DEV Community: Meg Rehn

The Great Tune-Out: Why AI’s Perfect Illusions Might Save Us from Social Media

Meg Rehn — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 01:41:56 +0000

We are currently living through the "wow" phase of generative AI. Every day, a new model drops, producing images that are impossibly stylized, hyper-realistic, or deeply unsettling. Video generation is close behind, promising cinema-quality output from simple text prompts. It is a technological marvel.

It is also, quite possibly, the beginning of the end for social media as we know it.

For fifteen years, social media platforms have relied on a fragile currency: trust. Not implicit trust—we know people use filters and curate their lives—but a baseline assumption that the human on the other side of the screen actually went to that restaurant, saw that sunset, or held that opinion.

The deluge of AI-generated media is about to debase that currency into oblivion. We are rushing toward a future where the internet is awash in synthetic reality, and the unintended consequence might be a massive societal "tune-out" and a surprising renaissance of the offline world.

The Tabloid Effect

To understand the future of an AI-saturated internet, look at the past of supermarket tabloids.

For decades, tabloids have printed headlines screaming about alien babies, two-headed politicians, and miraculous cures. The covers are designed to be visually arresting and instantly gripping. Yet, the vast majority of people walking through the checkout line ignore them.

Why? Because we have collectively categorized them as "entertainment," not reality. They are hogwash. Even if a headline is technically true, the source is so polluted with fabrication that the effort required to verify it isn't worth the return. We have developed a societal filter to tune out the noise.

AI is about to turn Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and X into the National Enquirer.

When anyone with a smartphone can generate a photo of themselves at an exclusive party they never attended, or create a video of a politician saying something they never said, the "wow" factor quickly curdles into exhaustion.

Social media feeds thrive on engagement rooted in reaction: envy, outrage, inspiration, humor. But those reactions require a belief that the stimulus is real.

If you know that the incredible vacation photo you’re envying was prompted by an algorithm in a basement, the envy vanishes.
If the viral outrage video is revealed to be a deepfake, the anger turns into cynical apathy.

When everything is spectacular, nothing is impressive. And when nothing is verifiable, nothing is credible.

The Death of "Pics or It Didn't Happen"

For a century, photography was our primary anchor for objective reality. The phrase "pics or it didn't happen" was the internet's golden rule of evidence.

Generative AI is dissolving this anchor. We are entering an epistemological crisis—a crisis of knowledge—where our eyes can no longer be trusted to tell us the truth about the digital world.

The cognitive load of navigating this new internet will become unsustainable for the average person. We do not have the mental energy to fact-check every image, decode every pixel for artifacts, or run every video through deepfake detection software just to scroll through our feeds before bed.

When the cost of verifying reality becomes too high, humans default to skepticism. We will assume everything digital is fake until proven otherwise. And once that threshold is crossed, social media loses its primary utility as a window into other people's lives. It just becomes a window into a never-ending, hallucinated cartoon.

The Offline Renaissance

So, where do we go when the digital square becomes a cacophony of beautiful lies?

We go outside.

If the internet becomes a low-trust environment, the value of high-trust environments skyrockets. The only place where trust can currently be readily established is the physical world.

We may be on the verge of an "Offline Renaissance," driven not by Luddism, but by a desperate craving for authenticity. When you can no longer trust a digital recording of a concert, attending live music becomes a premium experience. When digital art is infinitely replicable by machines, physical crafts made by human hands gain immense value.

We will see a return to analog verification. The handshake deal, the eye contact across a table, the tangible reality of a crowded room—these things cannot be prompted into existence by Midjourney.

The "status symbols" of the future might not be flawless Instagram aesthetics, but verifiable messiness. The flex won't be the perfect digital picture of a meal; it will be the actual stain on your shirt from eating it with friends.

The Great Correction

Social media has spent the last decade pulling us deeper into our screens, leveraging algorithmic addiction cycles. It seemed unstoppable.

It is ironic that the very technology meant to turbocharge content creation—AI—might be the thing that breaks the addiction loop. By flooding the zone with synthetic perfection, AI exposes the emptiness of the infinite scroll.

The depopularization of social media won't happen overnight. It will be a slow fade as users realize they are shouting into a void filled with bots and viewing a world built of pixels and air. Like tabloids at the checkout stand, the feeds will still be colorful, loud, and desperate for attention.

But we just won't be looking anymore. We’ll be too busy living in the real world, where things are messier, harder to capture, but undeniably true.

💬 Discussion

Do you feel your own trust in digital media eroding yet? Are you finding yourself placing more value on in-person interactions as AI content scales up?

Quick-Start Guide: Setting Up an Ubuntu Development Environment with WSL and VSCode

Meg Rehn — Fri, 03 Nov 2023 01:03:21 +0000

Why WSL?

Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) makes it easy to run Linux tools on Windows. I've personally used this setup for the last 5 years. The integration between Windows <-> Windows Terminal <-> Linux FS <-> VS Code is seamless and quite enjoyable to use.

Why Ubuntu?

Ubuntu is the default Linux distro for WSL and since the beginning, I have found it to have the best support in the WSL ecosystem. You'll also find good support for Ubuntu/Debian based systems in general. There are other distros in the Microsoft store, and you don't have to pick just one. Multiple can be installed and run concurrently.

What's covered in this guide?

