Bookmark-bait vs AI landfill - the Penfriend manifesto

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Hey—It's Tim. 

The realities of leaping into the abyss.

If you’ll allow me, I want to be brutally honest about what we’re doing with Penfriend, the challenges and why I’m committed to the cause.

I’m obsessed with the good stuff we all bookmark, quote, and copy‑paste into future slide decks.

Right now, building that feels like holding up a poster in Times Square and praying someone looks up. That’s what’s under threat when scale‑to‑oblivion AI sludge smothers the SERP.

The problem? Not AI itself, but the blunt‑force application of it to churn out landfill content. When that dragon rolls through town, nuance burns first.

The problem isn’t the dragon.
It’s what the dragon is doing.

AI isn’t evil. It’s power on tap.

Misused, it lobs molten garbage at writers who care.

Used well, it collapses a day’s research into minutes and turns muscle‑memory know‑how into “I can’t stop reading this” articles.

The opportunities are piled as high as the risks.

Fight or Flight

Yes, you can swear off AI forever - there are studies showing over‑reliance dulls the blade. But progress never checks your permission slip. Abandon it and you abandon leverage.

Better option and where my head is at is: learn to ride the thing. Put a saddle on that neck and steer. Dragons have gold. And I like gold.

That’s the core play behind Penfriend’s next drop: AI that makes you more human, not less.

Why I’m Still Swinging

Building this tool is a moonshot wrapped in a mortgage. We’re bootstrapping with a crew of four - two full‑timers and two brave part‑timers - stretching every dollar as thin as it’ll go.

Twelve‑hour days,
Vancouver rent, and a spreadsheet full of maybes.

I’ve wrangled SEO for 11 years, pulled in $38 million for clients, watched one‑person teams outrank armies of twenty. I know the craft - but I can’t hop on Zoom with every marketer on the planet.

So we’re bottling the craft in software.

The realities of AI content

Audience pushback is real (I feel it, too). Nobody wants AI schlock. They want a fingerprint on every paragraph.

We had two paths at the beginning.

Easy path: crank out penny‑per‑word filler and call it a day (literally what everyone else is doing…)
Hard path (ours): build a machine that writes bookmark‑bait.

Hard is a feature.

Where are we at the moment?

VIBE check is nearly live—scoring how “human” your draft sounds with spooky accuracy.

Next hurdle: get Penny to write inside those guardrails, not outside them. Most tools skip that step; we’re drilling into it.

How do we grab eyeballs? How do we earn a spot in your bookmarks? That’s the finish line.

And then, for you, make it as easy as possible.

We’re close.

Who’s in?

If you feel that itch to build bookmark-worthy content while the rest of the world makes microwave slop, then you’re my kind of rebel.

What we’re building with Penfriend is human first, AI assisted.

I will always be for the writer. For the creation of great content. And for the creation of content that makes you money.

I cannot thank you enough for your interest, your time and patience.

It’s coming. It’s so close.

✌️ Tim "Dragon Rider" Hanson
CMO @Penfriend.ai

Same brain, different platforms: X, Threads, LinkedIn.

P.S. What are you fears with writing content in 2025?

Penfriend.ai
Made by content marketers. Used by better ones.