> 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?
Never, because we never did. Slop exists because selling-slop is a facile business. Slop has existed for a long time before AI came on the scene and nobody in cultural discourse really wanted to admit it or had the words to talk about it except in niche online spaces. This type of stuff used to be called filler among various different industries. There was also the idea of things being formulaic.
A lot of what you point out like "dance music from the 2000's" or "movies from the 90's" are often surrounded by slop in other genres of the same media. A lot of contemporary critics pointed out these movements as slop in and of themselves just using words like formulaic. A lot of people forget or never knew that historically for most pop music writing a complete album was considered a waste of time. They'd just have people record covers of standards of public domain songs.
The main reason slop exists is because most of what you consume is business first and art second. Business decisions are driven by dullards using simplistic data. Publishing is a perfect example. They don't know how a unique piece of art is going to sell, for example House of Leaves took 6 years and went through 32 publishers before it was published. However they have plenty of data that romantasy slop is likely going to sell good enough to make a buck on.
The structure of cultural production is slop factories, art making it out of them is a happy accident.
Amazing quality art isn't recognised anymore because all attention is dictated by algorithms. And the algorithms are dictated by attention.
Audiences are fragmented and the internet has destroyed any universal culture. Even the most popular thing go ask your neighbour and they've never heard of it.
So it's much easier and safer (both economically but also personally for individuals) to produce consistent slop to the smaller fragmented audience than risk creating something great.
This is Slop-Slop-Slop
> 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?
Never, because we never did. Slop exists because selling-slop is a facile business. Slop has existed for a long time before AI came on the scene and nobody in cultural discourse really wanted to admit it or had the words to talk about it except in niche online spaces. This type of stuff used to be called filler among various different industries. There was also the idea of things being formulaic.
A lot of what you point out like "dance music from the 2000's" or "movies from the 90's" are often surrounded by slop in other genres of the same media. A lot of contemporary critics pointed out these movements as slop in and of themselves just using words like formulaic. A lot of people forget or never knew that historically for most pop music writing a complete album was considered a waste of time. They'd just have people record covers of standards of public domain songs.
The main reason slop exists is because most of what you consume is business first and art second. Business decisions are driven by dullards using simplistic data. Publishing is a perfect example. They don't know how a unique piece of art is going to sell, for example House of Leaves took 6 years and went through 32 publishers before it was published. However they have plenty of data that romantasy slop is likely going to sell good enough to make a buck on.
The structure of cultural production is slop factories, art making it out of them is a happy accident.
Amazing quality art isn't recognised anymore because all attention is dictated by algorithms. And the algorithms are dictated by attention.
Audiences are fragmented and the internet has destroyed any universal culture. Even the most popular thing go ask your neighbour and they've never heard of it.
So it's much easier and safer (both economically but also personally for individuals) to produce consistent slop to the smaller fragmented audience than risk creating something great.
Then why did you use it on your second most recent post?