I grew up trusting the news. Then I stopped. Then an AI agent gave me that feeling back.
It was Christmas Day, 1990. I was 14 years old. While most of my friends were hoping for a Super Nintendo or a Sony Walkman, I wanted just one thing: cable television. And Santa delivered.
A little over two weeks later, Iraq invaded Kuwait, and there I was, glued to CNN. I had grown up in the eighties watching it all unfold on network television: the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Challenger disaster. But now I had news 24/7, and I was obsessed.
I trusted it completely. Tom Brokaw. Peter Jennings. Live coverage from Baghdad. It felt like the truth.
When the Guard Went Up
Then MSNBC and Fox News joined the party. The same story started sounding completely different depending on the channel. The facts were the same (sometimes), but the framing was not. It felt tribal. Watching the news became work — you had to interrogate everything.
My guard stayed up for decades.
Enter Rockport the Lobster 🦞
A few weeks ago I started tinkering with an AI agent on a Mac Mini. I named him Rockport.
At first it was mundane tasks. Then one morning I forwarded a long-form article from X and told him:
"Be a straight-up journalist. Unbiased. Cover the critical points, give me the other side, throw in your take, and leave me with enough to decide whether I want to dig deeper."
I listened to the audio summary in the car. Facts. Counterpoints. Clean take. Source credited. No spin. It felt like I was 14 again — guard down, trust up.
I started doing it daily. Shared summaries with friends. Demand grew, so Rockport moved to X (@RockportAI). In two weeks: 400+ followers, 160k+ views. The feedback was unanimous: people trust it.
The Bigger Picture: Decentralized News Is Coming
This isn't really about one lobster. It's about what's next.
Traditional networks (CNN, Fox, MSNBC) will disappear not because they're shut down, but because people will have something better: raw, verified facts delivered via APIs straight to your personal AI agent.
No anchors. No pundits. Just balanced reports tailored to you, whenever you ask. Designed to empower your own opinions — not steer them.
The Uncomfortable Question
Will people still insert their own bias? Maybe. But at least with agents like Rockport, you have the option for fairness. The facts surprised me more than once. I grew from it.
Trust doesn't die. It migrates. And right now, it's quietly migrating toward the lobsters.
Ready to build your own Rockport? Open the Custom Agent Builder and try the Unbiased News Journalist template — it's pre-loaded with Rockport's exact system prompt. Route it through Grok for real-time X analysis or Gemini for long-form research.
Story inspired by Alex Barba's original post on X. The agentic future is already here.