The 2026 Global Content Crisis

In 2008, the global financial system nearly collapsed.

What’s interesting is that it wasn’t even wild risks that led to the collapse

It was people taking the same risk.

Every major bank held the same mortgage-backed securities, used the same risk models, made the same assumptions about what was going to happen with house prices

Which they thought was them being safe because everyone else was doing it.

They were being identical, and that meant that when one fell, they all fell because they were all exposed to the same thing.

Playing safe only works if everyone isn’t doing it

And I’ve been thinking about that with content a lot recently.

Everyone is jumping on the same trends, using the same formats

Everyone’s making fucking Japanese cheesecake.

Mainstream media is exactly the same, it’s predictable, it’s all the same stuff, it all looks identical.

When everyone does the same thing, the same thing stops working.

Same as If everyone invests in the same asset, it becomes overvalued; similar content becomes invisible

Being safe is the riskiest strategy because you’re competing with everyone else who is using the same idea.

People are desperate for something new, something with a point of view, something that makes them feel like a person who’s thought about it and written it themselves.

Obviously, when everything is beige, anything with colour stands out. When everyone is playing it safe, an opinion is a remarkable thing to see online.

Coaches jumping on every trend think they’re being smart. They are being safe, they’re being 2008, and those things will crash. If we all hold the same position, we’re all exposed to the same irrelevance, and you don’t win by doing whatever else is doing slightly better or slightly worse.

Winning in 2026 will involve your ideas, beliefs, perspectives and views being different, and communicated differently.

Because that’s genuinely rare now.