At the times, like today’s, we complain—with a reason—about AI slop taking over the internet. We fear that everything is left after some time is akin to a Pat Cadigan’s vision in Synners: food porn, war porn, traffic porn, med porn, just porn. And we kind of one step in this future already with things like PMV, ASMR video, compilations of numerous recordings with pets, funny or not, auto-scroll in Tiktok, quasi-engagement metrics. Except all of those were and are created by people, not AI.
We are already in the slop era. Only the slop is generated by humans. And I would say by bloggers—and mostly it is created by them—but no. Common folks, our neighbours, spouses, kids—all of them generate slop all the time. Lacking meaning, emotions, realness, authenticity slop.
I left Instagram, Twitter (X), Tiktok exactly because of it. I had not been seeing people there. There were only pictures of them. I have a profile with content there. But it isn’t me. My wife is there. But it is also not my wife.
I have withdrawn myself from those places mostly and nothing changed. Isn’t it a main trait of the slop? The absence of it makes no difference.
An interesting thing though is that most people in those places (I will continue to call it this way as it is hard for me to name it ‘social’ networks) do live real and authentic in its own way lives. There are not so many of them who do actually believe in this generated by themselves ‘slop’. It is a small part of them who can be actually fit into any of those basic, rudimentary shells called profiles. No, it is our choice by some reason to be publicly seen as those shells.
Is it just a fear akin to the one when making public speeches? Maybe. The result is we all support and fuel the sloppiness of the internet for a long time already.
And if you are scared to make a speech in front of others, even if it is an innocent one, you can just not, you know that, right?
This note first appeared handwritten in my physical journal around 8 AM, accompanied by a cup of freshly brewed homemade pour-over coffee.
It wasn’t rainy as should be in October in Tallinn but still grey and dark, again, as should be this season here. At some point our cat starts meowing. It’s her thing. She does that waking up alone in a room.