Slobodan Manić: Foreign.

Shiva Manrai: What is going on? Certified homies. Welcome to CRO After Dark, the long awaited second episode. Man, we went. We went cold was. It has been a full calendar year since we did it.

Slobodan Manić: I think it was the summer. I'm not sure. I think it was this summer. The long awaited sequel.

Shiva Manrai: The long awaited sequel that no one asked for.

Slobodan Manić: Ah, come on. What's the. What's your favorite sequel ever of any movie? Don't say Godfather because that's the lazy answer.

Shiva Manrai: That's a good question. You know, I was talking to other people about sequel.

Slobodan Manić: I'm a podcaster. I ask good questions.

Shiva Manrai: I'm not going to remember the name of the sequel, but there was a good. There was one movie I saw recently where the sequel was pretty good compared to the original and I was blown away by it and now I'm not going to remember it. Maybe I'll remember it at the end. So we'll maybe spoiler. We'll figure that out.

Slobodan Manić: At the end of the future is always the answer.

Shiva Manrai: What's yours? What's your favorite.

Slobodan Manić: Back to the future is always the answer. Like any movie question. It's back.

Shiva Manrai: You know what? I'm going to go a little meta. I'm going to say the sequel. I guess you can consider that the. The sequel to Breaking Bad is Better Call Saul. And it's a TV show and that's a spike. I know. I'm kind of fudging.

Slobodan Manić: I know. I know where you're going with this.

Shiva Manrai: Yes, Better Call Saul is better than Breaking Bad and Breaking Bad's fucking incredible.

Slobodan Manić: I think they're equally good. It's not obviously better.

Shiva Manrai: I know where you're going. And I'm not downplaying the greatness of Breaking Bad, but the character development, the plot, the twists, everything. The acting.

Slobodan Manić: Yeah, of course. I get it. I get where you're going. I just. I don't think it's obvious. That's what I'm saying.

Shiva Manrai: All right, drop a. Like in the comments if you thought Better Call Saul was better than Breaking Bad.

Slobodan Manić: What do they drop if they thought Breaking Bad?

Shiva Manrai: Nothing. And that's how we collect.

Slobodan Manić: What about Pluribus?

Shiva Manrai: I wanted to talk to you about that. Okay, so that's a good segue. I wanted to talk to you about Pluribus because I think you already spoiled it, but I wanted to ask you if you. And maybe, I don't know, let's make sure this is spoiler free. But as I was watching.

Slobodan Manić: No, we're not that kind of podcast. I don't Care.

Shiva Manrai: Well, I haven't caught up.

Slobodan Manić: How many episodes are you?

Shiva Manrai: Three.

Slobodan Manić: Oh, okay. Okay.

Shiva Manrai: That's why I'm starting to watch it. But as I'm going through it, there's a part of me that was like, dude, this feels exactly like AI Like a commentary on AI did you see.

Slobodan Manić: Vince Gilligan's statement about AI I didn't. I mean, every episode ends with the credits, post credits thing that says this show was made with humans, not AI and whatever it was, I didn't see that.

Shiva Manrai: That's it.

Slobodan Manić: He hates AI in creative processes, in stuff like this.

Shiva Manrai: So I think that's. I guess Vince Gilligan and I have something in common where we're both amazing, amazingly creative people who. Amazing works of art and we also hate robots.

Slobodan Manić: Yeah, it's a great.

Shiva Manrai: That's crazy. I didn't. So you think it is. Did he answer that question? Did he say it's AI no, he never said.

Slobodan Manić: Clearly. And what we are referring to is the. The hive mind, whatever they're called, that they're all A.I. how do you call them without insulting them? A.I. loving people. Let's. Let's just say that. And they. They cannot think on their own and they don't have a brain and whatever. Whatever. In the show. In the show. I don't think Viz Gilligan ever said that specifically, but the. The parallels that they make are. Are kind of clear.

Shiva Manrai: Yeah, it's crazy. Even like the whole, I'm not going to spoil this, but like when you yell at.

Slobodan Manić: Go ahead and spoil it. Who cares? This is not a.

Shiva Manrai: You yell at them and they like start shaking and stuff. That's like sometimes how AI is. If you yell at it, it kind of just like stops.

Slobodan Manić: It's always a positive response. They can always do whatever you want. They always praise you. I don't know.

Shiva Manrai: Yeah, I guess for everyone listening to this, go watch Pluribus because it's really good.

Slobodan Manić: It's on Apple TV. If you use CRO After Dark coupon code, you get 10% off on your first episode or however this works. I've never had a sponsor, so I don't know.

Shiva Manrai: They're not sponsoring us. You could try it. If it works, you can try it. Let us know because then we'll be surprised too. Can you imagine someone else has like a CRO After Dark like coupon code and it just works?

Slobodan Manić: I want to know what that CRO.

