Nothing New Under the Algorithm-Sycophancy, Toxic Positivity & the Industry of Yes

"…there is no new thing under the sun." — Ecclesiastes 1:9 "Sycophant" is an ancient Greek word, which is annoying, because it means I have to begin this piece by admitting my ancestors spotted this nonsense roughly 2,500 years before Silicon Valley gave it a UX team. The word sykophantēs has a messy little history involving figs, informers, false accusations, and the kind of civic drama that makes ancient Athens sound less like the birthplace of democracy and more like a neighborhood Facebook group with marble columns. Over time, it came to mean the thing we still recognize instantly: the flatterer. The parasite of approval. The person who survives by telling power exactly what it wants to hear. Which is to say: humanity did not invent sycophancy when someone made an AI assistant say, "You're absolutely right." We have always had validation machines. We just keep upgrading the interface. The court had courtiers. The church had indulgences. The traveling salesman had miracle tonic.…