Friction is the future

Why biology, not nostalgia, drives the "anti-AI" shift, and how friction becomes your competitive advantage in 2026.

art by Gerhard Richter

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This is the second part of a series speaking to my personal marketing and human behavior predictions for this year, so if you want to see the subsequent posts, make sure you’re subscribed!

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After digesting a mountain of 2026 predictions, I feel like the ”AI is out, human is in” take is already becoming a dated observation (and that’s fine - it doesn’t make it any less relevant!)

We know people are tired of AI. We see the backlash taking place.

But if you want to actually predict the future of marketing, you have to look past the “vibe shift” and look at economics of attention.

You hear the term “history repeats itself” constantly. In marketing, I say that consumers repeat themselves.

Biology informs our habits - and when an environment becomes oversaturated with one thing, the human brain naturally craves the opposite.

So then, predicting the future isn’t some magical psychic quality (I wish it was) - it’s about having the ability to identify scarcity.

In 2024 and 2025, the market became saturated with perfection. So inevitably in 2026, the market will correct itself by demanding organic friction.

Let’s talk about how the pendulum works, and why we’re swinging toward imperfections now and in the future.

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The history of the pendulum

To understand where we’re going, just look at last 70+ years. The industry’s creative output is ALWAYS dictated by a pendulum swinging between control and chaos.

• 1950s: polished, homogenized, perfect families

• 60s/70s: the swing to grit, rebellion, and counter culture

• 2010s: “clean girl” aesthetic, the perfectly curated grid, millennial pink walls

• 2020s: grunge revival, the “photo dump,” and now, the anti AI aesthetic

AI didn’t create this drastic “change” in our behavior, despite what some people might think. Instead, it just pulled the pendulum back to the extreme right (perfection), which triggered a necessary rebellion to the left (messiness).

The inflation of perfection

Because AI has democratized “perfect,” perfection has suffered from hyper inflation. it’s now…kind of worthless?

In 2015, a flawless Instagram photo signaled status, taste, and effort. There were truly no possible shortcuts toward creating that kind of content at scale.

In 2026, a flawless image signals that there’s some kind of automation involved.

Now if skin texture looks too smooth, we assume it’s a filter. If copy reads too grammatically perfect, we assume it’s ChatGPT. If a video is too polished, we assume it’s a deepfake.

So where does the value go? It goes to friction. Blurriness, typos, bad lighting, and raw texture are now just CAPTCHAs for reality. As it stands right now, they’re the only way we can verify that a human was ACTUALLY involved.

The face of 2026 (i.e. bio signatures)

Interestingly enough, this shift from perfection to friction will also show up, quite literally, on our faces.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the iconic book Making Faces by Kevyn Aucoin from the 90s. If you’re a millennial, you remember seeing it as a coffee table book everywhere - it was THE book about unique faces, features, and the makeup that enhances them.

But for the last decade, we’ve been chasing “Instagram Face”, e.g. fillers, filters, and symmetry.

So as I noted above, looking “perfect” will no longer be the goal, because looking perfect now creates a psychological distance. It assimilates you with the bots.

So the pendulum swings back to bio signatures. Yes - micro expressions, crows feet, smile lines, chipped teeth, gray hairs, etc. These features will signal that you’ve experienced things that an LLM hasn’t.

Faces will be like the canvas for your human experience - a beautiful portrayal of stories, memories, and just living life that cannot be recreated.

The reversal of enshittification

This rejection of “perfect” isn’t just happening to our faces…it’s also happening to our relationship with brands as well.

You’ve likely heard the term “enshittification” - platforms and brands making their experience worse to extract maximum value from users (more ads, more algorithms, less connection). But I’m already starting to see this pendulum swing from extraction to nurturing.

You might’ve seen Coke’s recent holiday campaign, which was generated entirely by AI. It was technically “perfect,” but it was emotionally dead. I was bored. It was expected, and as expected, it became another brand peacocking its efficiency to shareholders while alienating consumers.

On the contrary, Polaroid anticipated this shift perfectly, way back last summer. Their campaign celebrated graininess, physical media, and the inability to “undo” a photo. They leaned into the permanence and imperfection of reality.

If brands want to get ahead in 2026, they need to stop chasing efficiency and start chasing the inefficiency of being human as a way to nurture and connect.

Inefficiency is the new luxury

So how do you operationalize all of this as a founder or brand?

Well, in a world where I can generate 1,000 emails in a second, a single handwritten note becomes a luxury good. Why? Because it represents the one resource AI cannot replicate: human time.

“Doing things the hard way” is about to earn brands and creators massive respect.

• Instead of a mass digital invite, it’s a physical card

• Instead of mass seeded PR packages to 500 influencers, it’s 10 extremely curated packages based on deep research of that person’s ACTUAL life

• Instead of a flawless AI avatar, it’s a founder showing up on video with messy hair and a real opinion

This is the core of what I talked about months ago, what I’m calling this greater movement around slow marketing. In an automated world, doing things slowly is now the ultimate flex.

What comes next?

Smart brands and founders in 2026 will use AI for the boring stuff (backend, data sorting, the logistics, etc.) But the good ones will aggressively remove AI from the consumer-facing experiences, acknowledging the above.

But remember: the pendulum never stops.

Right now, the goal is friction. We crave that messy, raw, and human experience because we’re drowning in synthetic perfection.

However if history (and consumer psychology) holds true, this phase won’t last forever.

Eventually, “messy” will become performative. And when the world becomes too chaotic and unpolished, we’ll crave the structure and polish once again.

But that’s a problem for 2030. For this year, the strategy is clear: prove you’re real.