The Slop Has Only Just Begun

Please Sir, can I have some more [slop]?

Slop has infected and overwhelmed every facet of our culture.

Social media has become slop. Google has become slop. Online media has been drowned out by slop. Political campaigning around the world is pure slop. Writing platforms are swamped with slop. The majority of movies, TV shows and video games are nothing but paint-by-numbers slop. Most modern music is overly manufactured slop. Marketing and advertising have become slop.

While I'd argue that the standards in culture have been declining for years — at least since the dawn of the algorithms and the prioritization of engagement metrics over user experience — it feels like we're reaching a critical mass.

Creatives of all forms are now being deprioritized like never before, while algorithms pollute every platform with soulless AI sludge. All the usual suspects are to blame here: greedy boardroom execs, venture capitalists, and the continued shift from consumer value to shareholder value.

Generative AI allows almost anyone to generate almost anything. Some argue this is a noble concept — let's democratize creativity! — but the output lacks the very fundamentals that make art, writing, music and all the other crafts worth consuming.

Without the human touch, the nuances of tastes and opinions, the variation in style and techniques, the flaws and imperfections, the craft and experiences to shape things from, the majority of this output is soulless, purposeless and frankly useless, especially in its cultural context.

It's everywhere we turn, across almost every medium we use, and it's only about to get worse.

It really is dead internet theory in action. For those unaware, the theory goes that the Internet now consists mainly of bot activity and generated content that's manipulated by algorithmic curation. Where the theory goes slightly into conspiracy theory is the reason behind this shift: to control the population and minimize organic human activity. We'll leave that part for another day.

This slop era, fueled by generative AI, could be the point where the first, less cynical part of the theory becomes reality. Some platforms and sites are already there. AI content generated by AI profiles which is engaged with by other AI accounts. What about content more broadly? Films, shows, music, and books —these sectors are all battling with how to manage generative AI or deciding how to implement it as soon as possible. Big streaming platforms like Netflix are already doing it, and don't care what we think because the bottom line for them is that the "VFX sequence was completed 10 times faster than it could have been completed with visual, traditional VFX tools and workflows." That content mill must keep churning. Next on the list are ads: hyper-targeted, super-creepy, and fully AI-generated.

While many have pushed back — the protests by the actors guild, or court cases by authors and media publications whose work was stolen to train these LLMs — the executives see one thing: more output with fewer people, more profits for less expenses. I don't think it will stop anytime soon. We've only entered the slop era. We're already seeing entirely generated social content, films, music, books, and writing enter the mainstream — with a surprising lack of pushback — and that's with the underlying technology still in its infancy.

As it continues to improve, making it impossible to tell whether it's human or robot-created, we should be prepared for a literally overwhelming amount of content to come. The kicker? This stuff is made with bare minimal effort, thought and heart. I can't wait.

What happens from there depends a lot on us. It goes two ways:

1. Platforms, whether social or streaming, advertisers or media sites, continue to increase the output produced, in part or entirely, by AI. We eat it up, saying "Please, sir, can I have some more?" Engagement metrics stay the same or go up, opening the floodgates for this era to become permanent.

2. Platforms, whether social or streaming, advertisers or media sites, continue to increase the output produced, in part or entirely, by AI. We say, "Hey, go fuck yourself." Engagement metrics drop, impacting stock prices and values, causing panic in boardrooms with execs left sweating, forcing platforms and services to dial it all back.

Of course, the power isn't totally in our hands. Many of our tech overlords and execs are going to pursue the slop come hell or high water because their businesses have invested so much, leaving them sitting on a precarious house of cards that needs generative AI to generate something actually useful—money.

But we do have a say.

We can say no more. We can pursue things that actually bring us joy, not what we're told to consume. We can try, as hard as it is, to curate our own feeds and interests and ignore algorithm-driven, AI-generated sludge.

We can turn down the next serving of slop.