Why we do what we do

Have you seen many fireflies lately? Considerably less than you remember from your backyard in younger years? Gen-Z — have you ever seen a firefly IRL?

I read recently that our generation will be one of the last to coexist with fireflies due to habitat loss, negligent pesticide use, light pollution, and climate change. Like most things in the era of social media and AI, this is a half truth meant to outrage you enough to click something, buy something, rage spit into your devices, or optimally all three.

According to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, one in three species of firefly in the US are in danger of extinction. Habitat is the main reason, though light pollution is one of the main factors for that loss of habitat. The part I find profoundly sad is that when fireflies light up their butts as part of their bioluminescent mating ritual, there is just so much manmade light around that the boy and girl fireflies simply can't find each other in the light polluted darkness.

Who would have thought fireflies would be such a perfect metaphor for modern dating

The alarmists aren't entirely wrong, and they're not entirely right either — which is, of course, the point. Most species will survive. Whether your kids catch fireflies in the backyard the way you did when you were little is a different question. Take them somewhere dark enough to see the stars, and the magic is still there.

At Firefly, we all have a common thread. We were looking around for the light, and found ourselves lost in the noise of the modern TikTok-driven cacophony. Some of us are developers who interviewed for jobs building products that promised to connect people, but in reality they deepen what divides us. Some of us consulted on budding AI products that claim to deliver intelligent solutions, but the company leaders actually want you to build smoke and mirrors — enough to sell before anyone notices. Or worse: they genuinely believe the trick is real.

Everywhere we look, people are trading reality for fantasy — and no one's measuring the damage

Everywhere we look, people are trading reality for fantasy and parasocial simulation. The long-lasting impact of social media's ability to warp our perceptions of reality with ego-fueled dopamine hits can't even properly be measured.

Dating apps claim they want you to find your life mate and delete their app. They don't. You only have to look at the way they function to see what they actually want. Their actual goal: make the world so bright and noisy that you can only find a mate through them. Then, once you do, remind you there are a million superior options — keeping you in an endless cycle until your attention is monetized and your existence used up.

Genuine impact on actual people — that's the only metric that matters

Social media and AI are not the root of all evil. They can be used to make a positive impact on the world — to make people's lives genuinely better. The truth is that won't be the most profitable path. It's much more profitable to build a company promising something false, get millions of people to hit subscribe for $10/month, and cash out. Sure, in six months half of them realize it's bullshit and unsubscribe — but you had tens of millions paying for a lie, and two million were too lazy to even cancel. Half a billion in the bank before anyone figured it out. Jordan Belfort and Charles Ponzi would be proud.

This darkness isn't new. Every era has had its iteration — the forces that isolate, manipulate, and extract. Technology just accelerates and scales the process exponentially, which compounds the impact. Left unchecked, it will hollow us out. We must be better.

When the night is darkest, be the light.