Five Years In
By 2035, scrolls are no longer an experiment. They are the baseline interface of daily life. What began as a cultural split in 2030—HGC versus AGC—has matured into something more complex: a settlement.
The HGC camp still exists, but it has softened. Even its loudest critics have conceded that scrolls are not going away. Instead of opposing, many chose to blend: anchoring their social identity in human-generated posts while quietly relying on scrolls for private consumption.
The AGC camp, once silent, is now dominant—but not in a way that resembles social media. Scrolls never became a “movement” or a “platform.” They simply became routine. Everyone’s AI generates them, and most people scroll without thinking about it. It’s like checking the weather or brushing your teeth: invisible until you stop doing it.
The Hybrid Reality
The schism didn’t resolve into one side “winning.” Instead, 2035 introduced a hybrid reality:
- HGC feeds remain public squares. They are messy, slow, filled with personality, bias, and human fingerprints. People go there for visibility, identity, and recognition.
- AGC scrolls remain private theaters. They are fast, adaptive, filled with utility and companionship. People go there for immersion, reminders, and clarity.
The dual system is stable because it satisfies two needs. The public need to be seen, and the private need to be understood.
Device as Differentiator
The device wars of the early 2030s settled into clear strata. Apple still owns the premium “memory scroll” tier—scrolls that feel indistinguishable from lived experiences. Samsung dominates in “utility scrolls”—hyper-practical, fast, and seamlessly tied to commerce. Xiaomi, Huawei, and others focus on affordability, bringing scrolls to billions who never fully adopted social media in the first place.
By 2035, nobody asks about megapixels. They ask, “How strong is your scroll?”
Economics Without Ads
The absence of advertising in scrolls forced the industry to adapt. Scroll capability became a hardware differentiator and a services bundle, not an ad-financed feed. This shifted revenue models away from surveillance capitalism and toward old-fashioned competition: make the better device, win the market.
For the first time in decades, digital attention was not auctioned—it was owned.
Unexpected Consequences
The cultural consequences are profound:
- Politics without platforms. Scrolls are unaggregated. No central authority curates, censors, or amplifies. This makes mass movements harder to ignite, but also harder to suppress.
- Mental health bifurcation. For some, scrolls provide calm, clarity, and even companionship. For others, the solitude of a private scroll deepens isolation.
- The end of virality. Without a central feed, nothing “goes viral” in the old sense. Trends fragment into millions of micro-patterns, each personalized.
Looking Ahead
In 2030, scrolls felt like a gimmick. In 2035, they are the quiet infrastructure of thought and memory. The loud HGC-versus-AGC debate is mostly forgotten, replaced by a more pragmatic question:
How much of your day should belong to the scroll?