Slop Slop

There’s so much talk about slop, that the slop talk has become slop.

Everyone is talking about slop these days.

Merriam Webster declared slop the 2025 Word of the Year and I get why. Terrible AI art, content, and music has flooded every platform. Beyond AI generated content, things feel just…bad right now. There’s plenty of books, music, movies, and TV shows getting made, but most of it doesn’t even feel real, and almost none of it rises above being just fine. We are in the slop era. Slop is life.

When you try to define “slop” a few characteristics come to mind. Low-effort, soulless, repetitive, boring, predictable, cheap, ugly, uninspiring, you can probably add your own words.

So, hey, did you know that we’ve become inundated with slop? Have you heard of the dead-internet theory or noticed that culture is pretty boring right now? What about the novel observation that AI doesn’t make good art, but makes it easy to churn out slop all day? I’m sure you haven’t heard that one before!

There is so much slop that at this point, criticizing the slop has become a slop of its own. It’s way, way easier to criticize than it is to make, and right now there is SO much to criticize about the state of culture.

There’s so much talk about slop, that the slop talk has become slop.

It feels like we are living in a bystander effect of art. Everyone knows the culture is shit right now. Everything is a little dead and lifeless right now. Very little, if any, works of art or facets of culture rise to any level of greatness right now. There’s no optimism, no future we are living into. Amidst this, it feels like everyone is standing around waiting for someone to do something.

Movies suck, why doesn’t someone make great movies like we made in the 90s? Dance music sucks, why don’t people start partying again like we did in the 2000s? Fashion sucks, why don’t designers and celebrities take risks like they did in the 80s? Literature sucks, why doesn’t someone write a great novel like we had in, well you get the point.

Don’t be shocked when a slop economy produces a slop culture, but who makes the culture, dear reader? Could it possibly be you? If we want to stop the slop, shouldn’t we all be taking ourselves a little more seriously?

One of the things about slop is that it is easy to make, churn out, and get a low level of attention for. Nothing is easier than pointing out flaws in something, especially when most things that get made are a little stupid, predictable, cheap, or soulless right now. I know that. We all know that. At what point will we tire of slop slop and start making original stuff again?

Non-slop, quality, work takes, well, work, and work requires the feeling or assumption that something will come from that work. Payment, wealth, enjoyment, or the belief that work will be received or appreciated in some way is necessary for labor to happen, and right now there isn’t a lot of that going around. Things are expensive and no one is getting paid what they should. The future feels like it’s slowly being canceled, so why try anyway? No one really believes in anything anymore, so what’s the point of art or culture?

I realize I’m doing the thing I’m criticizing right now, but as long as we are pointing out slop, I’m going to point out that we are reaching peak pointing-out-slop-slop! Look, we know everything looks, tastes, and smells like shit right now. We know AI sucks. We know capitalism is to blame. We K N O W. Point at literally anything happening in culture right now (except Madonna’s new album) and it probably reeks of slop. You aren’t smart for pointing it out, you are doing slop slop! So now what? Next time you go to point out how dumb everything is in our culture, try making something non-sloppy instead. Work on that music, write something original, practice craft. Take time to really, actually, think of something original, and tell me something I don’t know.