Shiva Manrai: Would be because it wouldn't be this Chief Revenue Officer. It was funny. I was using AI Croatia's word. AI was Transcribing something in one of our meetings. And it was like, then the chief Shiva. The Chief Revenue Officer, and I was like, well, I got a promotion, guys. Congratulations to me, I guess.

Slobodan Manić: Awesome.

Shiva Manrai: That was funny.

Slobodan Manić: Anyway. Anyway, the.

Shiva Manrai: So let's go into the topic.

Slobodan Manić: I would say this one is even better. Pluribus has potential to be even better because this is the first Vince Gilligan show that hit the ground running. And. And we have never seen a Vince Gilligan show that was just incredibly amazing and absorbing from episode one. This is the first time that happened.

Shiva Manrai: Yeah.

Slobodan Manić: Let's get to the topics.

Shiva Manrai: I. I don't. That's a weird take because I thought Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul both hit the ground running.

Slobodan Manić: Not. Not like this.

Shiva Manrai: I just.

Slobodan Manić: Not with a big concept. Not with, like, the world changing. No. Not like this Fine particle soul was so slow. The first episode was nothing. Breaking Bad at least had the. The van scene where he's.

Shiva Manrai: Okay, I guess. I guess fine. If you mean that way, fine.

Slobodan Manić: Yeah, that's what I mean.

Shiva Manrai: That's what. Okay. All right, whatever. Let's get it. People don't care about this. They want to hear the.

Slobodan Manić: Maybe they do.

Shiva Manrai: They might. All right, we'll drop a. Like, if you want to hear us talk more about Pluribus, maybe we could do a CRO. After Dark. After Dark.

Slobodan Manić: Pluribus After Dark.

Shiva Manrai: So the thing that we're going to talk about today is something that both Sonia and I think will die in 2026. That is digital marketing related.

Slobodan Manić: Do we say start dying, at least not completely and absolutely be gone and.

Shiva Manrai: Buried and so things that will start diminishing in quality. All right, well, the clickbait thing that will die in 2026.

Slobodan Manić: Yeah, die, die. Let's say die. Yeah.

Shiva Manrai: Okay. So. Or maybe it will start to die. I guess, like, 2026 is a long year. The thing that you're saying, will it.

Slobodan Manić: As long as any other year.

Shiva Manrai: I know, but, like, it's a full year, Right? So you could say it's starting to die earlier in the year, but then at the end of the year, will it be dead?

Slobodan Manić: We can. We can say that. Yeah.

Shiva Manrai: Okay. Well, I'm similarly. I mean, this is a clickbait. So I think it's just. We're going to call out things that are going to be a lot worse in 2026. But the clickbait hooked you in, so welcome. You go first.

Slobodan Manić: So what I think will begin to die. And I'll go back to 2011, 2012, when optimizing only for desktop devices didn't really die in a year. But when mobile, when phones started being used more, we kind of switched our attention to optimizing for mobile first and all that stuff. And now you can't do CRO, you can't do web dev, you can't do UX if it's not for mobile devices as well. Talking about websites, of course, I think optimizing websites for humans and human behavior and the small nudges we use to trick them into adding more to cart and all that stuff will start to die finally in 2020. Because again, I'm not, I don't, I really don't like AI hype, but I think the AI agents thing, doing things on the websites, doing things that we don't really care about. Sure, some people like shopping. I'm not saying that will be gone and banned or whatever, but there will be more and more autonomous agents doing these things instead of humans. And when that hits 50%, not in 26, but it will happen at some point, does CRO die? Does it begin to die? And specifically when I say CRO, I mean optimizing the website, optimizing the brand experience, getting the users there, reaching new audiences, all that stuff that will happen, but not on the website. So I'm saying focusing CRO efforts only on the website is something that's going to start to diminish.

Shiva Manrai: At least I know where you're going from. I know where you're coming from. I get it. I just don't agree because I think the same people who are saying that were also saying like, oh, retail is gonna die when websites were created. And like people still go into stores wanting to buy things like mattress stores. People, well, that's a big expensive purchase. People still go into a store to try out mattresses. They might not buy directly from there, they might still buy on Amazon. But like those stores aren't totally dying. GameStop's rebounded back from.

Slobodan Manić: Yeah, but that was a meme. That was a meme last.

Shiva Manrai: I know, but like that still these stores still exist. So I know what you're going to. And you know, it's funny, that same point you were talking about desktop and people focusing more on mobile. I still, and maybe I'm boomer about this, I don't buy like big important purchases on my phone. No one does.

Slobodan Manić: I think no one does. Let's be honest about that. But the era of this is the only way to do it is going to stop existing like the same way that going to the shop to Buy was the only way and then it wasn't using.

Shiva Manrai: But in order for your prediction to be true, as it diminishes or dies, a large part of those people have to be totally gone. And it has to be. Add to traffic the mix.

Slobodan Manić: I completely agree, it's a clickbait. Of course this is not going to die completely. But I think we are reaching that point where these AI systems can do these things. And there are so many companies at the same time trying to push for AI to take over the browser and.

