the algo is not broken, your content is stuck in the past

I was standing at the fake-marble counter of my favorite local café, waiting for my iced flat white.

My girlfriend thinks I'm insane. Iced flat whites in January. She's convinced I have a temperature regulation disorder.

Anyway.

I'm staring at my phone while the barista does his thing, and I see a message pop up in a WhatsApp group I'm in with some founder friends.

"These new algos are trash. It's not worth posting anymore. Noone ever sees my shit."

It was a founder I've known for a couple years.

He has been posting consistently for 3 years and saw success using it for growth of his business.

I clicked through to his LinkedIn and X.

And there it was.

The same carousel template everyone was using in 2023. Bold text. Swipe arrows. "5 Tips For..." headline. The whole thing looked like it was made in Canva three years ago. Because it probably was.

I felt bad for him. But I also knew exactly what was coming next.

He'd post a few more times. Get frustrated and then quietly disappear.

I've watched this happen a dozen times now. 

People who started at the same time as me. People who were way more talented than me. 

And every single time, they blame the algorithm and changing platforms.

But here's the thing nobody wants to hear:

The algorithm is fine.

The game just changed.

Your content just doesn't connect anymore.

My friend didn't fail because social media hates him. He failed because the game moved and he stood still.

I've spent the last few weeks thinking about this. What's changing and what’s dying. 

Here's my take on where content is heading in 2026 - and what I'm personally changing so I don't end up ranting in a WhatsApp group bitching about how nothing works anymore:

1. pure education creators will stop making money

Last week I needed to learn how to create Ad retargeting campaigns with Meta. Found a 22-minute YouTube tutorial. 

Pasted the link into Gemini and had my answer in 10 seconds.

Didn't watch a single frame.

YouTube is building this in as a feature now. They're actively helping people skip your videos.

They get the answer without watching, never see your face, never click your offer. 

This is why education-only creators need to add a layer of their actual life. 

Your weird quirk of drinking beer with ice cubes. 

The story of how your science project volcano exploded and turned your grandma's garage into Hiroshima 2.0.

People need a reason to watch YOU instead of just asking Claude what you said.

If they're only coming for information, they'll stop coming

2. content creation and coding will merge

Claude Code is going mainstream.

Soon we'll be running multiple AI content agents at the same time. Different brand voices, different tasks, different models all working in parallel.

Claude Code becomes Claude Content. 

Content creator becomes a storytelling orchestrator.

If you're a creator and you ignore this as a fad, you'll pay the price. The people who learn to orchestrate AI agents will out-produce everyone else by 10x.

What I’m doing right now:

I’ve started to do 90% of my work (content, landing pages, seo research) in Claude Code.

It’s the single most impactful change I made in the last year.

I’m going to run a workshop where I teach how to leverage claude code for marketing as a non-technical person. I use it now to run multiple content agents at the same time.

I’ll share how you can turn your marketing playbook into claude skills that agents can use.

I’ll also share all the Claude skill files that I have created for myself, so you can just plug-n-play my proven marketing playbooks.

Spots will be limited, pre-register your interest here (already 200 people signed up).

3. courses will die, on demand AI info products will replace them

people don't finish courses. Completion rates are embarrassing.

Every time I look at my own course graveyard, I feel bad about all the money I paid.

But what if your knowledge was available 24/7 as an AI that people could just ask questions to?

That's where it's heading.

Your expertise as a product that actually gets used. Not a curriculum that sits in someone's Teachable account forever.

If you're selling info products in 2026:

start thinking about how to turn your knowledge into a trained model or interactive tool.

Learn how to create Claude Skills from your teaching materials. 

(I will share more on this topic soon).

4. people will become blind to unedited AI slop

I can't scroll LinkedIn anymore without seeing it.

Every post has the same cadence. The same arrows (->). The same "No X. No Y. Just XYZ." pattern

When I see it now, my brain ignores the post like my crushes ignored me in high school.

Your audience does the same.

If you copy-paste from ChatGPT without heavy editing, people file you as "NPC creator" and move on. 

You need a model trained on your writing. Or you need to actually write yourself.

If not you’ll just slowly slide into irrelevancy without even knowing why.

5. long-form will have a massive comeback

We're in a trust recession. Everyone's been burned by gurus selling dreams and AI slop flooding every feed.

Long-form is the antidote.

2 hours with someone on a podcast builds something that 500x 15-second clips never will. The more time someone spends with you, the more they trust you.

Most creators won't do long-form because it's hard. That's exactly why it works. If you do the hard thing, you get rewarded.

I'm going heavy on newsletters, X articles, long-form YouTube, live streams. 

Takes longer to make but it actually compounds.

(Especially X articles are favored by the algorithm right now, go try them!)

6. AI video quality will explode and nobody will care it's AI

The first full AI mini-series will dominate on Netflix this year.

And nobody will care that it's AI. They'll care if the story is good.

The human advantage stops being "I made this with my hands." 

It’s knowing what's actually interesting. Having a point of view worth watching.

That's much harder to automate than making the thing itself.

This is why I keep sharpening my blade as a storyteller. 

The creative skill of coming up with great ideas is what matters now. 

The execution is getting cheaper by the day.

7. the only content that survives is content that requires YOU

Ask yourself: why can only I make this?

If you can't answer that, you're replaceable.

It needs to be your weird experience. The thing that only makes sense coming from you.

For me it's the weird combo:

solopreneur, dad of a newborn, moved away from my home country, ex-music producer who knows the creative hustle. All of that shapes how I see things. 

Never post anything where you don't add your unique perspective. 

If anyone could make the same content, it doesn't matter that you made it.

summed up, what I'm doing in 2026:

• hosting my own IRL meetups

• weekly build-in-public video on X and YouTube

• one deep-dive vlog per month (higher production)

• long-form everything: newsletters, X articles, substack, youtube

• Keep on improving and training my own writing models (might productize) 

• using Claude Code as my content OS, running multiple agents in parallel

• no more courses - if I sell knowledge, it's a trained AI or software

I'm writing this on day 18 of being sick but i’m FINALLY getting better.

I’ve been basically useless since New Year's Day. The kind of flu where you go through a tissue box per hour and your nose looks like a tomato.

As a free bonus I got a gut infection once the viral cold was over. Yeay!

The good thing:

I used the time to reflect and to plan my 2026 strategy.

Now its time for action.

See you next week.

Ole

P.S.

P.S. If the Claude Code section got you curious, I'm running a live workshop on setting this up claude code for content/ marketing. No coding required. You'll get my exact skill files to copy into your setup. 200+ people already signed up, spots are limited. Pre-register so you’ll be able to grab a spot once it goes live.