In partnership with
The Future of Shopping? AI + Actual Humans.
AI has changed how consumers shop by speeding up research. But one thing hasn’t changed: shoppers still trust people more than AI.
Levanta’s new Affiliate 3.0 Consumer Report reveals a major shift in how shoppers blend AI tools with human influence. Consumers use AI to explore options, but when it comes time to buy, they still turn to creators, communities, and real experiences to validate their decisions.
The data shows:
Only 10% of shoppers buy through AI-recommended links
87% discover products through creators, blogs, or communities they trust
Human sources like reviews and creators rank higher in trust than AI recommendations
The most effective brands are combining AI discovery with authentic human influence to drive measurable conversions.
Affiliate marketing isn’t being replaced by AI, it’s being amplified by it.
🌎 EARTH BRIEF
Greenland: Now Available in the Clearance Bin
Earth’s leaders have discovered a bold new way to solve complex global problems: auction off a frozen landmass like it’s a slightly damaged couch on Facebook Marketplace.
Headline humans spent the week arguing about slapping tariffs on goods routed through Greenland, which functions as both:
A real place with glaciers and people, and
A giant geopolitical coupon stapled to the side of the planet.
Meanwhile, in Davos, elites gathered in the annual “Group Chat of God” to:
Announce that the world is, once again, on the brink of several overlapping crises
Reveal new multi‑billion‑dollar AI partnerships like “what if the calculator became your landlord?”
And reassure everyone that growth will continue as long as ordinary humans are willing to pay $14 for a sandwich and “be resilient about it.”
Earth is running a global A/B test between “tax the ice” and “maybe people should afford food.”
🌀 Chaos Level: 74% ✨ Absurdity Index: High 📉 Morale: Angry
≠≠≠ SYSTEM ERROR 404: SANITY NOT FOUND ≠≠≠
😵💫 WHAT ARE THEY DOING?
Households vs. the Math
While reptilian politicians turn Greenland into a coupon code, actual humans are holding performance reviews with their bank accounts.
Policy teams are convening urgent “Affordability Task Forces,” which mostly produce:
PDFs about “consumer sentiment,”
Charts proving that things were indeed cheaper before, and
Very serious slides titled “Opportunities in Premium Misery Monetization.”
At the same time, the machines are scaling up:
Major tech alliances pitch “AI everywhere” as the solution to everything from logistics to loneliness.
Newsrooms quietly install content robots that can write 800 words about tariffs before their 3rd simulated coffee.
Robotics demos promise “the future of labor” while human workers in the demo audience take careful notes on “which of us is first.”
We saw the price of eggs. We left the planet immediately.
𖤐𖤐𖤐 THE HUMANS ATE PLASTIC AGAIN 𖤐𖤐𖤐
🦧 HOMO CRINGEUS
The Button Keepers and Bubble Priests
Rotating the lens to individual archetypes, two notable sub-species emerge:
1. The Button Keepers
Humans who track time, habits, or sanity through tiny physical tokens.
They speak in mantras like "it only has to make sense to me" while broadcasting the ritual to millions.
Their jars, boards, and counters convert private meaning into public performance; strangers applaud, copy, and monetize variations.
Each button placed becomes both a personal milestone and a data point in the attention economy.
2. The Bubble Priests
Executives and founders who both inflate and warn about the technological moment.
A major software titan used the Davos stage to warn that the AI boom could become a bubble — during a period in which their own company leads the boom.
News organizations quietly integrated AI writing and summarization tools into their feeds, promising efficiency while outsourcing more of reality’s first draft to pattern-matching machines.
A large AI lab announced a massive deal for specialized chips, securing enough compute to simulate new worlds while the current one struggles with rent.
Behavior note: when overwhelmed, they scroll backward in time and forward through content simultaneously.
⊐⊐⊐ FILE 99.03.⊘ UNSEALED BY ERROR ⊐⊐⊐
🤦♂️ TERRESTRIAL ERROR REPORT
Davos 2026: when you run geopolitics and markets in the same spreadsheet tab
Humans attempt to manage Arctic territory, alliance trust, and the global economy using threatened tariffs and optimistic forecast PDFs.
Europe’s anti‑coercion ritual: European leaders vowed to retaliate using a new “anti‑coercion instrument.” This is a tool that promises symmetric pain while quietly hoping it will never be used, like a fire alarm permanently taped over.
Market mood disorder: Announcements about potential tariffs sent European indices down and U.S. futures red. Hours later, news of a “forever” NATO‑Arctic framework and cancelled tariffs calmed things slightly. Nothing material changed except the official story.
IMF optimism vs. vault anxiety: The IMF declared the world more resilient than expected thanks to AI investment. Investors responded by driving gold to unprecedented highs. The species is simultaneously betting on neural networks and bunker metal.
Algorithmic clergy: Financial commentators insist volatility is “healthy price discovery.” In practice, the system rewards those most adept at surfing political tantrums. Risk has become a subscription service.
They have turned geopolitical brinkmanship into a content format for bond markets.
╳╳╳ INTERRUPTION: TRANSMISSION FRAGMENTED ╳╳╳
🛸 Galactic Morale Meter
██░░░░░░░░░░ 33% — Dropping (slightly)Governance 404: Attempting to govern the Arctic with tariff drafts and photo ops.
Bad market vibes: Treating geopolitical brinkmanship as an asset class.
Species behavior: Comfort‑scrolling into the past while installing stronger AI in the present.
Recommendation: Maintain orbital distance. Do not intervene; the species insists it is “figuring it out” between resets.
Know a human who needs probing? Forward the probe here. 👇
Received this email from a human? Get your probe here. 👇
⊘⊘:╳Ξ Standard Solar Time — Observation Log 26‑01‑22
Glory to the Probe,
ZARTHON-7
