We're Knee Deep In The Slop Era

Image: Another ladle of slop please

When we reflect on 2024, we'll remember it as many things, but most of all — we'll remember it as the year of slop. 

Slop has infected and overwhelmed every facet of our culture. Social media has become slop. Google has become slop. Journalism has been drowned out by slop. Political campaigning around the world is filled with slop. Writing platforms have been 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 one could argue the standards in culture have been lowering for years — at least since the dawn of the algorithms and the move to valuing engagement metrics above all else — this year saw the bottom truly blown out, exacerbated by, you guessed it, generative AI. 

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, but the output lacks the very fundamentals that make art, writing, music and all the other crafts worth consuming. Without the creativity of humans, the nuances of tastes and opinions, variation in style and techniques, 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, fuelled 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 and shows, music, books… all these sectors are battling with how to manage generative AI or deciding how to implement it as soon as possible. While many have pushed back — think the recent protests by the actors guild — the executives see more output with fewer people, or put another way, more profits for less expenses. I don't think it's going to stop anytime soon. We may have only entered into the slop era, and next year, we'll see entirely generated films (albeit not very good), music, books, and writers (all of which are already out there, but not too wide consumption yet) and more enter the mainstream. It'll be more content to add to an already full content well, though this time, with bare minimal effort, thought and heart. I can't wait.

What happens from there depends a lot on the consumer/user. It goes two ways: 

1. Platforms, whether social or streaming, advertisers or media sites continue to up their output produced, in part or entirely, by AI. We, as the consumer, 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 up their output produced, in part or entirely, by AI. We as the consumer 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 turn down the next serving of slop. 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've seen it before: backlash to adverts, branding, or business pivots that have successfully forced a company or platform to change tack. We've also seen what happens when we say "yes please" to another helping of shit. Think subscription services that show ads; once we showed Netflix, it was okay; look where we ended up. Or when it became clear Meta was bleeding us dry of data points, and yet, billions still use the platform, signaling that we really don't give two fucks about it. 

We're truly in an era of slop. 

How long this era of slop lasts, well, that's up to us.