You Are Not a Content Machine

Please leave your fingerprints all over your work.

The last few months, a lot of great writers have been calling out the rise of AI-generated slop. The incoming flood of decent-enough content produced from just a few prompts is inevitable after all.

And two words keep coming up in those conversations:

1. Taste — the refined ability for one person to filter out the bad stuff, consuming and producing only real, top-notch work.

2. Craft — the discipline one puts into the work, to build with care and conviction, and make something beautiful.

Both are important.

But I want to add a third word to the mix — maybe the most important one to me moving forward:

Touch.

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Don't Make Shit For An Audience

Touch is the reason something stops you in your tracks and makes you feel more deeply.

It’s the joke only a single friend might understand. The handwritten note. It’s the detail that didn’t need to be there, but was. And you noticed it.

It’s also what separates customized from personal.

Personalized content is retention tactic.

Touch is a deeply intimate, intentional connection.

It’s similar to craft in that it requires deep care and emotion, but different in its intent. It’s directly reflects the creator.

Touch rewards the recipient in a way that scale never can.

It makes you feel seen because you are seen.

And that’s the bar now — not “is it good,” but “does it feel like someone cared.”

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You’re Not A Content Machine

Touch isn’t just a gift for your audience. It’s also a gift for yourself.

Adding your personal touch will always slow you down.

And maybe that’s what stops you from turning into a machine that churns out good-enough content.

It’s writing so your mom asks you about it.

It’s making something your friends can love or hate on you for.

It’s the joy of settling a pointless debate with a newsletter, or spending hours building a pointless little easter egg in your app because you know one person might see it.

You can’t fake that for likes (well maybe you could, but I can’t)

And you shouldn’t want to.

Because when you optimize for everyone all the time, you end up truly resonating with no one.

But when you make something for your best friend? For your partner? For a stranger you admire? Hell, even just for yourself.

You end up making something honest. Ironically, it’s something more people end up liking anyway.

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Petey’s Touch 🤌🏼

I’ve been writing here every week for almost a year.

Not to go viral. But to work on getting my voice and work out there.

And it’s already paid off in ways that don’t look like this emoji: 📈

It’s sparked conversations with people like

Daniel Hunter

,

Johnathan Dodson

, and

Kexin Cha

, new friends in adjacent fields!

It’s let my friends like Joe, Los,

Liz

, and others follow along with my work every week and comment on it here on Substack.

It’s opened new windows into my work and brain for my family, my girlfriend, and the people closest to me. No need to explain everything over dinner in a crowded restaurant or a quarterly FaceTime call.

That’s not just craft. That’s not just taste.

That’s touch.

And no, I don’t always get it right.

Some weeks the writing is ass (according to my Pops, every week the writing could be better).

Other weeks the topics might not resonate..

But it’s always honest and always Pete. And I think that’s the real differentiator across the board moving forward for all creatives.

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Get Your Hands Dirty

In a world where it’s easier than ever to be hands-off, it’s more important than ever to get your hands dirty.

Tools will get better.

Soon you’ll be able to auto-generate a feature-length film, a love letter, a gut-wrenching break-up song, maybe even your family’s Christmas card.

But it’ll still feel hollow if there’s no real story underneath. If it didn’t come from a lived experience, a moment you actually cared about.

Your taste will make it beautiful.

Your craft will make it solid.

But your touch will make it unforgettable.

So yeah — let the machines help. Use the tools. Speed things up where it makes sense.

But don’t forget to leave your fingerprint.

Add your touch.

What I Did This Week — Windows

Wanted to share a small win from a busy week. I had managed to get a piece of art working across browser windows. This functionality will serve as a foundation for a much larger interactive piece I am working on.

I had long been inspired by Entangled by Bjørn Staal to create a piece that works across browser windows, and after playing around for a bit, I was delighted to finally get a version of my own work doing the same.

A screenshot of Entangled from Bjørn’s website, one of my favorite works of art.

Something Beautiful — Kasse II

Came across this piece by Frank Lepold. One of these pieces that takes a familiar structure in sheet music and completely turns it on its head.

It’s madness but it’s lovely.