{"slug": "dispatches-from-the-vibe-coding-epidemic", "title": "Dispatches From the Vibe Coding Epidemic", "summary": "Three friends in one week showed a journalist AI-built apps—an animation, a carpool app, and a storybook app—none of which will likely gain a second user. The trend, dubbed \"vibe coding,\" mirrors the 2020 sourdough craze: hobbyists use AI to build apps that feel productive but remain unused. The journalist warns that AI wellness chatbots, in particular, should not be built casually, as they could harm vulnerable users.", "body_md": "*Twenty demos in three months. Zero second users. Patient zero was my neighbor, and the outbreak shows no signs of slowing.*\n\nThis week, three separate people showed me things they built with AI.\n\nMonday, a friend sent me a YouTube link. An AI-generated animation. “Like and subscribe!” he said — a man with a full-time job, two kids, and a mortgage, speaking to me in the dialect of a teenage influencer. The video has 47 views. Twelve are mine. Ten of those were on mute while I figured out what to say.\n\nWednesday, a neighbor texted me a link. “Check it out and tell me if it’s good.” It was a pickup-drop-and-food app for kids — who’s driving, who’s eating what, who forgot the water bottle. A genuine problem! Which is exactly why it has already been solved by the school WhatsApp group, the class Signal group, the carpool spreadsheet, one very organized mom named Deepa, and three funded startups that lived, pivoted, and died before he ever typed his first prompt. I told him it was “promising.” I am part of the problem.\n\nFriday, over chai, another neighbor casually pulled out his phone and showed me a children’s storybook app he’d built. Personalized stories. AI illustrations. His kid’s name in every tale. It was genuinely sweet. It was also the fourth AI storybook app I’ve been shown this year, and the kid in question was ten feet away, watching Cocomelon.\n\nAnd here’s the thing — this wasn’t a strange week. This was the twentieth demo in three months. Twenty apps I have dutifully downloaded, tested, and complimented, because I actually want to stay friends with these people and I don’t have it in me to crush anyone’s spirit. So I click the link. I create the account. I say “this is cool.” I have become the unpaid QA department for my entire social circle, and my only compensation is chai.\n\nIf you lived through 2020, you remember the sourdough starters. Every WhatsApp group had that one person posting crumb shots. Everyone named their starter. Everyone was suddenly a baker.\n\nNobody opened a bakery.\n\nVibe coding is the sourdough starter of 2026. The AI is the yeast, the app is the loaf, and the group chat is where it goes to be admired briefly and then die.\n\nThe difference is that nobody pretended their sourdough was a startup. Nobody sent you a slice of bread and asked for “feedback on the UX.” The bread people knew they were hobbyists. The vibe coders have a pitch deck energy about them that concerns me.\n\nLet me tell you what’s actually being built out there, based on my extremely scientific sample of friends, colleagues, and neighbors:\n\nNone of these will ever have a second user. Every single one was demoed to me with the glow of a person who has just discovered fire.\n\nAbout that wellness app. A colleague built a chatbot that checks in on your feelings — built it over a weekend, somewhere between lunch and a Costco run. Everything else on this list is harmless. This is the one category where “I vibe coded it” is not a charming origin story. The storybook app can hallucinate a dragon and everyone survives. This one should not be freelancing as a therapist at 2 a.m. for someone who’s actually struggling. Some things deserve more than vibes, and the human mind is on that list, somewhere above brunch reservations.\n\nAnd here’s the thing that actually gets me: **not one of these people is going to quit their job.** They know it. I know it. The app knows it. We are all participating in an elaborate theater where we pretend the storybook app is a “project” and not what it actually is — a very expensive way to feel productive on a Saturday.\n\nI’ve been trying to figure out what itch this scratches, because it’s clearly scratching *something*. Millions of people don’t collectively start doing the same pointless thing unless it’s feeding a real hunger.\n\nHere’s my theory. For twenty years, software was the thing that happened *to* us. Other people built the apps; we just downloaded them and accepted the terms and conditions. Building was for “technical people.” The rest of us were users — a word that, notably, we otherwise only apply to addicts.\n\nThen one day the gate just… opened. Type what you want, get an app. And everyone rushed through, not because they had something to build, but because *they finally could*. The storybook app isn’t a product. It’s a proof of existence. It’s my neighbor saying: I made a thing. Me. With my hands (okay, with my prompts).\n\nThat’s not nothing. That’s actually kind of beautiful.\n\nIt’s also, let’s be honest, mostly timepass. Elevated, silicon-flavored, venture-scented timepass.\n\nThe generous take writes itself: hobbies don’t need to monetize! Creativity is its own reward! Your uncle’s terrible watercolors never needed a gallery!\n\nAnd sure. Fine. All true.\n\nBut hobbies used to have the decency to *know* they were hobbies. The watercolor uncle never asked you to sign up for his waitlist. Vibe coding has smuggled startup vocabulary into weekend puttering, and now every hobbyist sounds like a founder. “I’m iterating.” “I’m getting user feedback.” Sir, I am not a user. I am your neighbor. I came here for tea.\n\nMy real worry isn’t the wasted weekends. It’s the quiet inflation of expectation — every one of these people half-believes their app is one feature away from mattering, and the fortieth storybook app is going to meet the same silence as the first thirty-nine.\n\nWe’re not chasing products. We’re chasing the feeling of being someone who builds. The apps are just the receipts.\n\nAnyway. I should wrap this up — I’m meeting a friend later and I have a feeling he’s built something.\n\nAnd yes, before you ask: I wrote this essay about people making things with AI, with an AI open in the next tab. I contain multitudes. At least I’m not asking you to check out my app.\n\n*Yet.*\n\n*If you enjoyed this, clap — or don’t, and instead go tell a vibe coder in your life that their app is nice. They built it for you anyway.*\n\n[Dispatches From the Vibe Coding Epidemic](https://blog.stackademic.com/dispatches-from-the-vibe-coding-epidemic-1b750d2ecf9c) was originally published in [Stackademic](https://blog.stackademic.com) on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/dispatches-from-the-vibe-coding-epidemic", "canonical_source": "https://blog.stackademic.com/dispatches-from-the-vibe-coding-epidemic-1b750d2ecf9c?source=rss----d1baaa8417a4---4", "published_at": "2026-07-10 08:00:30+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-10 08:10:09.282019+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["generative-ai", "ai-tools", "ai-products", "ai-ethics"], "entities": ["Deepa", "Cocomelon", "YouTube", "WhatsApp", "Signal", "Costco"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/dispatches-from-the-vibe-coding-epidemic", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/dispatches-from-the-vibe-coding-epidemic.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/dispatches-from-the-vibe-coding-epidemic.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/dispatches-from-the-vibe-coding-epidemic.jsonld"}}