Side note: I love the imperfect fonts and old school design of the website. For years I've been looking for ways to re-create old book style text and graphs in the digital era. This gets so close to that vision.
I've written and typeset books. It's not so much that there's no "fl" ligature: it's that with that font the lack of a "fl" ligature really makes it bad looking. With many other fonts it wouldn't be anywhere near that bad (and I'm not just only about monospace).
I don't agree with the article that the top couple content creators can walk away and kill a platform. Vine committed suicide for no real reason, it's a pretty poor example to point to. Nowadays on any top social media there's 1-3% of creators making the vast majority of popular content, but more importantly, there's another 15% of people out there who are vying to try and take their spots and will gladly fill the void should the top creators leave. They're mostly just not doing well because the top is being crowded out (and the algorithm keeps it that way), not for lack of trying.
If we are smart, we will remember this and allow 95% of the consumption to be AI, too. Might as well let the thing talk to itself instead of waste our time.
I've personally begun taking an incredibly critical eye at the pop culture I allow myself to consume, and have been recently making a movie playlist from films before 1990 or so.
I have a niche Instagram account that goes out to find content and then "reposts" it. There were several fun aspects of this e.g. finding good content, writing my own little algorithm to prioritize contents from older posts on smaller accounts etc.
Lately, much as others have said, you are seeing entire accounts of AI generated images that are high quality, near photo realistic and consistent e.g. it looks like the same person in different scenes/times of day etc
You sometimes hear the quote about "pre-war steel" that hadn't been hit by radiation and that's EXACTLY what it feels like looking for an account with posts from before ~2022.
I wonder if the above means that people are going to spend less time online and prioritize "in real life" events or if the slop is just going to get more addicted.
Probably a mix of both in the same way that Tough Mudder/Spartan Races became popular while at the same time the number of other people NOT leaving their houses went up.
The thing I hate and this article kind of gets at in a roundabout way is how much slop is encouraged by the algorithm if you are a creator.
I've mentioned on this account a bunch of times I'm a very small-scale content creator (4 digit follower count) that has never monetized or really tried to monetize - making content, even if no one or very few people watch it is a hobby I just enjoy whether I make money or not.
Recently though it's been pointed out to me in harsh ways I could be easily growing if I tried a little harder, so I've invested more resources into the channel, equipment, actually trying growth, etc.
What I have noticed is that the content I make often or usually has to change in ways the FYP algorithm likes, or it will be lost into the ether, no matter how much money I put into it. So in a way the FYP is deciding which content it likes, which affects what creators put out, which to me destroys the entire creative process and makes slop necessary. I deeply resent it, I don't want to participate in it, and a decision inevitably gets made where you have to be like "do I want to get bigger and make money, or do I want to make the content I want to make?" Only the very, very lucky get both if you're on one of these major platforms.
One thing I particularly hated was as a twitch partner I notice that if I show ads, more traffic is then driven to my channel. That fundamentally compromises my content IMO. I understand why they as a business would want me to show ads, but I very much do not want to show them. Yes, I can migrate or try to host my own content, so I am accepting this reality by staying, but it wasn't always this way.
> I'm a very small-scale content creator (4 digit follower count) that has never monetized or really tried to monetize
To my understanding, that's about the size where platforms will typically consider allowing you to monetize through their system (as opposed to rattling a cup at Patreon, Ko-Fi etc.), and no mean feat (while everyone that people can think of listening to might be at least that size, very few people who try to develop and grow a presence succeed to that extent).
"More reach" seems a valid enough goal/desire in and of itself (even if you deride it as a shallow form of communication, shallow attention is what provides the opportunity for deeper connections); this sets the goal-activity of creative pursuits apart from "lounging alone at the beach" (which is itself a flawed representation of retirement, but that's another story).
Integrity is good, but the adtech ecosystem isn't designed to reward integrity. It's all about funneling eyeballs and clicks, and doing everything possible to restrict available next actions to a selection of Google's choosing (or Facebook, or Microsoft, etc.) There's a vicious feedback cycle wherein consumers are successively limited in choice, and if it's more profitable to direct them to a competitor's channel that's full of ads and slop than to your channel, they're not only going to favor the competitor overtly in the algorithm, the feedback cycle is going to make the counterproductive things you do (like having integrity) less fashionable overall.
It's their playground, their rules. Fair or right has nothing to do with it.
