a structure people can attach memory to.

And that kind of clarity compounds.

This is why I think small brands have an underrated advantage right now. They don't need seven layers of approval to sharpen a point of view. They can decide what they mean and move. In a market flooded with polished sameness, clear edges travel.

Not because they're always more correct.

Because they're easier to feel.

The New Discipline Is Not Making More. It's Deciding More.

This is the part I find most interesting.

AI does not remove the need for taste. It makes the absence of taste much more visible.

When everyone can produce, the real separator becomes selection.

What you leave out. What you repeat. What you refuse. What you build the whole message around.

That is why generic is getting expensive.

Because every vague sentence, every interchangeable claim, every borrowed brand posture now competes against a universe of equally cheap competent output.

And in that environment, sameness is not neutral. It's a tax.

A tax on attention. A tax on trust. A tax on conversion. A tax on memory.

The people who win this phase won't just be the fastest producers.

They'll be the clearest choosers.

The ones with actual edges.

The ones willing to sound specific enough to lose the wrong people.

The ones who understand that when production becomes abundant, meaning becomes the scarce thing.

And scarce things usually get more valuable, not less.