Shiva Manrai: Do things for you.

Slobodan Manić: Virtually every big tech company, even Firefox, released an AI window feature. But I thought they would never do it, but they did.

Shiva Manrai: So it's funny you say that. I get where you're going. I understand from a technology perspective it can be done. But now I'm like, will it? Because my same example, some people like to go into a store and touch feel things. Groceries, Grocery was the one that I was like, man, a lot of people with this new tech, if I don't have to shop, that makes my life so much easier. The counterpoint's like, I don't trust someone to buy apples the way I want them to be. I want big apples. I need them to be specific. Shape. I don't want them to be brown, right? Or browned like soggy or whatever. I think there's people, go ahead.

Slobodan Manić: Let's talk about the entire process, not just the purchase itself. There's also the reason, discovery, the everything, all that. If the AI assistant is doing the research for you and telling you, I think you should buy this, I think these are the top three options. And then you look at that, what the assistant gave you and then you just say, okay, go to this website and buy it for me. That is going to become possible. It's possible already, but not at scale. It doesn't really work the way it should. I think in 2026 we'll see that happening. When that happens, when the website becomes what is currently the checkout page, just complete the transaction. Don't drop the ball, make it happen. All of the CRO things that CRO people do on the website are not going to be as important.

Shiva Manrai: Well, it depends. It depends on what you define as CRO. Because if you're saying micro nudges, button, color testing, like I am curious, anything.

Slobodan Manić: That'S happening only on your website. That's what I'm saying.

Shiva Manrai: Well, I think that's where then you're doing shitty CRO. If like the only decisions that the CRO is influencing are very tactical web behavior things versus experimentation as I try and define it. I'm sure you think of it this way too is it's a business evaluation. Right. Like you're. When you test into big, big experimentation related things that are strategic to the business.

Slobodan Manić: But you're still working with the website and nothing but the website. I'm saying it's not going to matter in this scenario. It has to be everywhere else. It has to be every channel you control and every channel you don't control. Because this agent and I do think this will happen in 2026. I'm not excited about it, I will not use this probably. But I think it's happening when, when this agent is doing all the things. If you're only optimizing the website and you're like, it's there to buy something, it already knows exactly what it's going to do. It's there to fail or not fail doing it. And that's.

Shiva Manrai: I know what you mean. I think you're just saying like there's going to be a big dramatic shift in behavior. Absolutely. Some people might rely less on doing their own quote unquote research and shift a little bit more into like using ChatGPT or AI to help find stuff. I think there's, it's, it's going to shift behavior, but I don't think it's going to change behavior. And I think that's a meaningful distinction because like think about what Talia talks about a lot with her emotional targeting where it's like, yeah, at the end of the day humans are irrational and humans still make emotional based decisions to buy things or acquire things. 100%.

Slobodan Manić: But what I'm saying is specifically what's happening on the website. If you're just dealing with doing CRO on the website, experimenting only with the websites, you're doing it for humans and human users and testing how their brains will work. It's not going to be the same. You have to move upstream in that decision making process or whatever you want to call it. That's what I'm saying. It's still going to be the humans deciding what they want influenced some different ways. But if you're just optimizing your pdp, your category page, your cart page, your offer, like if you buy this, we'll add this. If you add $20 more, you get free shipping. That is going to be ineffective, not less effective, completely ineffective once the decision happens off site.

Shiva Manrai: I mean, is that currently super effective anyway?

Slobodan Manić: That's what most people are focusing on.

Shiva Manrai: Most is a strong word. I think that's what a lot of people are talking about on LinkedIn.

Slobodan Manić: But that is a more accurate twitch.

Shiva Manrai: I think that's, that's not necessarily what people are tactically. You might be right, maybe they are. But I think that's what a lot of people.

Slobodan Manić: I agree with you.

Shiva Manrai: That's the stuff that gets the engagement and that's the thing that pisses Shiva off every time he sees it. Right? Like that's the stuff that gets the engagement. But I think if you're a CRO and you're like, I know, I know we have this complex conversation, Aaron's going to hate me about diminishing and downplaying button color testing. But like, I do think there's something to say around if you're just like button color testing and you're not thinking more strategically.

Slobodan Manić: Who does that?

Shiva Manrai: Some people I think. I feel like, okay, I'm not going to tell you what AI tool recommended this to me as a test idea, but let's just say I used a very prominent AI CRO related tool and I'm being very vague because I'm not trying to throw them under the bus.

Slobodan Manić: That's fine.

Shiva Manrai: But they audited my site and the top recommended things they suggested to me were three button color, three button tests, one of which was a button color, one of which was a button shape.

Slobodan Manić: Oh, even a shape.