Ubuntu 22.04 on WSL
Windows Terminal
oh-my-zsh git-ready terminal
VS Code integration
Docker Desktop integration

Install WSL and Configure Ubuntu as Default

On most Windows systems the use this command to enable all Windows dependencies and install a default Ubuntu Linux distribution (PowerShell):

wsl --install

If your system requires additional configuration, refer to the docs: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install

You may need to upgrade to a newer Ubuntu version if the default installed was out of date. Get the latest Ubuntu from MS Store (we'll use 22.04 LTS): https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/install-ubuntu-on-wsl2-on-windows-10#1-overview

List installed distros:

wsl -l

Set an installed distro as the wsl default:

wsl -s Ubuntu-22.04

Windows Terminal

Windows Terminal is the polar opposite of the traditional windows shell experience; with native tabbing, split terminals, appearance customization, support for powershell, cmd, and all linux distros all in one place. 👌

Learn more and install: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/

Set `Ubuntu 22.04` as your default shell in Windows Terminal

Enter the setting on Windows Terminal by clicking the down arrow at the top or pressing ctl+,

Set your default profile:

Configure Ubuntu

⚠ When you start up Ubuntu for the first time you'll need to configure your root user. Do so and set a password.

Add /snap/bin to path

#Add /snap/bin to the path
sudo sed -i \
     "s#^PATH=.*#PATH=\"/snap/bin:$(echo $PATH)\"#" \
     /etc/environment
#Load new path
source /etc/environment

Set up git-ready terminal

Cruise control into a rich terminal experience using oh-my-zsh (powerlevel10k), setup guide here: https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k#installation

Almost there, I promise 😉 - Your terminal should look something like this now:

Set up VS Code

VS Code is great IDE, it's also the perfect compliment for developing on WSL. Download it here: https://code.visualstudio.com/

Microsoft publishes a WSL extension for VS Code, it allows you to run work and build directly on your Linux filesystem from the VS Code process.

Get it from the marketplace here: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscode-remote.remote-wsl

Once you've set up your IDE and cloned a git repository into your Linux system you can open any repo in VS Code by using code , to open the current directory code .

What Weightlifting Has Taught Me About Systems Engineering

Meg Rehn — Sat, 28 Oct 2023 19:10:00 +0000

It’s hard to imagine Olympic weightlifting and engineering have much in common. But sometimes, it's the unlikeliest of connections that offer the most valuable insights. Beneath the surface, there is a profoundly human connection—a shared journey of growth and challenges.

Progressive Overload

In weightlifting you will never get stronger unless you embrace discomfort. This is not unlike an engineer who feels stuck but refuses to feel ignorant at anything. Progressive Overload is a training style that steadily increases resistance intensity. The process is designed to stress a physiological system capable of growth, for lifters this is muscle and the mental capacity necessary to move them.

Consider engineering design as an interconnected muscular system. If you're not regularly pushing the limits of your understanding, you’re leaving progress on the table. You and your applications will stay stagnant in the methods you resist changing for fear of the unfamiliar. The pressure on your current infrastructure will increase over time, components will buckle under the steady trend up of transactional load. Just like the deterioration of muscle mass with age, you can only slow or even reverse this with action. Get uncomfortable and be bold in your planning; that's the point!

Honesty

You either make the lift or you don't; you can shortcut and put in half effort in your training, but you will get half back, I guarantee that. A sobering component in Olympic weightlifting, especially in the first year, is that progress is almost entirely made by refining technique. There is no alternative or supplement you can take to avoid putting in the full breadth of hours.

Be honest with yourself and your team about gaps in your system, always. Understand requirements early to identify non-negotiables, allowing engineering time to focus on what can be delivered well and not fall into the paralysis of saying yes to everything.

Consistency

Trust the process and show up! Olympic weightlifting may be a borderline masochistic sport, the very nature of its training demands failure after failure after failure… Every time I fail a lift, I'm just learning another way not to do it. Put this into your philosophy: mistakes are human, mistakes are you getting better, learn to love showing up.

I have seen how huge shifts play out in an engineering organization, twice bought out and once reborn. The people, processes, and product are evolving at a rate that demands system operations team agility at least twice as fast to stay ahead. This is a call to be consistent at what you are best at; effect your changes you know how to make in your day and within your team and rest in this consistency.

Weightlifting is a Team Sport

Accept critical coaching and learn from others who have been where you are today and have seen it through. They see your struggles from a perspective you cannot. My coach sees improvement when I simply just don't, this is like looking down a mountain once you've reached the top and seeing other hikers just starting their ascent, their view blocked by trees only a few yards ahead. If we apply recognizing this difference in perspective to the engineering teams we lead we can do a bit of time traveling together; experience gained is irreplaceable, and when shared, it multiplies within the team. Value each engineer for their insight and critique by keeping communication open and honest.

Even though competition totals are credited to individual lifters, it's just not that simple. Behind the number is a journey shared among peers and coaches being retold by one. Be the first to support and recognize other engineers around you, they will do the same for you.

Final Thoughts

As humans, our life patterns are rhythmic, we have passions and personalities that find their way into everything we do. We all follow the very human pattern for growth: try, fail, try again. My hope for you is that you succeed in your goals, whether that is stepping out on the weightlifting platform or riding the engineering "eureka" for all of your days. But nothing happens overnight. Learn to love the journey of being a novice, lean on more experienced engineers around you to keep you on track, and assume honesty with yourself above everything else.