slop is a bad story
a rantifesto
There are all kinds of slop. AI-generated images that mimic art made by hand or by camera or by wrestling some other instrument into submission. AI-generated essays that mimic thought. The flurry of Substack Posts from never-before-writers and Twitter Articles crowned genius before anyone checks if they’re human. Slop is the merch that makes a mockery of the references it embeds and the choices it didn’t make. Slop is stealing cultural symbols and cool aesthetics to call itself tasteful—or tasteslop. Slop is a song with a sick beat and no meaning. With lyrics that do not yearn nor mourn nor show me the soul of anyone forlorn. Slop is the absence of decisions and, more critically, discernment. Slop is legacy IP with little else. Slop is Netflix movies you mark as read. Slop is the tale you tell someone else to live by just to validate yours. Founder slop says it’s 996 or never succeed—grindslop. Slop is calling boring brilliant. It is every podcaster on a mission to make every guest’s every soundbite make you quote it—profoundslop. I’m not scared to say most short-form video is straight slop. And slop leaves nothing but quease. But I’m not saying slop doesn’t work.
Smart slop is effective on the defenseless and dopamine-drugged. Slop is the tool of soft-crime grifters. Slop makes number go up while aura goes down. Slop is taking a beating right now, as if we just invented it, yet it was always there. Bad work isn’t immoral but faking the struggle is. Slop is where badness and dishonesty meet. One can be enough. Slop is excess pitched to us as appetite. Slop is calling me stupid. Now the gloves are off and everyone carries needle and thread. Slop! is the new scarlet letter. The threats have started: soon nobody will know what’s slop. But there are hunters among us whose life’s mission it is to know. Neighborhood watch has found a new cause. Slop is what makes parents say you’re only cheating yourself. Slop is what makes Sam Kriss promise to unalive you.
We tell ourselves stories in order to live, and we sell stories in order to eat; slop is when it becomes impossible to believe them. We aren’t becoming literary critics or film critics or design critics or lifestyle critics. We’re becoming story critics. What is slop? Slop is not a medium. Slop is a body severed from its soul. Slop is a narrative lie. Slop doesn’t think it’s telling you a story; it thinks it’s just showing you the world you want to see. But it tells you a story all the same—and Slop is a bad story. It is a story I do not believe, because its face is so fake or because I just know too much to be fooled. Slop is a bad story because the characters are just plot device and set design. It is a story too hollow and too literal to make anyone think before their eyes start to close or start to roll. Slop is a bad story, and it is that much worse because you were so clearly not the one meant to tell it.
Please tell a good one.
Cover image: Young Maiden Reading a Book,
Pierre-Auguste Cot