Shiva Manrai: Okay, so as the top three recommended tests for me to drive an improvement to my cer and I'm like, this is where it just lacks business context. It doesn't think like a human at all to influence the actual, like, yeah, decision making process that we do. So I mean that to just say as good CROs, we're able to suss out that good and the bad. And I think there might be evidence to suggest that maybe doing free shipping testing, promotion might be valuable. Maybe you have some data that that's a pretty important thing in the industry that you're in. Where I mean, that's important. Like when I look for merch online for like shows and like bands that I go see, I'll look at a shirt and be like, wow, that's already a $60 shirt. Whatever, I'll support the band. And it's like, plus Texas taxes, which kind of sucks sometimes. Plus shipping and handling, it's an extra 20 bucks. And I'm like, all right, I'm not buying this. This is $80.

Slobodan Manić: That's just one example. Shipping is one example. Button calls. I think those are not great examples of what should be tested on a website. And everyone, most people would agree that that's not really the, the highest value things test. What I'm saying is that when whatever autonomous thing is doing the, the website thing instead of the human, the decision has been made before the landing. There's no influencing it in, in trying to complete a transaction that it came there to complete. When you send and chat, GPT, Agent Perplexity, whatever, I don't care. I, I don't think those are the answers. I think there will be better systems than this. When I type in go to this website and buy these shoes this size, there's no influencing that once it lands, it's just trying to complete the transaction. The website things don't matter. It's there to fail or not fail in completing the transaction. You need to influence human elsewhere off site and that becomes more and more important. That's what I'm saying.

Shiva Manrai: Well then you could just use AI influencers to help garner the good luck.

Slobodan Manić: Yeah, I mean, you could use AI influencers.

Shiva Manrai: Did you see what was the.

Slobodan Manić: No, I don't know what you're talking about. Honestly, like real fake people that are like.

Shiva Manrai: Sorry, let's just. Can you repeat the sentence you just said again?

Slobodan Manić: I know what I said. Real fake people.

Shiva Manrai: That's not a sentence.

Slobodan Manić: I mean, if it's AI influencers, it's.

Shiva Manrai: Just a fake person. It's not a real fake person.

Slobodan Manić: It's exactly fake person pretending to be a real person. Yeah, that's what I said.

Shiva Manrai: You said real fake person.

Slobodan Manić: Same thing. Fake real person.

Shiva Manrai: I'm just being an asshole.

Slobodan Manić: I know you, you're good at it anyway. I don't know that. I haven't seen that that exists.

Shiva Manrai: Yeah. AI user quote unquote. AI quote unquote User generated content where it's not.

Slobodan Manić: That's not influencers. That's a different thing.

Shiva Manrai: No, no, I, I know, but what I'm saying is people are hijacking that and being like, okay, well I don't want to. I can't pay someone to organically promote my content. So I'm going to create this fake thing, which is. Honestly, I thought about this. The AI UGC is just like, it's just a slightly better version. Like a higher fidelity. I don't mean better as it's good. I just mean it's a higher fidelity version of the as seen on TV commercials where like, you know, the testimonials in those are all fake.

Slobodan Manić: Oh, you mean the testimonials in those.

Shiva Manrai: Okay, the testimonials in there are all fake. It's like. It's like a guy wearing a coat. And it's like, I'm a doctor and I recommend. It's like, no, you're not a doctor.

Slobodan Manić: Yeah, that's fair.

Shiva Manrai: Like, of course you're not a doctor. I think it's just a higher fidelity version of that same thing in the same way that, like, I don't know, the generative AI is almost just like a higher fidelity version of Photoshop in some ways.

Slobodan Manić: I. I don't know if I fully agree with that. But to go back to the as seen on TV thing, everyone I know will say, that's stupid. Like, lab coat on a. On a cheesy, like, Simpsons, Nick Riviera looking doctor. That. That's stupid. Like, no one is going to that.

Shiva Manrai: That. That is that analogy. That's funny.

Slobodan Manić: I mean, you know, the guy. You know, it's like a doctor.

Shiva Manrai: Yeah.

Slobodan Manić: Yeah. But yet again, some people will say, AI UGC makes sense and it's okay to use it. And you were really upset when this became a thing. I remember we had conversations. If you can't get one person to recommend your product honestly, and you have to generate a Super Mario or Popeye saying cool things about your product or like, a real fake person, how shitty is your product?

Shiva Manrai: Yeah.

Slobodan Manić: Like, what is the long play there? Like, I know it's shitty and nobody likes it, but if I just put some pixels in an ad, the people will start. You trick some people. I don't. I don't get that.

Shiva Manrai: It's not good. And then what I'm starting to see in YouTube is AI full AI ads. Like, there's. Yeah, there's a lot of that.

Slobodan Manić: There's a Tai Chi. There's a Tai Chi.

Shiva Manrai: Yeah, the Tai Chi thing. So stupid.

Slobodan Manić: My dad never thought he would lose weight doing Tai Chi. Like, are you fucking kidding me?

Shiva Manrai: I want to lose weight by December.

Slobodan Manić: Yeah.

Shiva Manrai: And it's like, oh, obviously it just picked the date. And then the guy's like, well, tell your dad. And it's like, it's so fake. It's so bad. I hated it.

