juar.eth 🦉

I’m not sure how others feel, or better said, how much they feel. I’m not sure what they feel, or when. So I can only talk about how I do, and I’m a person that feels insecurities about many things. Again, I’m not sure if more or less than you do, but I have some, and that’s something that is always on my mind. I’ve always had them and, for the majority of my life, I didn’t fully understand them. It was some years ago when I started realizing that these insecurities were probably my biggest strength, one of the things that mercilessly forced me into action, into actually changing things. It pushed me forward up to a point where inertia kept moving me, either through social inertia telling me who I was, or simply because sometimes what you’ve done in your past is what others assign to you, regardless of whether it is true or not.

It’s a bit tough to recognize this, but that inertia took me to where I am. And going back to those insecurities, as I have grown up, the pile of them has kept growing, all while this Sisyphus stayed at the skirt of the mountain, looking at the top growing in front of his eyes. And now AI arrives, and I’ve started seeing that mountain doing weird things, changing shape, to the point where it feels upside down. Do you know what that means? I don’t. But I know it is confusing, and that alone is reason enough to do something about it, or the anxiety about my big pile of insecurities might fall directly on my head.

Let me go back a bit, to where the mountain started growing, to the inertia. Only a few people know that during my early adulthood I suffered from a lot of impostor syndrome. In a way, people were putting me on a pedestal that I didn’t think I deserved. “You are the future of Spain!”, “I’m sure in some years you’ll be a great entrepreneur” or the good ol’ “Yeah, but not everybody is like you, Carlos!”. Lots of good things were said about me, all the while my head couldn’t fully believe them, so the only way not to disappoint those people was working really hard to make sure I didn’t. I’m proud of that Carlos, I wish I could tell him. But I reached a point where I stagnated, I stopped building, I stopped believing, I stopped having people by my side with whom I shared dreams of a world we wanted to build together.

But as I said, that inertia kept me going, people still saw me with some kind of admiration. Somehow, right at that point, I lost my impostor syndrome, I was someone important, who I always wanted to be. And while I was seeing myself there, something started to feel off, the gap between the dreamer, the builder, and that person that was excited about solving humanity’s problems started growing right in front of my eyes. I was losing the inertia, I could feel the clock ticking, not outside, but in me.

Then AI came, and suddenly I could do all those things again, I could dream, and tell it to build things for me while I guide it. It was fun, empowering, in a way a bit magical, and I think many of us have been there. But the more I’ve gone there, and the more convinced I’ve been not only of its potential, but of the reality of how much productivity can grow all around the world, the more something unknown has grown in me. I don’t have a name for it yet, it is some kind of unknown unknown.

I am starting to lose the capability of doing things I was able to do, because I surrender that to AI that, in most cases, if I guide it, will be able to do the job better than me. And if that’s the case, that feeling of being back to that special person (yes, very selfish, but it is what it is) is simply temporary. Anyone with some basic knowledge can do all the amazing things I’m doing right now, so what am I good for? Why would I want to be back, when that “being back” is so normalized that everyone will be like that?

I have to be honest with myself, I enjoyed the hell out of that impostor syndrome. Escaping it was fun, natural, fulfilling, but it was all those things because I craved external validation in one way or another. And now, as I’ve been realizing the commoditization of “being a genius” through AI, the initial rush of building things has transformed into something else, into a kind of despair. It feels like a continuation of me confronting the reality of life being hard, and me not being enough for the goals I set for myself. I look at my future with a mix of desperation and hope, hope that by keeping doing things and confronting myself, I’ll somehow come back to Sisyphus.

Everywhere I look, there’s people talking about how content is getting worse, AI slop, vague posting, noise… And sure, some of that is true. There is more content than ever before, and a big part of it is generated quickly, with little thought behind it, without the human touch and connection that makes things “click” in us. But if I take a step back, I don’t think that tells the full story. Is everything you read actually bad? Is everything people write just generated junk? Definitely not. I don’t consider most of what I write to be slop, and I know I’m not an exception. There are more people writing, thinking, and sharing ideas than ever before, and within that there is a surprising amount of genuinely good content. What’s actually happening is something deeper, and honestly a bit sad. Content gets created, it gets a brief moment of attention, and then it disappears. Not because it wasn’t valuable, but because the system around it is built that way. “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes” said Andy Warhol, but at the pace things are going, if we don’t change anything, I don’t think people will even have the patience for that. Today, content is expected to be consumed quickly, compete for attention immediately, and then make space for whatever comes next. Feeds move, timelines refresh, and even the highest quality pieces get buried within hours. Content comes with an expiration date, not because of its writing, but because the platform lifecycle is designed that way.

So if good content exists, is the solution simply better discovery? Better algorithms, better curation, better ways to surface what matters… the nerd in me starts mouth watering. But sadly, that’s not enough. When you do find something worth reading, something you actually want to spend time with, the experience itself breaks down. The devices we use today are simply not built for this type of content. Phones are designed for interruption. You open something you want to read, and within seconds you’ve been dragged into a video of a different way of cooking Chinese noodles (well, maybe that’s only me). Good luck going back to that article that could have changed your relationship, helped you get that promotion or made you understand the history of your own heritage. Next thought is Kindles, but guess what Amazon’s business model is here. Not selling the device, that’s for sure. It’s selling you ebooks. Internet native content works against that, so it’s simply not a priority. Articles, blogs, conversations, they all become second class citizens. And that’s the problem. Even when you find something worth reading, the way we consume it is fundamentally broken.

This is why we’re building Motif. Not from the idea of building a better Kindle, or a nicer app, but from a more basic question: what should happen the moment you decide to read? Whether you have two minutes or an hour, that moment should feel simple, tailored. You pick something up, and you stay with it. No friction, no distractions, no sense that you’re fighting the device to keep your attention where you want it. Motif focuses on bringing back a bit of humanity to the act of reading. Letting you enjoy freshly baked content, actually digest it, and maybe even talk about it later with your friends. Not something you skim and forget, but something that sticks with you for a while. An experience where internet native content is treated as first class, articles, blog posts, threads, chats, things you save and come back to.

And if this works, something else starts to shift. When good content doesn’t immediately disappear, more people start writing it. When there’s a place where ideas are actually read and revisited, not just rushed through and buried, it changes the incentive to create. We already have more tools than ever to think and explore ideas, LLMs included, but most of that potential gets lost in feeds. Fix the environment, and you start getting more signal, not more noise. It’s not about reading more. If anything, probably less. But actually finishing what you start, remembering what you read, letting things sit for a bit. That’s the direction. Just a better place to read.