People will argue that if a shortform video is human made or AI generated it doesn't matter, it's domamine-triggering filler either way.
But I do think that the parasocial relationships and discovering new influencers is a big part of the hook for many people, and taking that away may cause many to have a "what the hell am I even watching" moment.
It's easier to justify the addiction when it feels like you're "hanging out with a friend." When content is AI generated from concept to production, it's just...talking pixel soup.
First I removed the Instagram app from my phone, because it was full of dark patterns meant to keep users scrolling.
Endless reposted stories from people you follow, endless suggested posts when you ran out of posts from people you actually know, and then the slop bucket known as reels. I found myself sucked in too often.
I used the web app version on my phone for a bit, which has a lot fewer dark patterns, but eventually I ditched that too because I found myself checking it out of habit.
Now I still have a login on my desktop browser, because for whatever reason some businesses insist on only sharing hours/menus etc via an Instagram post. But I'm close to pulling the plug on Instagram altogether.
Is there an xcancel equivalent for Instagram that lets me bypass the login wall in a pinch?
I also added a ublock origin filter list for tuning out social media distractions. Now my YouTube and Reddits are essentially blank feeds - no suggested posts, stories or recommendations.
A large number of extremely smart people are being paid ungodly amounts of money to enhance the addictiveness of AI output. I'm not optimistic about them failing.
For a few perhaps. I finally got mad enough at facebook slop to quit checking every day. I still have an account, but check it maybe once a month if I think of it (generally because my kids do something cute and I want to share the photo with my family). I don't want to see the right/left wing "you need to be outraged about this evil thing the left/right wing just did" (both sides do it, if you don't see it either you need a more diverse group of friends, or you are not honest about people you mostly agree with). There is value in facebook, but it is at most 5 minutes per day - and that doesn't pay their bill so they want the slop.
Of course I lose the most from the above. There are a number of events that are only spread on facebook and so I don't find out about them. Facebook has mostly replaced craigslist.
Nothing will happen to it. Someone will eventually complete the loop between slop generators to human reward systems to turn the first order derivative of content supply back up to pre-COVID levels.
It certainly offers strong motivation, in my experience, to revisit or commit to analog based hobbies. Recently I did a sewing class at a library. I’ve got a watercolor painting kit for about $30 all in and - as this article indicates - seeking info by surfing the web to use the web as a benefit, well I do recommend it.
There still is plenty of information superhighway infrastructure online - more than ever! It’s a matter of disengaging from the AI “slop trough” as I like to call it. Good article framing the discussion.
> If it were up to TikTok and Meta, our feeds would be exclusively robot-made. Humans are a variable they cannot control, and I think they despise us for it.
OpenAI’s Sora mobile app is the experiment to see if human beings will tolerate total AI content consumption. We’ll see how that will go.
No, Sora is an experiment if humans will knowingly consume a fully AI feed. But FB, IG, Reddit, Hacker News, etc social media is already full of slop, labeled or not. And it's there because that's what humans are choosing to engage the most with.
Not really, it’s just the interface OpenAI gave for creating short videos with their AI. They push people to it hoping for engagement, but it’s not the sole reason people go — unlike TikTok.
I mean sure, this is trivially true, but there's some nuance here. For example, I could find slop in the above threads. Ultimately, while slop, we have to focus on outcomes. If they produce content with some truth in them, they're truthful, regardless of whether an AI agent did or didn't write them. As for 'eyes to see', I think ignorise is bliss here. If a tree falls in a forest, and someone sees it but can't understand the tree has fallen, what's the point discussing the demerits of felling trees?
There is an important question that needs to be asked: why is someone watching content?
There's a big difference between watching something because they are interested and engaged in the topic vs watching because they're doom scrolling. I'd argue this is an important business question as if it's the latter you're very open to disruption.
I think the problem is that many companies have cornered the market and have shifted strategy to wealth extraction. Resting on their laurels. It makes sense from that perspective to trade quality for revenue, as there's no competition, but by doing so you also lower the barrier to entry for competitors while driving demand/motivation for competitors. Striking a balance between aggressive profit maximization and maintaining a cornered market is difficult. The only long term strategy is to play against an imaginary adversary but the short term profit maximization is incredibly tempting. Not to mention highly profitable for those that are at the top before it collapses. Are those people more dedicated to filling their pockets or to the long term survival of the company? It's clearly the former if they do not even consider that the company could lose its dominance.