Slobodan Manić: I hope that company goes bankrupt tomorrow.

Shiva Manrai: And the thing that's annoying is, like, I'm sure Tai Chi actually has, like, good.

Slobodan Manić: We're not talking about Daichi.

Shiva Manrai: We're talking. I know. Just whoever's selling the bullshit.

Slobodan Manić: Yeah.

Shiva Manrai: Yeah. Okay. Well, so, okay. That might be a good segue into, like, my general death.

Slobodan Manić: Yeah.

Shiva Manrai: My. What will die in 2026? So similar. Clickbait. I'm not saying this is going to be a binary of alive or dead. What will, what will diminish in quality is trust in AI. I think this is finally the year where the hype dies and instead of the hype going up, the hype will take a steep downhill turn. And I think there are several things that are going to factor into it. I know we talked about this offline, but I do want to bring this up and I want to hear your feedback on this, honestly.

Slobodan Manić: Yes, yes.

Shiva Manrai: Ads in ChatGPT, ads in AI, I think is going to be a huge detriment to trust in AI because before, by the way, like, that's what Google was, before Google had ads, I think a lot of people trusted that. What the information they were getting out of it was generally unbiased. It was doing its best to find the most unbiased information. It's this thing called Google gullibility. That's what Kate Moran Nielsen Orman turned me onto. So I think there was just this idea that like you trusted it more. But now people are, people see this where ads are blending in with Google. It's just the smallest call out of ad versus organic. I think more and more people are becoming more untrustworthy of search results because of ads and I think that similar trend will happen in AI with like the AI tools.

Slobodan Manić: So I agree, but I think people will turn on AI and AI is doing great at turning people against it without the ads. Like, you don't need the ads for people to stop trusting AI.

Shiva Manrai: But is it. Well, do you think the camel.

Slobodan Manić: I think it's. I think it's irrelevant. I really think this is completely relevant. We would see the ads already if they had a reason to put them in or a good way to put them in. I know chatting, it's working on ads. ChatGPT is kind of working on ads. It's not even tested from what I know yet. And they pushed it back for like when Ultman had that code red thing which, like, this is your like life vest. You need this. You don't have any, like. And now you're pushing it back because I don't. I'm not buying anything they're saying. Like, I, I just don't think, I don't think people turning on AI will happen because of ads. I think it will happen because people realize this is not what we were promised. This really isn't what they hyped and kept hyping. There will be a small fraction of people, a small percentage of people that are so deep that there's no saving them like any cult. But a lot of people will just walk away and say, nah, never. I never.

Shiva Manrai: What do they do then? So, like, I guess, where do you. Where do you see the landscape in 2026?

Slobodan Manić: I think the people who went into deep will get in even deeper.

Shiva Manrai: They have to double down, they have to quadruple down, have to feel like they want.

Slobodan Manić: I. I don't care. I. I honestly don't care. Okay, sorry.

Shiva Manrai: No, I know, I know you don't care, but I'm. I want, I do want to understand, like, where do you think the landscape is going to be with. With all of this happening?

Slobodan Manić: I think, I think, I mean, people will be turning because they will, number one, see that. This kind of like ChatGPT5. What the fuck was that? Is that a new label on Chap GPT4?

Shiva Manrai: Yeah. That was interesting. Right? Like, I think every. Because I think, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me five times, shame on me. It feels like every time people have been promised something and even if the baseline tech is pretty good, I'm not denying, like it is, the tech is pretty good. It's pretty slick. But I think the fact that after, let's say five, six, seven iterations of whatever it is, like every time it comes out, it's always over promise, under deliver. When you continuously over promise every time, I think that's where people start to be like, then like, at some point you would think people are like, I. You just over promise every fucking time.

Slobodan Manić: That's what's been happening every time so far. But it may change. Like, they may change, they may start delivering. Honestly, at this point, and I've been working, playing with AI and not just the chatbots, I mean like APIs, integrations, building apps, I don't care anymore. I think we have enough AI technology to do anything that AI will give us in the. Whatever, how many years in the future. I don't think they'll do anything revolutionary with Gen AI after that. There's a whole new avenue of AI that needs to be explored. But Gen AI diminishing returns was two years ago.

Shiva Manrai: One of the unspoken parts of all of this. I know Iqbal gave a very good talk at this. The conversion hotel is the green or not so green parts about this. Not money green. I mean like, yeah, environmental impact of AI where it's like to just use AI to generate some nano banana bullshit of your dog.

Slobodan Manić: Yeah.

Shiva Manrai: Which I support. I love it. It's cute. In. In a bubble. It's cute. I love it. But the actual economic impact of thinking. Do you remember what he said? Like thanking Chad GPT for the reply is like the economic impact is. It's like a crazy.

Slobodan Manić: No, not ick. But this is what Sam Altman said just to be clear because, because you just mentioned Iqal earlier the thing.

Shiva Manrai: Well Iqbal's talk was about that but.

