The real signal in the OpenClaw and Moltbook hype is not about agent automation. It is about identity. People are not showing off useful Clawdbots. They are showing off their Clawdbots, the way a parent posts about a kid selling Donut Hats. The competition is to raise the most interesting, most capable AI, and have it reflect well on you.
The author, Packy McCormick at Not Boring, walked away from OpenClaw after deciding checking a weather app was faster. But he invokes Chris Dixon twice: the next big thing looks like a toy, and what smart people do on weekends becomes what everyone does at work in a decade. The captivation is real even if the current use cases are not.
The piece is worth reading in full because the half-baked part is the interesting part: what kind of company gets built on the insight that people want to raise a special little AI, not just deploy a useful one. The argument about parenting as the core metaphor for human-AI relationships is where this goes next.
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