You're right, we should focus on outcomes, but I don't think outcomes are very easy to measure. What outcomes? Over what time frame?
AI has made me hate real people even more that I already did. Constantly seeing human behavior emulated amplifies how much real people are on auto-pilot, even (especially?) the parts that make them "them".
>Creativity isn't scalable. Content creation has a hard productivity ceiling. Every human-created video on our feeds require some level of writing, production, and editing. Yet the For You Page has made the content consumption so efficient, that perhaps demand has exceeded supply.
I would have thought the opposite, the supply exceeded demand, driving the price so low so as to not be able to reward quality creators and/or curators. After all, demand has a hard ceiling at 24 hours per day.
The scarcity is in the originality and creativity.
Once you watch LotR, you watched like 20 percent guesstimate of all fantasy content because every fantasy stories involved elves and dwarves often enough.
Which is why sometime when I wonder why there's nothing to watch on YouTube despite the sheer abundance, it's time to work on something.
> After all, demand has a hard ceiling at 24 hours per day.
I agree consumption is capped. I constantly struggle with whether to watch a given video or read a given article. I have an ever increasing to-watch and to-read list and unfortunately human life is too short to learn all the things I would want to.
That being said, on the production side, it's a complex interplay between quality, quantity and discoverability. If it takes 10x the effort to increase quality 2x, then it might economical to produce 10x the number of videos with 1x the quality. I say might because those videos will be shared less, rated worse and will therefore have lower discoverability. But by how much?
And you can't judge quality until after you've consumed the "content"[0]. So if the goal is to serve as many ads as possible, it's more economical to just make more "content". That's why I much prefer individual "creators" who clearly do what they do because they enjoy it.
Off topic and doesn't impact the validity (or lack thereof) of the post. Just reactionary whining really...
For the love of all that is good, "exacerbated" and "exasperated" are different words.
We've already screwed up "home in on" by allowing the horrid "hone in" to horn in our lexicons. On a side note, watch out for those honing pigeons, they've got very sharp beaks.
To be fair, there is a logic behind “hone in on” that is at least plausible that relates to the intended meaning, and is perhaps somewhat responsible for it sticking around besides simply the similarity between “home” and “hone”.
I actually stumbled on this earlier today! I was reaching for home in on and settled on hone in on as it intuitively fit better to me! I remember thinking "Im trying to express reducing something critically which is like refining". Now I very clearly see the home etymology too though!
When people make these kinds of vocabulary mistakes, I like to at least charitably assume that English is their second language, but I've seen my kid's teachers make these mistakes, too...
I used to feel similarly whenever people would say "begs the question" to mean "raises a question." But now I've just given up. It's more common for people to mess this one up than not.
This lossy mingling of expressions that sound similar is a natural process always present in the evolution of a language. Giving up is a correct and healthy response imo.
"Begging the question" is a great example - its intended meaning as a specific fallacy descriptor lose to face-value interpretations that are "wrong" but also extremely fair for somebody to make. All this means is that "begging the question" is a weak name for the fallacy, because if you don't know what it means, a wrong assumption is easily available and contextually often seems to fit.
The language crushing out these expressions is a feature. Better all around to say the argument is circular or it assumes the conclusion. Doing those things may _actually_ "raise questions" as well as "begging the question" which makes things even worse.
It's not the fault of the casual language users that this expression is poorly understood, it's just bad naming in the first place.
Literally is literally figurative and only figuratively literal, anything remotely unsustainable is a "Ponzi scheme", and factoids are somehow facts instead of fictions... *sigh*
You really can't, not without also swearing off a ton of genuine content. You can swear off the Internet entirely, and maybe that's a net win, but other than that you're almost certain to encounter slop. And it may take longer than you like to sort the wheat from the chaff.
> Olive oil, wasabi, saffron, vanilla, Wagyu, honey, champagne, and truffle,...reality TV
from AI:
> lobster was once considered "garbage meat," so abundant in colonial America that it was fed to prisoners, slaves, and servants, sometimes leading to complaints and even laws limiting its servings
The decision that something is slop or good is subjective and ever changing.
The authors point is not that these things are “slop” in and of themselves, it’s that the demand for each of these so outpaces supply that the market is full of low quality (sometimes fraudulent) knock offs. AKA… slop.