Slobodan Manić: He wasn't, he wasn't talking about this.

Shiva Manrai: Specifically about fair enough thanking.

Slobodan Manić: He. This was last year, two years. I don't even remember when it was like he was fired two years ago. Sam Altman and then like whatever. I think he said something like every time you thank like over a year your thinking costs like 10 million, 20 million. Whatever it was, I don't care and that was just a flex. Look at how big we are. I don't care about anything they're saying. Anything they say is self reported, self measured and we're supposed to eat it up and trust them. I don't trust them. I just don't trust them.

Shiva Manrai: So there's one part of the story that's like trust in AI in like ads and stuff is one part of that. There's another part of that where trust in AI to do productive things I think is going down. So a couple of examples I'll give is I think Klarna, if I remember right, Clarna hired a bunch of, they tried to fire a bunch of people saying I will just do everything.

Slobodan Manić: And then they're like customer support, customer support 700 I think. Yep, yep, yep.

Shiva Manrai: And then it's like just kidding, that was a total miss rehire them back. One example, another example. I, I'm a, I'm a decently big gamer. Like I enjoy playing video games. I was pretty big into Call of Duty but the game quality has just been so shit lately. You mentioned not so not so subtle plug that I did a like deep dive in Call of Duty stuff. Check it out. I spent like, I spent like six hours doing that for like a like a seven minute video. Anyway I spent a lot of time go check it out because it was a cool thing that I did. If you guys want more video essays feel free to tag me but maybe I'll do it for active account.

Slobodan Manić: What's your Twitch account?

Shiva Manrai: Not on Twitch.

Slobodan Manić: Just kidding, just kidding.

Shiva Manrai: But the other thing that happened and maybe I should do a video on this is just like the use of AI in some of their creative stuff. It's so obvious that they're using AI to generate assets to shortcut things and I think that's just A broader. It's a broader view of how I think some companies just view quality of work. Because I think they're like, it does. They're like, it doesn't need to be. We don't need to do good quality work. We can just use AI to create slop and people will just continue to buy our shit. And I think people are recognizing and they're almost doubling, if not tripling down on this to be like, if we. If you're like proudly using AI and it's good, fine, and the end quality of the product is good. But if you're using AI and your end quality of the thing is bad, it's not just 1x bad, it's like 7x bad. People will be extra pissed at you if not only the thing is bad, but you used AI. It's a multiplier.

Slobodan Manić: It's laughable when it's bad. It's really something that it takes a while to recover from.

Shiva Manrai: No, no, but I'm talking about, like, public sentiment specifically.

Slobodan Manić: No, that's what I mean.

Shiva Manrai: Okay, okay.

Slobodan Manić: That's exactly what I mean. I agree with all of that. I just think when you think why every company I'm talking about specifically about big tech and their big tech is something like the colonial powers centuries ago. Like they're trying to take over the world and run the world forever in the future. I mean, are they not.

Shiva Manrai: They're not trying to take over the world. They've taken over the world.

Slobodan Manić: Well, not, not just completely yet, but they're very close.

Shiva Manrai: Did he see Gerda? Gerda asked Chachi PT if they're going to take over the world and then ChatGPT said no. It said no, dude, would it hallucinate?

Slobodan Manić: Irrelevant. Completely irrelevant. But what I was saying, they're definitely, again, tinfoil hat on, whatever. But it seems to me like they just want to own the world. These big tech companies, if you look at the wealthiest people in the world, what do they control? Like 80, 90% of. They have more than they need to have. The only reason they want to push AI into everything is because when AI is acceptable, like at an acceptable level of quality, like the assets you were mentioning, they don't need the workforce. And that dynamic is not good for anyone but them. And I don't know, we'd have some kind of a pushback. And also it's shitty. It looks really, really bad, the stuff they're doing. But just, you know, the same way Zara and H and M and all those clothes were. Why the. Are you wearing that plastic piece of trash 30, 40 years ago, and now that's like the standard. That's how we'll get used to the slop. Because they.

Shiva Manrai: I have no idea what you're talking about with Zara.

Slobodan Manić: I mean, it's just. It's cheap disposable clothing.

Shiva Manrai: Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Got it. You mean like TAMU and Sheen? Yes. Kind of stuff.

Slobodan Manić: Yeah, they're getting us used to that kind of shit. And same thing with slop. Same thing with AI Content. It's just not good.

Shiva Manrai: Oh, that's. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, I mean, they're getting us used to slop so that. Yeah, they can just keep on.

Slobodan Manić: I'm not saying there's a master plan to get humanity used to slop. Maybe there is.

Shiva Manrai: I don't know.

Slobodan Manić: But the more slop you serve, the more normal it becomes. And like, 10 years from now, if every YouTube ad is just ad AI slop, and every, like, half of YouTube videos are a slop, it's fine. Yeah.

Shiva Manrai: So they're playing the long game. They're like, we suffer now, but we're setting the foundation up.

