The Surveillance Generation

Phillip and Brian look into tomorrow’s creator economy, shaped by the role of AI-driven agents in commerce and attention as currency. While rising generations invisibly develop instincts for algorithmic curation, Mr. Beast’s Feastables collect dust in your local Walgreens. PLUS: We bring you along to our NRF panel discussion alongside our friends from BigCommerce.

Velocity Over Volume

Key takeaways:

• Mr. Beast on Colin and Samir: His too many failed sidequests reveal a bigger picture about the viability of creator-led trends in the long term.  
• The future of creator-driven consumer trends is agent-driven.
• Gen Alpha is a surveillance generation, and attention as currency is instinctual. 
• Commerce is not just a transaction layer but an infrastructure that connects different facets of the digital world, and is the backbone for emerging tech trends.
• [00:07:40]  “If the future of the attention economy is agentic…Do creators have some role to play in agent attention?” – Phillip
• [00:08:35] “The creator economy is a form of patronage.” – Phillip
• [00:11:35] “Gen Alpha is a surveillance generation…my children know instinctively that they’re constantly being surveilled. They give negative attention signals to things they don’t like.” – Phillip
• [00:21:10] “There’s going to continue to be bots in the world, and we are going to hate them.” – Brian
• [00:18:00] “The problem with running AI as effectively an API with a brain of its own is that it becomes completely impossible to diagnose when things go wrong. And that’s going to drive people crazy.” – Brian
• [00:22:00] “There's going to be entire categories that emerge just for creators to try to find alpha and arbitrage in the system.” – Phillip

In-Show Mentions:

• Mr. Beast, Walt Disney, and the Promise of Payoff
• @Anuatluru on X
• Kiri Masters on Agentic Shopping
• Insiders #184: Coexist: Avoiding Agentic Ghettos

Show Links:

• Check out Future Commerce on YouTube

• Check out Future Commerce+ for exclusive content and save on merch and print
• Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world
• Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce

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