2026-10-15
Like lots of people, the topic of ‘slop’ has occupied a lot of my thinking.
While my absolutist sensibilities have made it easier for me to opt-out of using the stuff entirely, my curiosity keeps me wondering about the human side of the one-sided relationship between people and ai.
One of my fedi-friends had this to say:
I was thinking about plays in a theatre and how when we watch actors we’re also participants. We suspend our reality to watch a story’s reality.
When we read a book, we’re imagining the world and the people that story takes place in.
Even listening to stories we’re imagining worlds, we’re participants as we aren’t passively taking it in. It’s all sharing our time and imagining. It’s social.
Which I think is part of the reason AI slop feels wrong to so many of us. It’s not social at all.
I keep returning to these words to help explain why I find the entire topic so offputting. So much of my world revolves around the idea of creating and maintaining empathetic connections. Taking those out of the equation feels painful in a way I struggled to find words to describe.
Before this, I suspected much of AI’s obsessive popularity was about its being a thought stopper. Like an emotional pacifier, it makes it easy to avoid the discomfort associated with engaging with others and their “uncomfortable” new ideas. Our survival instincts are hard wired to seek out (perceived) safety, and as a result I think our brains accept this sort of emotional distance so long as we’re kept numb.
Both ideas terrify me, and strengthen my resolve to focus on messy human creativity.