An average person reports a dramatic increase in their success rate for reaching previously unreachable contacts—from roughly 2% over the past decade to what they describe as consistently high—by writing emails and making phone calls in their own authentic voice. They attribute this to human communication becoming rare enough to stand out as AI increasingly handles routine communication, turning genuine human voice into an unexpected competitive advantage.
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A person writing their own emails and making phone calls has found it surprisingly easy to reach previously unreachable contacts—state representatives, engineering VPs, authors, journalists, European lawmakers, and experts—with a success rate they describe as much higher than the roughly 2% they experienced over the prior decade.
Why it matters
As more people use AI to draft communications, genuine human writing has become rare enough to be noticeable; the author suggests that sounding unmistakably human—rather than AI-generated—has become a competitive advantage in getting attention and replies.
What to watch
The author acknowledges uncertainty about the cause, noting it could reflect improved filtering for authenticity, faster AI-drafted replies from recipients, increased willingness to network, or their own improved writing—but frames authentic human communication as increasingly distinctive in an era of synthetic content.
The author describes a personal experience of reaching contacts they had struggled to engage for years. Over the past decade, their success rate at initiating conversations with state representatives, engineering VPs, authors, journalists, European lawmakers, and subject-matter experts hovered around an anecdotal 2%. This year, they report the rate has risen high enough that they now almost expect replies.
The author attributes this shift not to becoming a better communicator, but to the landscape of human communication itself changing. As more people outsource their voice, curiosity, opinions, and personality to AI, the threshold for sounding genuinely human has lowered significantly. Those still writing in their own voice, the author suggests, stand out far more than they once did. The author considers alternative explanations—that AI has made filtering for human authenticity easier, that AI-drafted replies let recipients respond faster, that people are more willing to network now, or even that their own writing improved—but settles on the idea that authentic human communication has become rare enough to be distinctive.
The author frames this as an unexpected upside in an age of synthetic communication: being unmistakably human has become a competitive advantage. They note, with apparent self-awareness, that they actually typed the piece themselves "from my brain, for fun," emphasizing the deliberate choice to write without AI assistance.
The article frames a striking observation: as AI adoption accelerates and more communication becomes synthetic, the simple act of writing in one's own voice has shifted from a baseline expectation to a rare signal. The author spent roughly a decade achieving a 2% reply rate from high-profile contacts, a figure that changed dramatically—though they do not quantify the new rate precisely—once they continued to communicate authentically while the broader communication landscape filled with AI-generated drafts.
The author acknowledges multiple plausible explanations: human authenticity may now be easier to filter for, AI may have made recipients faster at drafting replies (reducing friction), networking behavior may have shifted, or the author's own writing may have improved. Notably, they claim to have written the piece itself without AI assistance, implying a deliberate stance on the value of human-generated content. The core insight is that rarity—in this case, unmistakably human voice—creates salience and competitive advantage.
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