Duelling articles at 50 paces. Same publication channel.
I do wonder if it will limit or improve their growth to learn to communicate beyond it as the drivers behind the seat instead of the passengers.
I also use the wallpaper on https://hplovecraft.com/ as my actual wallpaper.
I'm not sure I like the effect of the font in the article. The subtle vertical position differences and inconsistent kerning are distracting. Typewriters and physical printing are not sloppy in that sense.
Now I'm reconsidering my resolve to look for AI slop - my enthusiasm for topography is getting in the way.
funny topo you made!
I've written and typeset books. It's not so much that there's no "fl" ligature: it's that with that font the lack of a "fl" ligature really makes it bad looking. With many other fonts it wouldn't be anywhere near that bad (and I'm not just only about monospace).
People consume more and more of it until they get sick, and even then won’t stop.
The craft is noticeably different.
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.
To my understanding, that's about the size where platforms will typically consider allowing you to monetize through their system (as opposed to rattling a cup at Patreon, Ko-Fi etc.), and no mean feat (while everyone that people can think of listening to might be at least that size, very few people who try to develop and grow a presence succeed to that extent).
Congrats.
But like a sibling comment was getting at, maybe I have everything I want already.
It's their playground, their rules. Fair or right has nothing to do with it.
I noticed recently that some of my older accounts would have a higher quality of recommended content.
And then within a week or two of using them, it would be back to the same slop as my main account.
As far as I can tell this is because I click on what catches my attention. Whatever stands out. Which tends to be the most clickbaity thumbnails.
So I have to wonder if what you're actually fighting against is an algorithm, or the human limbic system...
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.
The heterofurries and homofurries will be furious.
I like the article, but its annoying to say "it's there!" as if most of these these alternate sources aren't mostly on other social media sites or dying a slow death
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.
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...
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.
There still is plenty of information superhighway infrastructure online - more than ever! It’s a matter of disengaging from the AI “slop trough” as I like to call it. Good article framing the discussion.
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.
It is worse, because even if you scroll down 1000 videos, human-generated, a few of them may be useful. With AI slop, we now have a spam of low quality crap that just wastes time. They are ruining the world wide web right now. Yesterday was the first time Qwant delivered better results than Google search. I am scared.
> 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.
Beaches and lobster are real things in the natural world. Slop is something else.
> we have to focus on outcomes
There is an important question that needs to be asked: why is someone watching content?
There's a big difference between watching something because they are interested and engaged in the topic vs watching because they're doom scrolling. I'd argue this is an important business question as if it's the latter you're very open to disruption.
I think the problem is that many companies have cornered the market and have shifted strategy to wealth extraction. Resting on their laurels. It makes sense from that perspective to trade quality for revenue, as there's no competition, but by doing so you also lower the barrier to entry for competitors while driving demand/motivation for competitors. Striking a balance between aggressive profit maximization and maintaining a cornered market is difficult. The only long term strategy is to play against an imaginary adversary but the short term profit maximization is incredibly tempting. Not to mention highly profitable for those that are at the top before it collapses. Are those people more dedicated to filling their pockets or to the long term survival of the company? It's clearly the former if they do not even consider that the company could lose its dominance.
You're right, we should focus on outcomes, but I don't think outcomes are very easy to measure. What outcomes? Over what time frame?
Nope, they're still slop. Just like a spam message about a product you actually like is still spam.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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
(At least "defiantly" is an actual word, unlike "definately" which doesn't even pass spell check)
The last time someone used “jive” when not in relation to music was George Jefferson and other Black folks up to the very early 80s (I am Black before the pearl clutching starts)
"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.
By contrast, the colloquial use feels like an abbreviation of the implicit phrase "it begs for the question to be asked", which makes so much more sense than the "correct" meaning that if I'm being perfectly honest, I'd rather use it.
I like Wikipedia's alternate name for the fallacy: "assuming the conclusion", because it explains what's actually happening.