Likely many other, I’ve been grossed out by some of the shit getting churned out with generative ai. But it’s also made me notice some of the existing things that give me the same feeling.
Poorly translated stuff, as often seen on cheap Chinese imports, has the same uncanny valley awkwardness. It sounds like English, but it isn’t what an actual human who spoke English would say. And if we want to talk about an algorithm that’s gone rogue and is destroying the world while trying to fulfill some arbitary metrics, there’s always late-stage capitalism…
Anyone else notice things like this?
Anything found on aliexpress, temu or wish. Manufactured trash/industrial runoff that’s likely dangerous to breathe near.
Television news. In fact, most of the shit on television these days.
The idea cancer for toddlers section of youtube, which I think they have since cleaned up. The “finger family pregnant elsa kills hitler spiderman” era. Which was kind of fascinating to study, because no one was in charge. iPad children weren’t making decisions, they were just letting the colors and sounds happen, and actual people deciding to make the content, sometimes to the point of wearing costumes and shooting live video, were making what the algorithm deemed popular. At least one woman pulled a bright blue dress over a fake baby belly while her husband scribbled a toothbrush mustache on a Spiderman mask and didn’t think “What the hell are we even doing right now?”
low effort, low quality, for making money because of it. Might not have either low effort or quality “tag” at times, but then its replaced by being harmful, which can be there with them too. So things like what fastfood companies squeeze out, tiktok content, illegal drugs, temu trash.
So maybe also anything that actively exploits humans in some way for monetary gains (ai exploits and harms creators, fastfood and drugs exploit and harm body, tiktok trash exploits and harms mind, temu trash exploits western economy and harms environment).
so in short, shit that would make world better place with its absence
Reaction videos - prime example of slop. WHO DAFUQ WATCHES THESE? Like, am I going crazy by not getting this? Why would I watch some person just sit there and react to shit, often exaggerating their reaction to get attention of a watcher, that brings literally 0 fucking worth to the original content?
Prank videos - only are second to reaction videos. 99% of the time are either fake or they do some questionable stuff to expectorating bystanders.
Reaction videos can be done right. There’s a vocal coach on Youtube who listens to and comments on the vocal techniques in use in famous songs, the most fun ones are the ones she’s never heard before. It’s also really easy to do this kind of content lazily, play someone else’s video and remember to say “oh shit” occasionally.
There’s two kinds of reaction videos. The more common type a lot of streamers do is just garbage content stealing. The other is actually interesting or entertaining to watch.
I dont mind them when the reactor is a specialist (like a physicist or chemist or something) who normally produce their own content reacting to a realted thing. Pure react channels are pretty trash tho
Short form video comedy with cringy facial expressions synced to music is my most hated example
shorts, ads, fast food
Just about any short form video site.
Most paperback novels sold in grocery stores
90% of the Steam library
Fast fashion
Kitchen appliances with superfluous electronics
Battery powered scooters that can’t handle a mild incline
etc etc
Influenza.
Recipe websites.
Any trump speech.
For recipe sites use the Broccoli app. Scrapes off the SEO gunk and saves the recipe locally.
*Most recipe sites.
JustOneCookbook is very brief on backstory. Anything mentioned is usually related in context to the dish like culture things or substitutions.But besides that page? Very unusual to have minimal background info strictly related to the recipe.
YouTube channels that are mostly just reading Reddit comments.
Even if they discuss the content of it?
Similarly, youtube channels about disaster events that are just reading the Wikipedia page with some spooky music.
Especially if it’s using that annoyingly upbeat robot voice.
That would be AI slop by most standards since the robot voice is “AI” in a way.
Or reading “am I the asshole” or “relationship advice” posts.
Fuck. I hate so much of this crap.
A lot of these are also AI slop nowadays too
fast food…
at this point can you even call that meat?
I grew up poor where you don’t throw away food.
But yeah I’m not eating at Carl’s Jr. That shit is nasty.
The “cooking blog” style where a simple answer to a simple question has to be padded with eight paragraphs of garbage. Like, I just want to know how to put a comment in a YAML file. I don’t need a table of contents for this, I don’t need to hear a brief history of how the comment was invented, just tell me the character to type.
what is the reason behind this? i never understood it. is the garbage supposed to raise the SEO score or something?
More screen length = more space for embedded video ads.
When it was recipes they claimed it was copyright related. If another site stole your whole recipe plus the story you know it’s stolen. Just saying to hard boil eggs, split em, add mayo and mustard… well that’s just any deviled eggs.
If you’re not adding Sriracha to them, it’s not deviled eggs. 😀
Temu dollar garbage. Especially 3D printed stuff
Side qustion:
AliExpress doesnt pretend to be the “THIS ARTICLE HAS A 99% DISCOUNT!!! Buy now!!!” (and I choose to ingore the discount codes which apply at >200€ cart value).Would you consider their stuff slop?
Trashy sure but some of the stuff is actually better than getting the same on Amazon.I’ve been buying from alibaba and aliexpress for years and I’ve never had anything INAD or otherwise temu style shitty come from there. It’s literally Amazon without the middleman.
I mean…There is shit but you can filter it out very easily.
There’s shit on there but just don’t buy it. Temu actually lies about what you’ll get.
Amazon. It’s a gigantic warehouse of slop
any maga conspiracy theories
“Silverberg’s Law”
Someone once asked science fiction writer Robert Silverberg why 90% of the SF stories they read were crap.
Silverberg replied that 90% of everything is crap.
You mean Sturgeon’s law, right?
And that’s why older media is usually better. Only the good parts have survived and the 90% has been forgotten.
The trouble is that a lot of the good stuff is forgotten as well.
Here are some movies you’ve probably never heard of.
“The Day of the Jackal” [original]
“The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3” [original]
“Silent Partner” Elliot Gould
“The 3 Musketeers” Raquel Welch and Oliver Reed.
“Little Big Man”
I never hear them mentioned but people will rewatch a Hitchcock movie fifty times.
Sadly true (and yeah, I didn’t know about those movies)
