In the middle of the night, came across a few posts on Twitter about “AI psychosis”. It was an exhilarating time - agents had just gotten way better, and everyone was feverishly building stuff. I thought to myself that these posts didn’t quite capture the exhilaration and euphoria of the moment. It wasn’t psychosis, it wasn’t anxiety — it was mania! Thus “Cyclical Generative Mania” was born as a concept.
Where I started
Started as a joke Twitter thread I was going to post. Then I started to get deeper on the concept as my own CGM took hold…
Where I ended
I purchased the domain cyclicalgenerativemania.com and set up a full interactive website with a quiz, comorbid conditions, Promptzac™, etc. I tried to lean into the big pharma UX patterns as much as possible. I also developed an entire launch strategy on Reddit, X, Hackernews, etc. I was totally convinced it would go viral.
What I learned
It did not go viral lol. It was quite the opposite, I think it got about 2 likes from my tiny X account of 12 followers. Reddit didn’t like it, Hackernews didn’t like it, no one liked it but the friends in tech I sent it to, who said it was hilarious. My husband was like - why??? why would you spend time on this?? what about your actual startup?? All I could do was shrug because the whole thing was so ridiculous and meta at that point, a true manic sleepless Claude-fueled episode.
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