A night out with friends could be described as a ‘sacrifice’ of time and money to show care/affection for those people, but if it’s something you enjoy is it really a sacrifice?> > As an example, I enjoy making things, and making things for others is a good source of both inspiration and ‘disposal’ for lack of better word. Making sure the things I make find good homes and not just making junk is a form of care in my opinion.

For the purposes of this definition of slop, yes, that counts as effort! Even if it’s a thing you like, you did put time into it. You did show that it’s valuable to you, and that you care about the outcome. If you’re an excellent cartoonist and a whip-smart comedian, a 10/10 comic strip you dashed off in five minutes about a topic you’ve been thinking on for weeks might well represent the culmination of decades of honing your craft and contain within a great wellspring of thought and consideration. Absolutely not slop.

In fairness, I’m the same way as you, so I might be biased here.

If it is something you don’t enjoy does that sacrifice actually show that care for others? Personally, I can think of few things worse than a night out with someone who doesn’t want to be there and isn’t having fun.

I think that gets more into the weeds about whether or not it’s good art, in terms of the idiom we’ve been using. Because you’re right about that, but there are also few things more comforting than a friend showing up somewhere that they don’t want to be just because they know you need them.

Watching Love Island with my friend wasn’t a sacrifice because I got the fun of watching a psychological horror film, they got their ‘sims’ playtime and we had an interesting/fun/silly discussion afterwards.

But what I’m saying is that it was a sacrifice. Not a large one, of course; and not one that cost you much. But you could’ve spent that time playing video games yourself, or cooking, or writing a book, or hang gliding, or whatever. You also chose to sacrifice that part of you that didn’t want to watch Love Island, which is again not much, but not nothing. You chose to spend it doing something with them; something that it turned out that you enjoyed, though not for the same reason they did.

There’s something to the words “effort” and “sacrifice” that you don’t like, and I think I see why (as we’ll talk about later). Does the word “choice” hit you better? It isn’t exactly what I mean, but I’m starting to think it might have more to do with an opportunity cost that is evaluated and intentionally selected, than more broadly expending some kind of energy. AI has no opportunity cost, at the individual level, which means that no one is choosing specifically to do it. They aren’t putting anything of themselves in it. It has no value because it isn’t them. (This isn’t a framing that I’ve been able to get a good handle on yet, so right now it’s just a topic for conversation. Seems like I can trust you with that.)

In the same way that the time I’m spending talking to you isn’t a sacrifice because it’s providing interesting thoughts and perspectives that I might not run into otherwise is a useful challenge to my own beliefs/perspectives. Hopefully it’s the same for you?

One hundred percent. This has been a pleasure. In a lot of ways I figure out what I think by writing it down, so this has been a very useful challenge. I’m really enjoying and getting benefit from it. But you and I could be doing something else; the fact that we’re both choosing to be here, honing our arguments, is meaningful.

This may be a silly analogy, but it’s kind of like the old phrase, “we know you have a choice when it comes to air travel, and we thank you for flying with us.” It’s not a sacrifice in the sense of giving up something good or deep, but if you select Delta, you’re sacrificing a flight on United. You’re making a choice. With slop, you don’t have to make a choice. You can send an agent on all of the flights at once!

It’s hard to understate the damage the ‘self-sacrifice’ mentality can cause. A lot of relationships are ruined by two people trying to show they care for eachother by deliberately and intentionally sabotaging themselves at every opportunity. A lot of ‘activism’ is people sacrificing their time and energy doing things that are well meaning but nobody asked for, help nobody, and often cause harm.

Yeah, I think that’s definitely the dark side of this conversation. But like eating, exercise, saving money, alcohol, sex, and so many other enjoyable or even good things, sacrifice can become a disorder when taken too far. In the example you gave, I don’t think those two people are sacrificing and sabotaging themselves for each other, but for the feeling of “winning the friendship.” The activist is sacrificing, not for the movement, but just so they can feel good about themselves. So I get why you don’t have a positive association with the word “sacrifice” (because of my upbringing, I don’t see it as a necessarily negative word).

