The Killer App Is Killer Hype

AI, COVID, and the business of mass fear

Feb 12, 2026

Every time someone writes a viral article about how AI is about to take your job, eat your sandwich, and sleep with your wife, I recommend you do one thing:

Get a paid account with Claude or ChatGPT. Whichever. (I have both.)

Then use it for a day on something mission-critical to your business. Not writing emails or churning spreadsheets. The sort of thing only YOU can do.

You will see, as I do every day, that the mystical aura and apocalyptic fear around these tools is pure hype.

Claude and ChatGPT lie. They make stuff up. They fail to follow even basic instructions. You can craft the perfect prompt, and they will still fail to produce a consistent outcome from it.

And they’ll kiss your butt the entire time while they do.

Can you get great outputs with these tools? Sure. I can hit the jackpot on a slot machine too. But that’s not a financial plan.

Tech people are famous for believing “This new innovation is gonna change everything forever! *I* am gonna change everything forever!”

And I learned that tech people will question absolutely anything… except that idea. That is the forgone conclusion that they live inside: that technology will fix the world forever and ever, and they are the ones to show us the way.

Some of them fancy themselves prophets of approaching change, like the author of the viral post I screenshotted. Others are high priests, with their wizardly words and techniques. And there are a few kings of their world, mostly CEO’s who hope to lead a new global-technocratic empire.

But I might remind Matt Shumer that COVID was a giant nothingburger of media-created hype.

You know who actually died of COVID? Senior citizens (80+) and those with 4 or more comorbidities, like advanced Type 2 diabetes, emphysema, and obesity. (This data was already available in summer 2020 btw.)

Study results published in Denmark in summer 2020. I don’t have the original source.

Many of these were people who had so abused their bodies with poor lifestyle choices that a Chinese Frankenstein lab monster could finish them off easily… following a ride on a government-subsidized ventilator. An image that was also used to terrify grandma and grandpa into submission at the isolated end of their lives.

You know who DIDN’T die of COVID? Healthy adults with low BMI’s, and children.

Oh sure many of them died *with* COVID, thanks to PCR tests that gave pieces of fruit false positives. But hey, those rookie numbers had to be pumped up somehow.

Besides, Pfizer needed a testing ground for new tech. Which led to a whole bunch of “suddenly” for a couple years.

Remember that? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

I bring all that up because Matt Shumer uses COVID as a framing device for coming change. But COVID was pure hype facilitated by global special interests to get you to think differently about your life, your liberty, and your relationship with technology and the State.

When you look seriously at COVID—past the shrieking flight attendants and dancing nurses—nothing was there but illusion and propaganda. Especially not for healthy, aware, and conscientious people.

Which is why everyone who didn’t take the jab is still here, and doesn’t regret that decision at all.

So yeah, if you’re a “senior citizen” at your job with 4+ comorbidities of laziness, low effort, and a lack of a desire to innovate or contribute, maybe AI will take your position. Before it rummages through your fridge at midnight and plays fetch with your dog.

Or you can do what humans do: work harder, think better, and grow as a person. Stop streaming and swiping and start reading.

Then go touch grass, which AI can’t do. It’ll never know what it means to lay in the sun at the park on a warm day.

Because AI is not human and cannot replace real humans.

So stop being afraid of diseases and computers and murder hornets, or whatever else the media tells you. (Next week it’ll be UFO’s.)

And remember: COVID and AI have a lot more in common than this author lets on. The “killer app” might just be “killer hype.”

Go see for yourself.

This article was originally posted on X.

Additional posts skeptical of Shumer’s claims, and AI more broadly: