AI-nxiety

Why every marketer feels behind, and the small things that actually help

My LinkedIn feed kinda sucks.

Every other post is somebody who claims they “cracked” AI marketing. Seventeen bullet points. A thread you have to scroll through twice to find the part where they sell you the course. Underneath those posts, in the comments, are real people. People who got laid off three weeks ago. People watching their team shrink and trying to figure out what the next thing is. People who are scared.

That’s the part nobody’s naming.

The reason these posts work isn’t because they’re good. It’s not even because they’re real.

Last week I saw one from a guy talking about his 20 person “team” of AI agents running his YouTube. He mentions to drop a comment to get his whole setup that’s “crushing it.” I went and found his YouTube. He hadn’t posted a video in 6 months

Above (left) is a Linkedin post that I saw, which pretty much copied word for word a Twitter post (right) that came out a day before with the exact same screen shot and call to action. Creators are just recycling click bait.

These posts work because the audience is nervous. Confused. We’re watching companies like Meta lay off thousands of workers, hearing “we’re using AI to do more with less” from CEOs while we’re refreshing job boards on Sunday nights. And in that state, anything that promises a map looks like a map.

I’ve been calling this AI-nxiety in my own head for a few months. It’s the low hum that sits behind your day. It’s the reason you opened a tab to read about Claude prompting at 11pm last night and closed it ten minutes later because you didn’t know where to put any of it. It’s probably why you’re reading this post. It’s the reason your boss keeps forwarding you newsletters with subject lines like “The Future of Marketing.”

And the tools won’t sit still. It feels like CONSTANTLY there’s a new feature. A new image generator on Wednesday. A new agent that can apparently do half your job by Friday. You haven’t even figured out the last one, and there’s already something else. By the time you’ve watched the demo video, three more have shipped. The pace itself is the trap. You can’t catch up to a moving target, so eventually you stop trying, and then you feel guilty for stopping.

It’s the reason a perfectly competent senior marketer with fifteen years of experience suddenly feels like they’re behind.

The truth is this. You’re not behind. You’re being marketed to.

You know this. You’re a marketer.

They’re feeding on your fear. Your unease. Your dread of being left behind.

The grift has a pattern

Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

The post opens with a number. “I just used AI to do in 4 hours what used to take my team 2 weeks.” Or, “I tested 47 AI tools so you don’t have to.” Or, “Most marketers will be replaced by AI. Here’s how to be the exception.” Then comes the thread. Vague claims dressed as frameworks. A screenshot of a analytics tool with big numbers. And at the bottom, almost always, a link. A waitlist. A community. A cohort.

Or the newer version. The comment trap. “Comment PLAYBOOK below and I’ll DM you the framework.” “Type AI for my prompt library.” The promise is the bait. The comment is the product. They’re not handing you a playbook. They’re using you to feed the algorithm, and the algorithm is paying them in reach. You’re the engagement, not the customer.

The truth is, you don’t need a 17-step framework to use a tool. You don’t need a $497 cohort to write a better prompt. You need a problem you actually have, and an hour to try.

The grift works because it offers certainty and a sense of direction in a moment when nobody has any.

What it actually looks like, from my seat

I run marketing at TONE. I use AI every day. It honestly makes me upset to see so many people who aren’t actual marketers shilling these tools at you.

I like to think I’m probably one of the more “AI native marketers” out there. I wrote a whole piece on how we integrated Claude into our business. And honestly, I feel SO BEHIND constantly.

So what does it really look like?

It’s almost never the version you see in the LinkedIn posts. I’m creating assets in Higgsfield. It sometimes takes me hours to nail it. I’m “vibedecking“ presentations and strategy decks. I’m learning how to get better at it as I go. We’re building out how the team uses AI. We’ve made mistakes. We’re still learning.

We make small steps and then some big ones. Data integration has been the first big win. But no one’s going to write viral posts about it. I know it seems like everyone is light years ahead. They’re not.

Where to actually start

This is the part the spammy posts skip, because the honest answer doesn’t sell anything.

Pick one thing you do every week. Not something theoretical. Something on your calendar. The weekly report. The recap email. The brief you write for the agency. The retro doc nobody reads.

Do that one thing with AI this week. Don’t read a framework first. Don’t watch a YouTube video. Just open Claude or ChatGPT and try. It’ll be clunky. It’ll probably be worse than your normal version the first time. Do it again next week.

That’s it.

If you can’t think of anything? Try it on a side project. Last night I vibecoded a website with Lovable. Not for work. For fun. I had Claude walk me through the steps of how to do it.

The skill isn’t “knowing AI.” The skill is knowing your own work well enough to hand off one piece of it. Marketers who already think about their workflow already have the harder skill. The AI part is the easy part. You learn it by using it badly for a few weeks until you’re not using it badly anymore.

And the layoffs. I’m not going to pretend they’re not happening. They are. But the people getting hired right now aren’t the ones who took the course. They’re the ones who can show, in plain language, what they used AI for last Tuesday. That’s a much smaller bar than the feed is making you feel.

You’re allowed to opt out of the panic.

You’re allowed to close the tab.

You’re allowed to start small.