SLOP I – Slop on everyone’s tongues

The computer delivers us content to consume? What SLOP it is!

I need you to take a look at this bizarre video called ‘Brainrottopia’ (Unless you have epilepsy!) – it stuck on my brain like a burr and I had to solve it.

Hardly any views, odd bit of editing-together of various sorts of content that I’ve seen called ‘slop’. It might just be a bunch of garbled gibberish that you shouldn’t take too seriously, but what we’re supposed to ignore, pass our eyes over, usually is something more important if you look too close. 

Now I’ve no clue what the creator meant, but it feels like it’s tapping into the reactive energy of that concept of ‘slop’ that has been everywhere lately. It’s in the News, in the Oxford Dictionary, on TV, in Magazines, on Twitter, – ‘slop.’ That game’s slop, that song, that news story – it’s a word for reacting and a metaphor – a thing is like ‘slop.’

It’s also a juvenile word, the kind you wouldn’t use outside of being snarky, yet it’s stuck to the zeitgeist strangely hard. Undeniably it’s fun to say, great phonetics, but that doesn’t explain why ‘AI slop’ is becoming the go-to descriptor for AI content at large, let alone for any cultural product you want to put down.

When a metaphor’s this prevalent, it’s worth interrogating, which got me asking: where the heck did ‘slop’ enter our zeitgeist from? And, perhaps more importantly, what’s at the root of ‘Slop’?

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A decent start is looking at how the word is used: 

Meme wiki KnowYourMeme puts the term as spawned by the community of streamer ‘Pyrocynical’, calling his low-effort content his ‘slop for the piggies’ – but that genealogy is woefully incomplete (I doubt the folks at Oxford Dictionary run in those circles!)

Anti-feminist youtubers of the post-gamergate scene talk about the ‘woke’ or ‘feminist’ slop in games and film they spite, so is it, like ‘-pilled’ or ‘based,’ coming out of the alt-right? Pre-dating the usage of the term ‘AI slop’ is the phrase Goyslop. The term was used by far-right internet users from at least 2019 to describe unhealthy foods that these unpleasant lads say is ‘foisted by sinister Jews upon the West’, in the classic anti-semitic conspiracy style.

Thing is, this origin doesn’t have any good link to its use for ‘AI slop,’ and don’t let that mistake you – slop’s not just for the wormy little fascists! 

Progressive, Left-wing, or critique-adjacent YouTubers have thrown in their commentaries – but if you really want to see ‘slop’ be used for everything under the sun, try subreddits for leftism-adjacent-infotainment and find:  ‘pop psychology slop,’ arguments over ‘slop’ being used too much, defense and attacks on ‘slop games.’ 

Here’s the funny thing, only some of these match the definition of ‘slop’ given by the OED or mainstream broadcasters, most are using it to construct whole novel categories of ‘slop.’

Slop is an unclear ground, it’s the word of the day, but everyone’s using it for different things. Its meaning is broader than one category, so we gotta go deeper!

To the dictionary!

It’s clearly used as a metaphor, as in ‘this thing is like slop,’ so what’d it originally mean?

The original noun has a few usages orbiting around vibe. Slop is wet, if we think of the texture of a ‘slop’ it’s not far from slime or sludge or goo. The word has strong sound symbolism – slops sound like the word – “Slop!” Slop is distinctly unclean, you don’t want to touch a pile of slop – to dress untidy is ‘sloppy,’ and one minor use of the noun is as a term for wastewater (“Pour out the slop”) or in an archaic form to mean ‘human excrement.’ 

It’s also a common pejorative for food of a deeply unpleasant form – a workhouse gruel is ‘slop.’ There’s also several archaic uses which I’m excluding here, where there’s no evidence of a connection with its modern use.

Slop’s most revealing old meaning and most quick-to-hand is ‘food for farm animals,’ especially pigs. To ‘slop’ a pig is farm terminology meaning to ‘to fill an animal’s food trough.’

This usage, and the waste/dirt connotations link it closely with ‘garbage’, and both share a link in their origin – garbage derives from an old English term for the waste cuts of meat that would be thrown to animals. Farm animal’s slop is usually food waste – leftovers or vegetables not sufficient for human use. Their texture, ground up or left to soak in water overnight, is certainly slop-like. 

