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Slop is everywhere for those with eyes to see

https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/slop-is-everywhere-for-those-with-eyes-to-see/
95•speckx•2h ago

Comments

lotsofpulp•2h ago
>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.

kiba•1h ago
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.

hvs•1h ago
And also why a large percentage of the "content" on YouTube is YouTubers reactions to other YouTubers.
MrGilbert•1h ago
> ... because every fantasy stories involved elves and dwarves often enough.

I think there is still demand for an elvish court show, somewhere.

chuckadams•51m ago
Too much elaborate flowery argument. I want to see Orc Court.
martin-t•1h ago
> 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.

[0]: https://eev.ee/blog/2025/07/03/the-rise-of-whatever/#:~:text...

daotoad•1h ago
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.

isoprophlex•1h ago
I've got a few well-homed knives in my kitchen. They're really happy where they are. I can leave them hone alone, too, which is nice.
nkrisc•1h ago
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”.
schrectacular•1h ago
As much as it angers me to say it, I do believe it is an eggcorn.
dugidugout•5m ago
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!
csallen•1h ago
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.
mnhnthrow34•59m ago
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.

Sharlin•42m ago
Yeah, we should probably standardize on "assuming the conclusion" or just "circular logic" when talking about the logical fallacy.
JamesTRexx•1h ago
Now imagine everyone using get only for its true meaning: to receive.
amatecha•59m ago
Ah yeah I noticed that too while pouring over the post :D
roadside_picnic•48m ago
We will never recovered from the fact that "literally" now means "figuratively but with emphasis".
monocularvision•31m ago
I understand that language evolves and meanings change but we need a word that means “literally”! If we let this one go, the battle is lost.
ryandrake•44m ago
Glad to see someone fighting the good fight, no matter how lost the battle is online. I'd add:

    your/you’re
    who’s/whose
    were/we’re/where
    to/too/two
    are/our
    then/than
    lose/loose
    wary/weary
    affect/effect
    aloud/allowed
    definitely/defiantly
    complement/compliment
    flout/flaunt

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...
mikepurvis•42m ago
No "effects" discussion is complete without https://xkcd.com/326/

(At least "defiantly" is an actual word, unlike "definately" which doesn't even pass spell check)

SoftTalker•17m ago
Standard excuse: autocorrect must have changed it.
mikepurvis•43m ago
Intriguing. I'm normally pretty careful about this kind of thing but I had thought "hone in" was correct. Apparently not:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/home-in-or-hone-in

assimpleaspossi•32m ago
Well, birds aren't real, so there's that.
behnamoh•1h ago
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.
watersb•53m ago
I generally like it, too, but on my iPhone that very first sentence puts a spotlight in the lack of an 'fl' ligature in the word, "influence".

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/

rjsw•48m ago
You might be interested in the resources [1] on the H.P.Lovecraft Historical Society website.

[1] https://www.hplhs.org/resources.php#fonts

Levitating•40m ago
Oh thats great.

I also use the wallpaper on https://hplovecraft.com/ as my actual wallpaper.

maerF0x0•1h ago
From the Article:

> 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.

turtletontine•1h ago
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.
FarmerPotato•42m ago
Yes, and before modern leisure time, beaches were uncanny haunts. The borderland where shipwrecks were found and dead things floated ashore.

Beaches and lobster are real things in the natural world. Slop is something else.

onion2k•1h ago
If you spend your time worrying about what TikTok videos other people watch you've probably got too much time on your hands.
ottah•1h ago
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.
nomel•53m ago
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.
ceejayoz•5m ago
One might say the same about HN comments.
47thpresident•1h ago
> 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.

not_ai•1h ago
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.
kgwxd•1h ago
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".
OGEnthusiast•1h ago
The upshot is that having everything be AI slop could be what breaks our collective addiction to chronic screen time/usage.
dashundchen•51m ago
The only winning move is not to play.

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...

FarmerPotato•47m ago
Perhaps you meant 'upside' .. if so, well played.
numpad0•40m ago
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.
bluGill•9m ago
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.

andyfilms1•5m ago
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.

erelong•43m ago
If you don't like the "slop" you can probably "avert thine eyes"
jfengel•37m ago
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.
alexpotato•42m ago
From a personal perspective:

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.

will_pseudonym•41m ago
the great bifurcation will continue apace
hackyhacky•34m ago
> the great bifurcation will continue apace

The heterofurries and homofurries will be furious.

pilooch•33m ago
Synthetic data for human (machine) learning... We should spend more time outside, we will!
jadenpeterson•16m ago
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?
JohnMakin•12m ago
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.

9dev•5m ago
There’s a neat little story called "Anecdote on Lowering the work ethic" that you might like. You can read the plot on the Wikipedia page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anekdote_zur_Senkung_der_Arbei...

East Germany balloon escape

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Germany_balloon_escape
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Slop is everywhere for those with eyes to see

https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/slop-is-everywhere-for-those-with-eyes-to-see/
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