My desk looks like an electronic graveyard that just exploded.

My home-lab is a chaotic shrine that is filled with half-charged devices, blinking LEDs, and enough wires to strangle a small village.

If you’re a bit like me, you know that gadgets pile up faster than unread emails. Heck! if suddenly there would be no more electrons on earth, I would be stuck with tons of dead bricks (and the universe would disintegrate btw, but that’s a minor inconvenience).

Take my latest fascination: from MeetGeek, that stalkerish note-taking assistant that is lurking in my Zoom and Teams calls, to Voicenotes, the passive-aggressive transcription app that is hogging my iPhone storage. And how about Plaud. . . who ever knew that the world needed a credit card-sized eavesdropping device?

Then there’s the freaking AI Compass, now that is a borderline transcription necklace I pretend isn’t creepy as f∩ck and needs charging every hour, and my latest purchase, Hidock, now that is an overly intrusive desktop docking station that wants to document every Teams or phone-call I make.

And each of these absurdly unnecessary devices represents my desperate need to avoid actual productivity.

And all of that, buried in shiny plastic.

. . . a picture of the clutter.

. . . I asked ChatGPT to clean up the mess a little

I see my chocolate bar I ate whole, is back, and thank you for the nuts, Chad !

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More rants after the brake:

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When friends like you, or worse, LinkedIn enthusiasts, spot this tech orgy, their first suggestion is always, “Hey, ever thought about monetizing your obsession?” Right, as if the world needs another self-appointed “tech influencer” vomiting sponsored nonsense about gadgets that nobody wants.

So I was wondering if I shouldn’t just turn my unhealthy fixation into some clickbait YouTube channel or churn out relentless reviews for affiliate commissions? Perhaps I should build a database to satisfy other gadget-addicted fools?

Because face it, passion without profit is unthinkable.

Right?

Wrong.

People seem utterly baffled that I waste time and a lotta cash on “AI” gadgets and tech trinkets that “don’t lead anywhere”. But hey, that’s precisely why they are appealing. My obsession is an act of glorious defiance against the productivity hustle cult.

We exist in a nightmarish reality where every hobby must evolve into a friggin’ side hustle.

Love to code for fun ⤳ Launch a bootcamp!

Passionate about smart home tech ⤳ Time to push sponsored smart plugs!

Even my dearly beloved AI, something I’ve genuinely enjoyed for over a decade as a hobby and for work, is constantly pushed to be monetized into another meaningless grind.

Remember when tech enthusiasm was just harmlessly geeking out?

Like spending an entire weekend setting up LAN parties, where the biggest drama involved arguing about who forgot the Ethernet cables or obsessively tweaking your custom-built PC rig to squeeze out slightly better frame rates in Quake III. Those days were purely about the joy of tinkering with tech, with zero thoughts of influencer partnerships or subscriber counts.

Or recall the simpler thrills of late-night IRC chats, when I was diving deep into arcane programming languages purely for bragging rights among fellow nerds who genuinely appreciated your pointless mastery of FORTRAN or Assembly.

And more recent, the humble AI geek who spends endless weekends messing around with machine learning models that have no commercial potential whatsoever. No groundbreaking startup pitch, no LinkedIn thought leadership bullshit, just pure joy in making a slightly smarter chatbot that no one will ever see.

I know a lot of them, and love them all.

I know their passion, their intellect.

Your intellect.

‘Cause I know YOU!

Or that small group of nerds still passionately discussing quantum computing, and are fully aware that they’ll never revolutionize the world with their theories. Their enthusiasm isn’t measured in venture funding rounds but in the sheer delight of speculative bullshit sessions.

These are my kind of people.

You are my kind of people.

They indulge in beautifully pointless endeavors.

They intentionally keep their scope limited to personal curiosity. They’re a giant middle finger to society’s relentless “scale or die” mandate.

The capitalist narrative demands every obsession produce revenue streams.

Social media compels us to broadcast our every fleeting tech flirtation. Productivity zealots shout “why automate something once when you could automate it a thousand times for maximum ROI”?

This warped ideology convinces us that staying small is a pathetic failure.

Well, f⋂ck that nonsense entirely.

Have you ever had a nerdy debate with a fellow tech geek, when someone interrupts and suggests turning it into a TED talk for clout.

Oh shit, I did that to someone yesterday.

My bad.

You share your obscure AI experiments anonymously in niche forums and on Reddit, where you inspire more genuine excitement than a viral, forgettable post on Medium or heaven forbid, Substack (barf). A local hackathon among a small group of obsessed tech misfits might generate far deeper satisfaction than any other gimmicky AI startup.

Scaling doesn’t always equate to more value.

A cozy weekend AI brainstorming session would lose all its appeal if scaled into a goddamn mega-conference filled with insufferable jargon-barfing “innovators”.

Sure, groundbreaking medical AI or beneficial educational tech deserves widespread adoption, assuming any tech company still bothers creating something genuinely beneficial instead of endlessly iterating on surveillance capitalism.

But not every tech obsession needs scaling.

Nature teaches us this*

Some species thrive by remaining specialized and avoiding dominance. Maybe your quirky AI obsession is already at its optimal inefficiency.

Screw efficiency.

Reject scalability.

Enjoying your gadgets privately, obsessively, and then moving on is the most rebellious act imaginable.

Like my desk overflowing with transcription gizmos.

Sure, I could easily turn these reviews into monetized content. But I won’t, because their uselessness is exactly why they matter.

We desperately need more tech dead-ends, and let’s embrace private projects that thrive precisely because they are pointless.

* Marc Drees – care to comment?

Signing up for the next LAN party 2025.

Marco

Oh? Did I ask you to take the survey?

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I build AI by day and warn about it by night. I call it job security. Let’s keep smashing delusions with truth. We are the chaos. We are the firewall. We are Big Tech’s worst PR nightmare.

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9. How I quit chasing every AI trend (and finally got my sh** together) | LinkedIn
10. The dark visitors lurking in your digital shadows | LinkedIn
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13. The $95 million apology for Siri’s secret recordings | LinkedIn
14. Prediction: OpenAI will go public, and here comes the greedy shitshow | LinkedIn
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17. Bill says: only three jobs will survive | LinkedIn
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