Now, common across the usual definitions is a strong core of ‘value’, and in that low value. Slop is *waste* water, or unpleasant liquids, or dirty things, all of which are things of little or even negative value (you want to get rid of it, not have it). Slop as an actual foodstuff is of too low a quality for humans, so it is fed to pigs – while describing food as slop is a way to call it disgusting. 

It’s worthless things, but because it’s about value, this gives it a real slippery nature, and is why definitions are so messy: because what is of the lowest, worthless state to me is not the same as you. The most banal kitsch is charming to someone, the rotten meat is a delight for maggots – even the loathsome faeces is appreciated by dung beetles and the joyful pervert. 

However, the word slop’s associations evoke common negative features of cultural objects that a lot of people find distasteful:

Slop is all blended up, it’s no one thing.

The individual identity of a portion of slop disappears, it is repetitive, homogeneous, blended up remains of other things that most importantly is sold by volume, rather than piecemeal. AI images are generated in volume by the batch, platforms like tiktok can endlessly produce new videos (as in the video at the top of this post), so every piece becomes indistinct.

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AI content is especially liquidy and insolid.

Find some AI slop, see how backs melt into fronts, cars spill out of motorcycles, space wobbles around the moving camera. The sloppy, runny nature of these images contributes to the specific experience of disgust at AI slop.

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Slop is produced for mass consumption

In the workhouse, in the barn – or to millions of viewers. Slop content is for mass-consumption, Mr. Beast, clickbait, engagement farming.  

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Most importantly, slop is for pigs.

Pigs are the archetypal consumer, and their food is ‘slop.’ At its heart, it’s about how you feel as a ‘consumer.’ Slop is that which is worthless (especially if it’s got ‘sloppy’ features), but is (wants to be) consumed – and that just feels gross.

Slop is products which, given to you to consume, make you feel like it’s slop thrust at a pig. 

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This reveals what allows us to find ‘slop’ everywhere: that ‘slop’ vibe isn’t limited to any specific genre of object, but is a potential in every consumer good. ‘Slop’ is appearing when a product strikes you as too clearly expecting you to consume it without thought – like a pig. That is to say, when it’s

too brazenly a product.

In capitalism consumer goods have a status of sheathing, where their cynical status as objects of profit-for-somebody are hidden: Toothpaste is not made to clean your teeth, it’s made to make money by you buying it. When you wake up in the morning, though, it’s just toothpaste for your teeth.

But if that sheath of ‘real worth’ is gone, if it’s nakedly manufactured to take your money, that ruins the process – it’s a little too obvious. 

Consider this anecdote (shamelessly poached) from Mark Fisher’s “Capitalist Realism” (Pages 51-52): 

Gerald Ratner, a successful jewelry executive, broke the kayfabe of his goods’ value in 1991 when he remarked in an after-dinner speech that the inexpensive jewelry his shops sold was ‘crap,’ ‘worth less than a sandwich.’ The quip lost 500 million in value for the company and he became a cautionary tale for execs – Customers might previously have known that the jewelry Ratner sold was poor quality, but he admitted it. When this representative of the company pulled back that veil, something snapped.

All this talk of slop is that same logic on tiny cultural products. To call an image ‘AI slop,’ you must know it’s made by AI – that there’s nothing behind what is supposedly a ‘real picture’ but a machine churning out data points – so you can easily recognize how worthless it is. 

Slop happens because we each still have some sense of value to compare the image to, and these slops are a bit too pure in their cynicism – it’s there to make money, get views, keep your attention – falling short of what you think it should be. It’s not crazy to be disgusted by that – might even make you sane!

Yet, all that makes things ‘slop’ is present throughout other forms. The capacity for slop lies within every product, every bit of commodified culture, if you don’t dress it up enough. Peak slop is the intensification of the same forces behind every product – it’s just somebody playing capitalism sloppily. 

Next time, we’ll slurp a big bowl of sloppified history and ask: Is ‘slop history’ history, or is it something much more slippery? See you pigs then.