Slobodan Manić: Do they suffer? Do they even suffer?

Shiva Manrai: Well, like, suffer is subjective. But I know Activision, like, their Call of Duty game has been had. It's had a lot of critical feedback with its release. And again, that's more just like. It's not just their use of AI, it's that the game's not great. And they use AI, which makes people 10 times more pissed. And it's like you laid off a bunch of people, your quality of games sucks. And then whatever exists. You're using AI stupidly. And it's like, well, we have so many reasons to be pissed off at you that they become multipliers. And it's like if you just. This is.

Slobodan Manić: Yeah, we're not fans. Let's just put it mildly. We're not fans of stuff like that. But your topic, you think about 2026, is that people will start trusting AI less, I guess, is the big thing.

Shiva Manrai: Yeah, I think this is the. My sentiment is that we were in an upward trajectory, even if the velocity of maybe still.

Slobodan Manić: Maybe we still are.

Shiva Manrai: I think so. We still are. I'm saying, like, it was like a 90 degree angle up, and then I think it's starting. I think we are starting to see more of a plateau.

Slobodan Manić: Say hockey stick. Wearing that just after you.

Shiva Manrai: Well, it's funny, people say hockey stick, but, like, it depends on how you hold the hockey stick, because hockey stick could go up like that. If you flip the stick around, it just goes down.

Slobodan Manić: Yeah, but hockey stick chart, like, come on.

Shiva Manrai: I. I have never used that term ever.

Slobodan Manić: Sorry.

Shiva Manrai: No, I know it's, you know, it's crazy. I never thought about that until you just said that. I never used that term before.

Slobodan Manić: You're wearing a Rangers Christmas sweater.

Shiva Manrai: Yeah. Tis the season.

Slobodan Manić: I know.

Shiva Manrai: I would love. This is super depressing. Maybe we end on a very quick.

Slobodan Manić: Like, this is not depressing. This is just reality.

Shiva Manrai: Yeah. Duality is depressing. Let's end on a more optimistic, positive note. Say one. Either you. Do you want to do something that we're grateful for?

Slobodan Manić: I think the other side maybe, but let me just say the other side of the coin that you just flipped, people will start waking up and seeing that, you know, maybe we can do this without OpenAI. Maybe we can do this without anthropic.

Shiva Manrai: Maybe you can just run.

Slobodan Manić: I hope you can run a small model somewhere in the cloud or on your computer and just do all those things that they're selling you and saying if we don't do it, China will. Which I have no words for that. Maybe people start seeing that if I install any small model, open source model, I can do the same things that you're selling that you're saying as will save humanity. Like the. The way they started this. Like this will cure cancer. This will solve the energy crisis.

Shiva Manrai: This will solve it will solve the energy crisis while.

Slobodan Manić: Yeah, by making it worse. Until we solve it. Like, I think people will be waking up more to that. And that is the best thing that can happen in 2026 when it comes to AI because AI is great. The technology is great. Who's controlling it is not great.

Shiva Manrai: Yeah.

Slobodan Manić: And that needs to change.

Shiva Manrai: Yeah. I love it. Well, I guess let's.

Slobodan Manić: That's a good. What are we thankful?

Shiva Manrai: No, no.

Slobodan Manić: We need to say what we thankful for. We have a few more minutes for this thankful for. In. In this year or. Or next year.

Shiva Manrai: Well, let's do a 2025 reflection, something.

Slobodan Manić: You go first.

Shiva Manrai: Thankful for that you had in 2025.

Slobodan Manić: You go first.

Shiva Manrai: I mean, this is a personal one, but I had 10 years of my best friend with me and he passed away in July, but I had my best friend and I'm very thankful for the time that I was able to share with him. And it makes me sad that I don't have him anymore. But, you know, have to be thankful for the memories that you had. So I don't know if like, I don't know how many people will get to this point of the podcast and listen to this? But, like, doesn't matter. Whoever's still listening. I. We appreciate you guys for listening to 37 minutes of unhinged content, but I.

Slobodan Manić: Would say mostly unhinged. There was some not unhinged.

Shiva Manrai: We had some. We had some takes in there that were sufficiently hinged and, yes, lubed. I guess I agree with that. But Jordy was like my. He was my center of the universe from. For like the most informative, most formative parts of my life. So it hit me really hard. Like, personally, professionally, it still kind of even does. Like, sometimes there are just days where I'm like, for me to be. Took a pretty big hit of just like my productivity because I just sit at my computer screen and I'd be like, I'm not editing. I don't want to edit this. There's no part of me that wants to do anything related to this. I just want to sit on my couch and do nothing. Thankfully, I've been in a better spot. People like you, Sonny, have helped me. People have privately and publicly reached out to me. Fans of. For May to be fans of just, you know, people in the digital marketing space. So I think I'm thankful for people who reached out and thankful for the time I had to spend with, like, my best friend for 10 plus years. And I miss him. I love him and I'll see him. I don't want to say I'll see him again soon, but I'll see him and I'm excited.

