A Mojito, a Beach, and the Algorithm
Year after year. Racing, adventuring, sacrificing, moving forward. Travels, clubs, records, charities, talks, books. Repeat.
Sometimes all you need is rest. A mojito. A beach. A moment to sit still and contemplate the enormous amount of real things you survived.
But social media and algorithms do not take breaks. They punish you for following a natural rhythm. Post or be forgotten. Engage or disappear. The machine does not care that you just rode through a typhoon or pushed a broken scooter for twelve kilometres in the dark — it only cares that you did not post about it at the optimal time on the optimal day with the optimal hashtags.
And while I sit here wanting five minutes of silence, AI-generated accounts are pumping out fake adventure videos and fabricated travel photos at a rate no human can match. Stunning images of places that do not exist, rides that never happened, journeys invented by a machine in three seconds. People like them. Share them. Comment "incredible!" People genuinely cannot tell the difference anymore — or have stopped caring, which is worse.
What difference does it make to me personally? Here is the honest answer.
If my reach shrinks — because I took a week off, because the algorithm decided a fake AI video of a Vespa crossing the Sahara deserved more attention than my actual 27,113 km world circumnavigation — then fewer people see my books. Fewer people book me for talks. At some point I cannot afford the next adventure. A few years after that, the book disappears quietly from Amazon and I am forgotten. My story buried under a flood of content that never happened.
That is the nature of things today.
Let Me Be Crystal Clear
When you share AI-generated fake content — toy Vespa cartoons, fabricated adventure videos, fake travel stories illustrated by machines — you are not just wasting a few seconds of someone's time. You are actively destroying the reach of real content made by real people living real adventures.
Here is the mechanism: every share of fake content feeds the algorithm. The algorithm sees engagement and serves more of the same. Real content — made by someone who actually rode through a typhoon, actually slept behind a petrol station in Siberia, actually spent three years saving for a world tour — gets buried. The reach drops. The audience shrinks. The sponsorship that might have funded the next adventure never comes.
The real people stop sharing. Because it is work. It costs effort, sacrifice, and money to do what we do. When the reward is zero because a cartoon Vespa gets more clicks than a real one, the rational response is to stop. And then there is no more real content. Because it died. For five likes from strangers you do not even know.
What This Page Is
On this page and in my books I do not use AI. No generated text. No fake images. No algorithm-optimised content designed to look authentic. This is real — written by someone who actually did the things described, on actual old Vespas, with a real small budget, 10% sponsoring and no product recommendations paid by commission.
I am oldschool. A real low-budget adventure traveller without the bullshit.
You want a real internet with real people and real stories? You want to keep seeing actual humans doing actual things rather than a machine's idea of what adventure looks like?
Share this page. Share my content. Not for me — for the principle. It is the only way for real stories to survive against the flood.
If I lose against the fake content, you lose too.
I am going to finish this mojito. Then I am going to get back on the Vespa.