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TikTalk – Welcome To The Algorithm’s Accent

We used to create content to be understood.

Now, more often than not, we create for more clicks.
It starts small…

An article we optimize for Search Engines.
A TikTok caption that uses phrases created by others that gets the culture clicking.
A perfectly polite email drafted by ChatGPT.
An article where the words feel oddly… AI-generated.

Suddenly, more and more people (and companies) are speaking this way… mistaking performance for personality.

No one told us to start speaking like this.
We just watched it “work.”
We saw the likes, the comments, the little check marks of approval.
And we learned… quickly.

Welcome to the algorithm’s accent.

TikTok has made the weirdest sentence structure in the room the most effective (check out this article: Algorithm On Fleek: How TikTok is Transforming the English Language).
ChatGPT is now changing vocabulary choices in written and spoken communications (check out this article: People Are Starting to Talk More Like ChatGPT).
Memes aren’t just jokes anymore… they’re new grammar guides.
And what’s weirder is that ChatGPT is giving us the opposite impulse.

Where TikTok turns language up, ChatGPT turns it down.

Everything gets smoothed… flattened.
Polished to the point where it no longer sounds like a person… just a person who doesn’t want to offend (or sounds like everyone else).
One platform teaches us to speak creatively to fit a new culture.
The other blands us like HR manuals in a dress shirt.
And the net effect?

Our voices are slowly being replaced by performance.

We’ve been through this before.
The telephone changed how we greet each other.
Email rewired our sense of brevity.
Autocorrect made us all bad at spelling… but better at catching typos.

Still, this moment feels different.

Because for the first time, we’re not just using the tools.
We’re absorbing their personalities… it’s becoming a new kind of “voice”.
Think about how ChatGPT writes…
We all see the use of words we had not (typically) used before: “delve,” “comprehend,” “meticulous,” “swift,” “boast.”
We’re now using The Dash Test (if there’s an em dash, that means it’s AI generated).
Now scroll your inbox… now listen to yourself speak in a meeting.

The algorithm isn’t just watching us.

We’re watching it back… and copying.
And for marketers, leaders, creators?
That has serious implications.

Brands used to chase culture… now they chase cadence.

They want to either beat the algorithms or bend it to their will.
But here’s the problem (maybe opportunity):
Language isn’t just a wrapper for ideas anymore… it is the idea.
You change your tone, you change your message.
You change your rhythm, you change your meaning.
You change your language, you change who you are.
And if the goal is clarity without humanity?

Congratulations… the AI machines are winning (hello, AI slop).

But if you still want to sound like you?
Here’s what I think matters:

Write a little slower.
Speak with more quirks.
Don’t sand down your style to match the prompt.
Don’t let the algorithm dictate the word choice or the flow.
And maybe let the/some typos live? (this one makes me cringe).

Because the backlash is already here.

We see people thinking and creating in authentically human ways.
As a middle finger to the algorithm.
Even if it “costs them” visibility.
Some creators (but not enough) now seem to crave what the algorithm can’t optimize:
The glitch… the pause… the breath between thoughts that tells you someone’s “really” there.

TikTok and ChatGPT are teaching us to speak the same.

But real language?
It was always about being felt.
So ask yourself this:
If your words weren’t being scored by the machine…
Would you still say them the same way?

Or is the algorithm already ghostwriting our voice?

This is what Elias Makos and I discussed on CJAD 800 AM.

https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/2138505027

Mitch Joel · TikTalk – Welcome To The Algorithm’s Accent – The Elias Makos Show – CJAD 800

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Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.