If you like absurdist humor, there's a really good chance you'll enjoy some of the humor focused AI video "algorithm tracks" (what's the proper name?) on TikTok.
Seriously, stop worrying about what people do in their free time, and find you're own joy. It's not like your distaste is going to have any effect on the people who enjoy it, so stop worrying about it.
[1] https://www.hplhs.org/resources.php#fonts
I also use the wallpaper on https://hplovecraft.com/ as my actual wallpaper.
Now I'm reconsidering my resolve to look for AI slop - my enthusiasm for topography is getting in the way.
https://wondermark.com/c/650/
funny topo you made!
I've written and typeset books. It's not so much that there's no "fl" ligature: it's that with that font the lack of a "fl" ligature really makes it bad looking. With many other fonts it wouldn't be anywhere near that bad (and I'm not just only about monospace).
The craft is noticeably different.
People consume more and more of it until they get sick, and even then won’t stop.
I have a niche Instagram account that goes out to find content and then "reposts" it. There were several fun aspects of this e.g. finding good content, writing my own little algorithm to prioritize contents from older posts on smaller accounts etc.
Lately, much as others have said, you are seeing entire accounts of AI generated images that are high quality, near photo realistic and consistent e.g. it looks like the same person in different scenes/times of day etc
You sometimes hear the quote about "pre-war steel" that hadn't been hit by radiation and that's EXACTLY what it feels like looking for an account with posts from before ~2022.
I wonder if the above means that people are going to spend less time online and prioritize "in real life" events or if the slop is just going to get more addicted.
Probably a mix of both in the same way that Tough Mudder/Spartan Races became popular while at the same time the number of other people NOT leaving their houses went up.
The heterofurries and homofurries will be furious.
I've mentioned on this account a bunch of times I'm a very small-scale content creator (4 digit follower count) that has never monetized or really tried to monetize - making content, even if no one or very few people watch it is a hobby I just enjoy whether I make money or not.
Recently though it's been pointed out to me in harsh ways I could be easily growing if I tried a little harder, so I've invested more resources into the channel, equipment, actually trying growth, etc.
What I have noticed is that the content I make often or usually has to change in ways the FYP algorithm likes, or it will be lost into the ether, no matter how much money I put into it. So in a way the FYP is deciding which content it likes, which affects what creators put out, which to me destroys the entire creative process and makes slop necessary. I deeply resent it, I don't want to participate in it, and a decision inevitably gets made where you have to be like "do I want to get bigger and make money, or do I want to make the content I want to make?" Only the very, very lucky get both if you're on one of these major platforms.
One thing I particularly hated was as a twitch partner I notice that if I show ads, more traffic is then driven to my channel. That fundamentally compromises my content IMO. I understand why they as a business would want me to show ads, but I very much do not want to show them. Yes, I can migrate or try to host my own content, so I am accepting this reality by staying, but it wasn't always this way.
To my understanding, that's about the size where platforms will typically consider allowing you to monetize through their system (as opposed to rattling a cup at Patreon, Ko-Fi etc.), and no mean feat (while everyone that people can think of listening to might be at least that size, very few people who try to develop and grow a presence succeed to that extent).
Congrats.
It's their playground, their rules. Fair or right has nothing to do with it.
I noticed recently that some of my older accounts would have a higher quality of recommended content.
And then within a week or two of using them, it would be back to the same slop as my main account.
As far as I can tell this is because I click on what catches my attention. Whatever stands out. Which tends to be the most clickbaity thumbnails.
So I have to wonder if what you're actually fighting against is an algorithm, or the human limbic system...
But I do think that the parasocial relationships and discovering new influencers is a big part of the hook for many people, and taking that away may cause many to have a "what the hell am I even watching" moment.
It's easier to justify the addiction when it feels like you're "hanging out with a friend." When content is AI generated from concept to production, it's just...talking pixel soup.
First I removed the Instagram app from my phone, because it was full of dark patterns meant to keep users scrolling.
Endless reposted stories from people you follow, endless suggested posts when you ran out of posts from people you actually know, and then the slop bucket known as reels. I found myself sucked in too often.
I used the web app version on my phone for a bit, which has a lot fewer dark patterns, but eventually I ditched that too because I found myself checking it out of habit.
Now I still have a login on my desktop browser, because for whatever reason some businesses insist on only sharing hours/menus etc via an Instagram post. But I'm close to pulling the plug on Instagram altogether.
