Welcome to the New Renaissance
- Rich Washburn
- Nov 16, 2025
- 3 min read
The good news is: if you’re producing AI slop and vibe-coded trash… you’re already here.
Let’s not sugarcoat it — the internet right now is flooded with junk.AI-generated slop. Vibe-coded “masterpieces.” Instagram philosophers with diffusion filters and Canva quotes. Every feed looks like the world’s biggest art school critique, and half of it feels like someone just learned where the “generate” button lives.
But here’s the thing: that noise? That chaos? That’s the sound of the future being born.
We’ve been here before.
Remember GeoCities? Remember MySpace?
Remember when everyone suddenly became a web designer — pasting animated GIFs, neon backgrounds, and auto-playing music onto their personal corner of the internet?It was hideous. It was beautiful. It was ours.
Or take YouTube — when it first launched, it was pure randomness. Cats. Lip-syncs. Keyboard mash chaos. It was like humanity dropped a camcorder into the void. Nobody had a clue what it was for. Fast forward: YouTube is now the largest educational platform on Earth. We built YouTube University out of the ashes of webcam weirdness.
Same pattern, every time. First comes the chaos, then comes the clarity.
This Time, It’s Bigger
But here’s the difference — this one isn’t just another medium. It’s not video. It’s not social. It’s everything.
AI isn’t a tool; it’s a partner. And unlike every collaborator you’ve ever had — it will never say, “You’re going too fast.”It doesn’t get tired. It doesn’t lose focus. It doesn’t need permission.The only limitation left in the room is you.
That’s the terrifying part — and the exhilarating part.Because this technology is a mirror. It doesn’t create brilliance out of nothing; it reflects whatever you bring to it.If you feed it laziness, you’ll get slop.If you feed it curiosity, you’ll get wonder.If you feed it obsession, you’ll get legacy.
Right now, the world is collectively learning how to talk to its reflection.
The Global Classroom
What you’re seeing online — the endless stream of weird outputs, vibe-coded “art,” text experiments, and AI “inspirations” — that’s not trash.That’s tinker time.
Everyone’s learning where the knobs are, what the levers do, how the machine thinks.Every prompt is an experiment. Every bad image, every half-written poem, every uncanny valley face — it’s all part of a massive, public classroom.
We are witnessing the largest distributed learning event in human history.The birth of co-creation at scale.
From Access to Agency
The Renaissance we’re stepping into isn’t about access — it’s about agency. You don’t need permission to make anything anymore. No degree. No studio. No budget.
If you want to paint, you can start today — and an AI will teach you technique as you go.If you want to build an app, design a logo, write a song, produce a film, you can. Instantly.Your curiosity is now your credential.
We’ve never had that before. Not at this scale. Not this personal.
The Mirror and the Message
This is what makes the moment holy — and messy. AI isn’t just amplifying creativity; it’s revealing it. It’s not replacing artists; it’s exposing who’s actually willing to be one.
For the first time in history, we’re building with something that reflects us back — faster, louder, clearer.That’s why this feels overwhelming. That’s why the output looks like chaos. Because it’s us, learning in public.
This isn’t the death of creativity. It’s the public rehearsal for the next civilization.
So Go Make Your Slop
Go make the weird thing. The cringe thing. The thing you don’t even know how to name yet.Because the people who are experimenting now — the ones brave enough to create through the noise — will be the ones defining what comes next.
You are not behind. You are not lost in the noise. You are the noise.And that’s where every renaissance begins.
TL;DR: Don’t be afraid of the AI slop. It’s not failure — it’s the first draft of the future.This moment will never happen again. Show up for it.
Comments