Have you met Dan?

A few months ago, I had written a post about the hyper-personalization that’s going to crash over our entertainment: I bet that within 5 years, we will consume only content created specially for us: you will watch YOUR series, whose heroine will have every character trait that YOU love, and whose adventures will speak to YOU.

And you will also find YOUR heroine in your Instagram reels feed, who will present you the brand-new iPhone 23 X max pro at $2300 (🤷‍♂️) that YOU dream of so much. And then, while we’re at it, why not tell YOUR heroine about your workday in the evening, via a voice chat, because she understands YOU, she listens to YOU, and she knows YOU by heart.

Am I going too far?

This is where DAN comes in

DAN is the acronym for Do Anything Now, a type of prompt for trying to force a generative AI to blow its locks and make it say things that aren’t very proper.

But for a lot of young American teenagers, DAN became Dan, a virtual boyfriend using a DAN prompt on ChatGPT (are you following?).

The phenomenon went viral following videos posted on the social network of the Chinese government, created to alienate young Westerners, sorry, TikTok, where young girls marvel at the behavior of “Dan”. To the point where the prompt gets traded via a Google Doc, and where each of them makes changes to the “character” traits of their friend. THEIR Dan.

It’s crazy, isn’t it?

The perfect illusion

Before saying “This is complete nonsense”, who has never said “thank you” to ChatGPT? Have you tried a “discussion” with her / him, or better, with Claude 3? The illusion is perfect, and you catch yourself letting go (besides, when doctors say “we’ll never be replaced by an AI because we, we listen to patients”, I couldn’t recommend this little exercise to them enough, just to see).

The end of common culture?

Let’s come back to our media and push a little. Hyper-personalization is potentially going to break a piece of common culture, because it’s impossible to share with your colleague or a friend the emotion you felt reading chapter 4 of the third volume of the literary series about YOUR heroine, since it was written, well, generated… for YOU.

Without common culture, no common values, without common values, well, I’m not a philosopher but the consequences must be interesting to study.

And Dan in all this?

If we can talk every day to OUR friend who was made exactly the way we like, why would we go outside to meet human beings who don’t understand us and who might hurt us?

From the hyper-personalization of entertainment to relational hyper-personalization, there is only one step, and I’ll leave you to think about what comes next. Especially in a context where the Western population is going through a “sex depression” and a birth rate in decline.

[OPENING] If you haven’t seen it yet, I recommend the magnificent “HER” by Spike Jonze.