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Hey folks, it's your content friend Eric here.
Not gonna lie, the whiplash between “use AI or you’ll get left behind” and “AI is gonna kill us all” is getting to be a little much.
That led me to wonder: Can we compartmentalize our real-life AI feelings from our at-work AI feelings?
I’ve seen lots of chatter about this online, so I took to the streets (the Superpath Slack community) to ask whether content marketers were feeling major dissonance about AI.
Here are some of the answers I got. Jessica summed up the general sentiment well:
Between us friends, I secretly wish AI would just go away, especially within the art world. In a small local protest, I’ve put up posters stating “Your AI Poster Sucks.” I’ve even made stickers—they are so popular I need to make another order.
Then, at work, I’m over here slamming skills and chewing through tokens, conversing with AI all the livelong day — because it’s my job. If I don’t, I likely would very quickly not have a job.
Here’s a great tip for balancing out those icky feelings:
I come from a book-publishing background and have a lot of friends still in the arts, so on principle I've had enough [of AI]. But yup, I need to pay the bills. Ironically, using it so much at/for work makes it easier to spot in life, which also increases the fatigue.
I compartmentalize a lot and also cope by pouring a lot of my non-work energy into touching grass/art as a counterbalance to stay sane and be with people who aren't in tech—volunteering with a literary nonprofit, pottery classes, reading physical books, taking random craft-related classes, exercise, etc.
K, one more perspective. Is AI just the tool of the moment?
I see AI as a tool, like a calculator or a PC. The people making money off AI bestow powers on it that it doesn't have. It's essentially a very fancy automation platform for my purposes, which means it can do more than traditional automation tools but it also means its failures are more frequent and disruptive… I've burned a week's worth of tokens trying to get it to make a f***ing invoice correctly and it STILL doesn't work.
The AI bubble is real. No one in my primary social circle has much interest in or contact with AI, which makes avoiding it outside of work (except for craptacular news writing and ecommerce chatbots) pretty easy.
If you can take only one thing away from these smart folks, let it be this: it’s completely normal to feel weird about all of this. It’s clear you are not alone. In fact, you’re in the majority.
If you still have the mental capacity to take more away, let me offer my perspective:
The world tries to force us into all kinds of false dichotomies. Introvert or extrovert. Left-wing or right-wing. Environmentalist or car owner. Swiftie or hater. But real life is murkier than that. Humans are full of lovely and unexpected contradictions.
So no, you don’t have to choose between being an AI hater and being AI-pilled.
One of my co-workers called me “the biggest AI power user they know,” and I felt the need to clarify that I use almost no AI in my personal life. I still Google things, I don’t make any ‘80s ChatGPT pictures of myself, and I still write my wife’s birthday cards by hand. How dare you label me as AI-pilled!
I have so many conflicting thoughts on AI. I believe it’s both overhyped and underhyped; its use should be regulated—but not too regulated; using it for writing tasks is fine, but using it in place of writing is not. Etcetera etcetera.
Here’s the thing: jobs are jobs sometimes.
Writing B2B content is inherently outcomes-driven. My job is to get people to read something, feel something, or click something—with the end goal of them spending money with my employer. Of course, I choose my employers selectively and work for companies I believe in.
So as Julie pointed out, if a tool helps me do that better or faster, I use it—the same way I'd use a template, a keyword tool, or a spellchecker. You can use a tool for what it's good at without endorsing everything the tool touches.
And like the anonymous marketer pointed out: using AI at work lets me have a nuanced, educated opinion on a complex issue. I like that.
Compartmentalizing isn't hypocrisy. You don't owe anyone a consistent, all-encompassing AI stance.
Cheers,
- Eric
PS. ICYMI, my wife and I are expecting a baby girl any day now! I’ll still be writing the Superpath newsletter on my pat leave, so I’m taking questions from the reader mailbag. Have a content career question for me? Just reply to this email.
📆 Upcoming Superpath Community Events
To get the invitations to our member events, join Superpath Pro. You get 30 days free, so you can attend all these events!
Change My Mind (Sep 16): Happening now! We'll debate two or three hot takes we're hearing in content marketing, with more nuance than you get on LinkedIn. Come ready to change your mind.
Slack AMA (Sep 23): A live AMA on Slack with Hayley Cornwell Steinberg, Head of Marketing at AirGarage. Her team recently ran a process to hire an In-house Journalist, so we invited her to talk about what hiring a full-time content marketer looks like in 2026.
IRL: Brooklyn Content Marketing Meetup (Sep 29): Join us for a casual meetup for content marketers. We'll have some light structure with a few icebreakers. Everyone welcome. RSVP here!
LinkedIn Post the Most (September Challenge): Post at least 10 times on LinkedIn this month, drop those posts in Slack for everyone to like, and you'll earn a raffle ticket for some Superpath swag 💃.
🎙 New episode of Content, Briefly: A new job? In 5 weeks? In this economy?!
(Editor’s note: I didn’t know “In this economy!?” was allowed to be used unironically. The podcast naming committee has been reprimanded.)
Ruth got laid off in June and had a new job five weeks later. She's now director of marketing at AnswerRocket, an AI consulting firm.
Finding a job in this oversaturated market is a hot topic right now—so Chloe, Rachel, and Alex put Ruth on the hot seat to find out how she did it.
Her big takeaway: writing 30 tailored applications took the most time and attention in the job hunt, but the real value came from recruiter relationships and the network she'd built before needing a job.
They talked about:
Making one resume per job vs. having a few versions you reuse
Time-blocking a job search so it doesn’t eat up your whole life
Turning your career into a "short story" pitch recruiters remember
Ruth's extra bonus tip: get a shirt that says "Hire me, I'm fun."
💬 Great Slack Threads This Week
Here were some great discussions in the Superpath Slack community this week:
Has anyone seen success with auto-updating articles? For example, software listicles that keep all the info current. I think that's valuable to readers because most listicles are outdated.
I'm buying an AI subscription again and am not sure which one to go with. My last one was Claude, and it felt like the quality of the thinking had slipped a bit over the past 3 months or so compared to GPT or Gemini. What does everyone work with these days?
I’m scoping out a more structured PT/fractional role with one of my clients - looking at something like 2 days a week. I’ve never charged for this kind of model before - how have others approached it?
📙 The Reading List
Here are some links that got the Superpath Slack community talking this week:
We asked 1,042 content marketers if their blog works. Just 14% said yes. | Andy Crestodina
💼 Who's Hiring?
Check out the Superpath Job Board — a mix of jobs we've curated from the open web, plus exclusive featured job listings from companies looking to hire the best content marketers.
This week’s featured roles:
⭐️ Lingo.dev is hiring a Senior Content Engineer (Remote — Global)
⭐️ Atticus is hiring a Head of Web and Organic Growth (Remote — US, $145K–180K)
⭐️ Mizrahi Developments is hiring a Marketing Lead (Onsite — Toronto, $100K–150K CAD)
Jobs are posted on the job board 72 hours late. Superpath Pro members get them within hours of posting.
Want to post a role? Feature your job here.
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