Business

Samantha Perry

If 2024 was the year of AI awe, and 2025 the year of pilot project exhaustion, then this is the year of the great digital backlash.

Walk into any Sandton boardroom, and you’ll feel it: a palpable craving for anything that hasn't been optimised by an algorithm. We’re witnessing the swing back toward the experience economy, where the ultimate luxury isn't a faster chatbot, but a face-to- face conversation with a person who actually remembers your name without checking their CRM system. What’s driving this? Paradoxically, it’s the very thing that was supposed to make our lives easier: frictionless connection. Trends at SXSW 2026 highlight a growing resentment toward “algorithmic comfort”, that sterile, filtered digital reality where every interaction is mediated by a platform. When everything online is a warped digital mirror, human beings naturally seek the rough edges of real life. We’re tired of AI slop drowning out authentic creativity, and we're gatvol of the hallucinations that make us second-guess every piece of data we see.