The Creator's Dilemma in the Technogarch's World

Why your work fuels the machine that’s replacing you…and what you can do about it.

You’ve been told for years that the only way to grow as a creator is to put your work out there. Start a blog. Share your insights. Be generous. Consistent. Helpful.

But what happens when that desire gets weaponized — stolen and used to wipe out your business? That’s the Creator’s Dilemma: you have to be visible to survive, but being visible feeds the very system that’s replacing you.

Now, Google has made it official.

A New Kind of Theft, Framed as Progress

On May 20, 2025, Google CEO Sundar Pichai took the stage at the company’s annual developer conference to announce a “total reimagining of Search.”

You’ve already seen AI Overviews — the paragraphs or bullet lists that show up at the top of search results, summarizing content scraped from the web. Now Google is going further. And they’re not hiding it. They’re just hoping you’re too exhausted to fight back.

“For those who want an end-to-end AI Search experience, we are introducing an all-new AI Mode.” - Sundar Pichai

According to a BBC report published this week, AI Mode is no longer a summary of the results but a replacement for them. Instead of links or lists, you’ll get a chatbot-crafted “miniature article” answering your question.

The source? Everything creators have ever published.

Bloggers, small publishers and website owners already know AI Overviews have decimated their traffic. Now, there’s every reason to believe that AI Mode will wipe out what’s left. Liz Reid, Google’s head of Search, says: “This is the future of Google Search.”

Creator? More like a ghostwriter for Google.

This is what happens when a system built on extraction finally reveals its true nature. Your articles are transformed into generic prose by a bot. Your voice is flattened into statistical averages. Your visibility is replaced with synthetic summaries. And your traffic disappears.

But here’s the catch: Google won’t link back to your content, won’t credit you, and won’t send users to your newsletter, shop, or podcast. Google wants your labor, your knowledge, and your personality. They just don’t want you.

Why?

Google’s business model has shifted from organizing the world’s information to owning the output. And that output is increasingly machine-made, but human-fed.

What Choice Do We Have?

This is the point where some people start wringing their hands and declaring it’s too late. That resistance is pointless. They believe that what we’re facing is too big, too vast, and too powerful. They say there’s nothing we can do but pack it in and accept our fate.

That’s exactly what Google is counting on.

For the past two years, Google has been training us to believe we’re powerless.

• HCU wiped out huge swaths of creator traffic.

• Core updates penalized high-ranking, small publisher sites.

• Indexing changes dropped thousands of blogs and millions of pages from the index.

Throughout it all, Google gave no clear explanation or path to recovery, and people who tried to comply saw no improvement. Those who pushed back were told their work just wasn’t good enough.

All of this has been conditioning: a slow erosion of hope, designed to make this moment feel inevitable. But that’s a lie.

How to Topple Giants

Last week, I discussed several strategies for creators to resist extraction and make content harder to scrape or learn from.

This week, I want to focus on revolt at the platform level.

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Everything You Published Became Google’s Brain

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Don’t Just Complain, Show People What’s Happening.

Start taking screenshots of AI Mode outputs that clearly echo or summarize your original work.

• In your posts, tag followers who wonder why you don’t publish more often.

• Tag your peers who are starting to struggle, too.

• Tag the Googlers and SEO “experts” who say this is a good development, that AI is the future of search.

• Hell, tag the investors and show them which way the wind outside the C-suite blows.

Drive People Off Google.

Start treating Google like the hostile force it has become. Sure, feeding their AI with misinformation is one tactic.

So is actively recommending alternate search engines like Brave, Kagi, Ecosia, or DuckDuckGo to your followers. Explain why you’re making this recommendation. Share your story about how they’re breaking the internet.

Many creators feel afraid to call out the platforms when they pull unethical crap like this. But here’s a reality check for you: if they’ve already replaced you at the top of the search page, you have nothing left to lose.

Repeat Yourself. Loudly. Daily.

Creators chase trends, especially those of us leaning into our social media audiences. We are pros at pivoting from one day's big topic to the next.

That’s part of how we got here: one day we’re outraged in a tweet, skeet, or Note. The next, we’ve moved on.

This time, keep the message going. Don’t post once and move on. Don’t whisper. They trained us to shut up, but now it’s time to retrain ourselves and each other to speak up.

Be so loud, so annoying, and so persistent that their investors start asking questions their PR teams can’t answer.

Struggle Together

You’re not alone in being wiped out by the platform you’ve been feeding. Hundreds of thousands of creators have experienced the squeeze and the disillusionment. But some of us are done accepting scraps.

Don’t assume your voice doesn’t matter. If it didn’t, you wouldn’t have an audience.

You’re a Creator. A communicator. A person with a platform.

The technogarch system is enriching itself at your expense. Refuse to keep playing along. Use your time and talent to speak up, because the future you’re saving belongs us all.

And there’s no dilemma about that.

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🛠️ Friday: The Toolkit to Fight Back

If The Creator’s Dilemma hit home, you’ll want what’s coming next:

This Friday, I’m publishing the Creator Resistance Kit — a public post (for now) packed with tools to protect your work, steer your audience away from AI-driven platforms, and push back with purpose.

Make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss it. And tell a friend so they can resist, too.