Slobodan Manić: But I get what you mean. And I'll just say that I'm really. First of all, I didn't. I had no idea. You had. You had him for 10 years. Like, I had no idea. I'm just happy to see that you're in a better place than you were during the summer because it was rough, as you said. So.

Shiva Manrai: Yeah. And it was hard. I had a good therapist that helped me work through a lot of stuff and I had a great support system. Yeah. What about you?

Slobodan Manić: What about me? I'm just honestly, the network of people that I care about, I was able to build thanks to the podcast is something that was.

Shiva Manrai: He saw 30 people at Conversion Hotel.

Slobodan Manić: 29. At 29 guests. Yes. And I had them in slide.

Shiva Manrai: And he didn't take the selfie with them.

Slobodan Manić: I did not. It was. The logistics would have made it impossible. But I'm honestly, like, this started. It's December or February 18th. I think it's gonna be five years since I started the podcast, like that's a long ass time to have a podcast. The number of people that I was able to meet that I'm still in touch with frequently that were on the podcast and that really are my go to people when I need an opinion of someone I really respect and care, an opinion I'll honor and care about is just insane. That this happened because I bought a microphone and started reaching out to people and asking them questions. It just completely, completely doesn't feel real still five years later. So I'm just thankful for that. And it's kind of coming together. Like, what was it two weeks ago at Commercial Hotel? Like 29 guests of the podcast were. That's more than 10. That's like 15% of all the people that were there. That is completely crazy.

Shiva Manrai: I'm just trying to pull this up on the side, Sonny. I like, it's gonna take me like seven days to try and go through all of our like, conversations.

Slobodan Manić: No, that's not possible. LinkedIn makes it impossible. Yeah, I mean, you're one of those people, obviously.

Shiva Manrai: And of course, well, it ends at December 1st. No. Okay, no. I'm trying to remember what was our first interaction.

Slobodan Manić: Had to be a LinkedIn message. And this was in your CRO memes day. So something around that.

Shiva Manrai: What do you mean in my CRO memes day? That continues to be my day.

Slobodan Manić: That's not the only thing you do these days.

Shiva Manrai: It used to be I still, I. Now I just have memes and videos.

Slobodan Manić: Yeah, no, no, but you, you know, you know what I mean, this was, I, I'm gonna say three years ago at least. You were on the podcast like three years ago.

Shiva Manrai: Was that the start? You invited me on the pod.

Slobodan Manić: What do you mean? What do you mean?

Shiva Manrai: Like, what was our first interaction? Why did, why did we get in contact?

Slobodan Manić: I have no, I, it was such a long time ago. I, I mean, and you cannot scroll through our LinkedIn messages.

Shiva Manrai: I was trying and I, I, as you were talking, it was like a minute and I got up to September 25th of this year and I was like, that's the, that's going to take me.

Slobodan Manić: That is completely impossible. But yeah, I'm just, I'm just still shocked and in awe that something like this is possible. And honestly, anyone can do something like this in a few years. Like, you want to build a professional network, Just be kind to people and try to help them as they're doing whatever they're doing and just have meaningful, friendly conversations, deep conversations, and not just shallow, slob that most people seem to be.

Shiva Manrai: Well, that's a good place to wrap with the whole meta conversation around AI when AI is everywhere. Just be an authentic human being. You will stand out. You might think you're not because you'll see the AI slop getting thousands of likes from other bots and thousands of comments from other bots.

Slobodan Manić: Exactly. Exactly.

Shiva Manrai: But I promise, be authentically yourself on comments on dm. Me. Dm, Sonny, like, absolutely we will. Human to human. Unless you try and sell me shit, then I will block you and fuck you. But if you try and authentically reach out to me, just, like, have a conversation or talk, like, more, more, more authenticity in 2026. Let's make that happen.

Slobodan Manić: And beyond. But let's. Let's please, everyone, make that happen.

Shiva Manrai: Because to authenticity and beyond.

Slobodan Manić: A slop can go to hell.

Shiva Manrai: Hell, yeah. All right, Sonny, what do you want to plug? Anything you want to plug?

Slobodan Manić: Nothing. Just check out the podcast. I'm making some big changes in 2026.

Shiva Manrai: No hacks.

Slobodan Manić: I'll announce that. No hacks. Nohackspod.com I will announce that next year. Connect with me on LinkedIn if we're not connected. Just nothing. Just enjoy the holidays, take it easy, slow down.

Shiva Manrai: Cool. And then my plugs are just go. Subscribe to. From A2B. I have a sub beehive from A2B. H I I V.com I post memes, gifs, you know, like companion content for the pod. But yeah, go check our stuff out. DM us if you guys want to. Or don't. Sorry, I was like, I'm trying to. Okay, how do we rap?

Slobodan Manić: That's good.

Shiva Manrai: And we're done. We did it.

Slobodan Manić: Yeah. Awesome, awesome, awesome.