On Sovereignty & Systems
Brands that scaled using pure ads (like Meta, X, etc) are now rethinking their growth loops entirely.
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Social Capital Is the New Currency: But It’s Getting Expensive
Platforms are extracting attention but not sharing the upside.
Read itIn my last post, I talked about how social capital has become the new currency, and how we’re spending real money, even going into debt, just to earn clout.
That shift isn’t happening in isolation.
It’s part of a bigger collapse:
The traditional ad model is breaking down, and what’s replacing it isn’t more polished campaigns. It’s ugly ads, lo-fi videos, and human-level social credit doing what polished marketing can’t.
You don’t need a dashboard to feel it.
CPMs are rising.
Clickthroughs are dying.
iOS updates shredded tracking.
People scroll past polished ads like wallpaper. (Me number 1😂)
We’ve over-optimized every frame, tested every call-to-action, and burned billions in performance spend trying to squeeze out conversions. But now, even the biggest brands are realizing:
You can’t optimize your way back to trust.
Let’s be blunt:
The ads that work now are ugly.
Shaky iPhone videos. One-take rants. A person is just talking in their bedroom.
And they’re outperforming the polished agency reel.
Why?
Because we’ve entered the age of earned attention.
People don’t trust perfection; they trust what feels real, even when it's messy.
That’s why a creator talking about a skincare brand with bad lighting and background noise might convert better than a million-dollar billboard.
We’ve moved from targeting to trust. In a world flooded with noise, people follow people, not pixels.
Your reputation is the algorithm now.
Social credit is earned slowly:
Through proximity
Through consistency
Through “I’ve seen this person before, and they don’t lie to me.”
And it travels fast.
If someone you respect vouches for a product, a platform, or a community, it’s likely to stick.
This is how clout becomes distribution. This is how the new attention economy moves.
You’re already seeing it:
Brands running UGC-style ads filmed by creators
Influencers writing the copy themselves, unrehearsed
Paid media budgets are being redirected to people who can move culture, not just media metrics
Even Meta now recommends “native-feeling, lo-fi creatives” in their best practices.
Because the data is undeniable: Raw converts. Relatable wins. Polished gets skipped.
This is bigger than TikTok trends.
This is a systemic reordering of the ad model:
The model we used to scale brands (extract attention, convert fast, repeat) is aging out.
The new loop is slower but stronger: build trust, earn participation, let people amplify for you.
In my last piece, I wrote about how social capital is now the currency we chase, and how we’ve been buying it through overpriced experiences, even BNPL debt.
But here’s the plot twist:
You don’t need debt to earn attention. You need trust.
And trust doesn’t come from perfect ads.
It comes from real people, saying real things, in real time.
So yes, ugly ads are rising.
Not because brands have run out of budget.
But because the audience has run out of belief.
This is the reset.
This is the era of relational advertising.
And it’s the best thing that could happen to the internet.