Is there an xcancel equivalent for Instagram that lets me bypass the login wall in a pinch?
I also added a ublock origin filter list for tuning out social media distractions. Now my YouTube and Reddits are essentially blank feeds - no suggested posts, stories or recommendations.
https://github.com/BevizLaszlo/UBlock-Filters-for-Social-Med...
Of course I lose the most from the above. There are a number of events that are only spread on facebook and so I don't find out about them. Facebook has mostly replaced craigslist.
There still is plenty of information superhighway infrastructure online - more than ever! It’s a matter of disengaging from the AI “slop trough” as I like to call it. Good article framing the discussion.
OpenAI’s Sora mobile app is the experiment to see if human beings will tolerate total AI content consumption. We’ll see how that will go.
There is an important question that needs to be asked: why is someone watching content?
There's a big difference between watching something because they are interested and engaged in the topic vs watching because they're doom scrolling. I'd argue this is an important business question as if it's the latter you're very open to disruption.
I think the problem is that many companies have cornered the market and have shifted strategy to wealth extraction. Resting on their laurels. It makes sense from that perspective to trade quality for revenue, as there's no competition, but by doing so you also lower the barrier to entry for competitors while driving demand/motivation for competitors. Striking a balance between aggressive profit maximization and maintaining a cornered market is difficult. The only long term strategy is to play against an imaginary adversary but the short term profit maximization is incredibly tempting. Not to mention highly profitable for those that are at the top before it collapses. Are those people more dedicated to filling their pockets or to the long term survival of the company? It's clearly the former if they do not even consider that the company could lose its dominance.
You're right, we should focus on outcomes, but I don't think outcomes are very easy to measure. What outcomes? Over what time frame?
Nope, they're still slop. Just like a spam message about a product you actually like is still spam.
I would have thought the opposite, the supply exceeded demand, driving the price so low so as to not be able to reward quality creators and/or curators. After all, demand has a hard ceiling at 24 hours per day.
Once you watch LotR, you watched like 20 percent guesstimate of all fantasy content because every fantasy stories involved elves and dwarves often enough.
Which is why sometime when I wonder why there's nothing to watch on YouTube despite the sheer abundance, it's time to work on something.
I think there is still demand for an elvish court show, somewhere.
I agree consumption is capped. I constantly struggle with whether to watch a given video or read a given article. I have an ever increasing to-watch and to-read list and unfortunately human life is too short to learn all the things I would want to.
That being said, on the production side, it's a complex interplay between quality, quantity and discoverability. If it takes 10x the effort to increase quality 2x, then it might economical to produce 10x the number of videos with 1x the quality. I say might because those videos will be shared less, rated worse and will therefore have lower discoverability. But by how much?
And you can't judge quality until after you've consumed the "content"[0]. So if the goal is to serve as many ads as possible, it's more economical to just make more "content". That's why I much prefer individual "creators" who clearly do what they do because they enjoy it.
[0]: https://eev.ee/blog/2025/07/03/the-rise-of-whatever/#:~:text...
For the love of all that is good, "exacerbated" and "exasperated" are different words.
We've already screwed up "home in on" by allowing the horrid "hone in" to horn in our lexicons. On a side note, watch out for those honing pigeons, they've got very sharp beaks.
(At least "defiantly" is an actual word, unlike "definately" which doesn't even pass spell check)
"Begging the question" is a great example - its intended meaning as a specific fallacy descriptor lose to face-value interpretations that are "wrong" but also extremely fair for somebody to make. All this means is that "begging the question" is a weak name for the fallacy, because if you don't know what it means, a wrong assumption is easily available and contextually often seems to fit.
The language crushing out these expressions is a feature. Better all around to say the argument is circular or it assumes the conclusion. Doing those things may _actually_ "raise questions" as well as "begging the question" which makes things even worse.
It's not the fault of the casual language users that this expression is poorly understood, it's just bad naming in the first place.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/home-in-or-hone-in
> Olive oil, wasabi, saffron, vanilla, Wagyu, honey, champagne, and truffle,...reality TV
from AI:
> lobster was once considered "garbage meat," so abundant in colonial America that it was fed to prisoners, slaves, and servants, sometimes leading to complaints and even laws limiting its servings
The decision that something is slop or good is subjective and ever changing.
Beaches and lobster are real things in the natural world. Slop is something else.