I do think it shows a desire or intent to care, but I don’t think it automatically or necessarily translates.

“Intent” is another good word that we could probably use here for what I’m calling “effort,” though it’s also inexact. Slop has no intent.

But if they spent a whole week thinking on that tweet then surely it’s more important to them than someone who only spent a few minutes! /s

lol. As someone who has labored over a text message for hours that ended up being sent as literally the phrase “ok, thanks!”, I can’t say I entirely disagree, but I do recognize how ridiculous it is and that I’m not normal in that.

I would agree that spam is incapable of communication a message. Not that it doesn’t have one, but by ‘flooding the zone’ at best it gets filtered and ignored, at worst it triggers a severe reactionary response.

This is basically what I meant by saying that Kurzgesagt’s output wasn’t enough to call it “slop.” Though that’s probably subjective.

I do feel like there is still something we keep circling around here but I’m unsure what it is or how to suss it out.

We’re getting close with “intent” and “choice.” It’s not exactly those, or “effort” or “sacrifice,” but almost like…the midpoint between all four terms.

The original commercial promotion a company that in reality is the antithesis of everything ‘solarpunk’ and which deliberately and intentionally does everything in its power to prevent the sort of future imagined in the commercial.

Oh, yeah. It’s a great irony that Chobani paid for it. I suppose it’s kind of the modern version of patronage, though, isn’t it? The Medicis were brutal, violent, and manipulative, but they sponsored some of the most enduring artwork of the European Renaissance, including that of all four Ninja Turtles. That doesn’t make them good, but it does mean that some stuff they did caused goodness as a second-order effect.

I think we can both agree 7 was actually pretty good.

No argument there. Vista was the low point between the high points of XP and 7.

However, I would argue that 11 has more bugs, more adware/spyware, worse performance, less customization and less ‘salvagability’ than Vista. It just doesn’t feel as bad thanks to the slow enshittification that was 8, 8.1, 10.

No argument there, either. I switched to Linux a couple years ago because I was tired of that dance. And now we’ve completed the Lemmy carcinization: all conversations eventually evolve into either Linux conversations or socialism conversations (and the night is still young for us to hit both!).

it does still feel like I’m missing something big and important but we’ve spent how many words trying to find it? And I still don’t know what it could be. I do very much appreciate you being willing to explore it with me though! Thank you!

Very much a pleasure! There are probably as many definitions of “slop” as there are people on the internet, and maybe I’m the one who’s wrong. But I think you’ve got the spirit.

Describing the ingredients doesn’t clarify anything because it’s not really any different other than process and packaging. I think that’s the exact sort of insight I was looking for! Thank you! Does that all track for you as well?

I think so! And with the gift of “intent” earlier, I think we can extend the metaphor a little bit.

The intent of a home-cooked meal is to express love to your friends and family. The intent of the food at a full-service restaurant is to be the context about which you spend time with loved ones, or to impress or experience. The intent of fast food is to impart energy in a way that’s convenient and enjoyable enough that others will pay for it. Even the intent of a dog treat is to encourage or reward behavior in a beloved pet. All of those intents cause the cook to make particular decisions regarding ingredients, preparation, presentation, and so on; the decisions’ outcomes don’t matter to this conversation, just the fact that they were made.

But with slop, the farmer has no intent. He just shovels it into the trough so that the pigs will shut up until they’re fat enough to slaughter. (How’s that for an overwrought metaphor?)

I think the problem there would be the tomato

Oh yeah. It’s definitely not a haphazardly mix together kind of thing. But a creamy bolognese sauce on biscuits? It’d be weird. But I’d try it!

Honestly, reading back on this again, I realize that I was thinking about this like adding tomato to cream. But adding cream to tomato, a la cheese on chili, or tomato soup made with milk, or penne rosa? Or even tacos with cheese and salsa? Maybe this is just a framing thing, or a concentration thing.

…That’s such a better description of what we took 2 episodes to figure out how to communicate!

In your defense, you were watching Love Island. That probably slows down the brain.