YouTubeās system for suppressing low-quality AI content mistakenly targeted Kurzgesagt, leaving the channel with its worst-performing upload since 2013.
YouTubeās system for suppressing low-quality AI content mistakenly targeted Kurzgesagt, leaving the channel with its worst-performing upload since 2013.
The definition I think most of the internet has settled on is āno-effort, no-value content, about which neither creator nor viewer cares that it exists.ā
It has to satisfy all four criteria to be slop (no effort, no value, creator doesnāt care, viewer doesnāt care), but it doesnāt necessarily have to be AI; still, generally speaking, non-AI content is so much more expensive and time consuming that people are unlikely to put in the work (and companies are unlikely to put in the money) to have it made.
Human-made memes and jokes arenāt slop, partially because even when theyāre low effort bad photoshops, they make people laugh (or at least think amused thoughts). At the very least, a human can feel gratified to have made a thing they wanted to make. Human-made ads arenāt slop, because the company at least cares that it provides enough of a return to justify paying an employee for its creation.
Honestly it seems like our definitions donāt differ that much. Rephrasing my definition to your format: ālittle to no-value content, about which the creator cares little about, with the goal for mass appealā.
I donāt think the amount of effort someone put into something changes itās value or quality. It feels like some kind of āblood sweat and tears are whatās most important, thatās why blood diamonds are the most valuableā shit yāknow?
People can find value in anything, so Iām likely a bit more pervasive on whatās āslopā quality.
I do emotionally agree that most human-made memes and jokes arenāt slop but according to both of our definitions that doesnāt really hold up. If it was just because the creator cared about their creation or the laugh was valuable that āunslopsā a lot of, pretty terrible and objectively slop, slop. I think weāre both missing something here, any ideas on what?
I disagree strongly about ads and see those of all shapes and provenance as the quintessential and original slop. The creators donāt care about the ad, theyāre doing it for a paycheck with the benefactor only giving a shit about the āengagementā that comes from force feeding the ad to the masses.
No, I think the effort is key here, because the original pitch for calling AI output āslopā was, āif they donāt care enough to make it, why would I care enough to read/look at/watch/listen to it?ā
If itās anything churned out cynically, with only the desire to make money off of broad appeal, then we have to put Sherlock Holmes stories into that camp; certainly from āHound of the Baskervillesā onward, if not all of it. Doyle cared about the work, and he put in plenty of time and effort to making it, and the readers definitely cared, but at the end of the day he was done with the character and just wanted to give the fans what they wanted so he could make a paycheck. We also have to put basically every movie in that camp, and pretty much every book written before the publishing industry took a nosedive in the late 90s. We have to put a ton of music into that category. Basically, anything other than indie street art.
As for ads never being art: I see what youāre saying, but the āart-nouveauā style and movement began as advertising for theater performances in the 1890s. Similarly and more recently, thereās a seminal and well-beloved Chobani ad from 2021 called āDear Aliceā that has defined and codified a lot of the āsolarpunkā aesthetic. Somebody went through and erased all of the brand logos and set it to different music, and itās legitimately a beautiful little video about a touching parent/child relationship in a solarpunk future, but it was originally made as an ad.
Humans, especially artists, work for ad agencies; and sometimes they make art as a part of their paid work. Itās not common by any means, but the fact that they were paid for it doesnāt make it slop.
I think we need to partially disentangle ābad artā from āslop.ā
Slop is bad, but it doesnāt just mean ābad.ā All slop is bad art, but we humans can try really hard and make bad or objectionable art with our own two hands just fine. āBirth of a Nationā is absolutely objectionable and deplorable, but itās not slop because D. W. Griffith truly believed in what he was making. āThe Roomā is objectively not a good movie, but Tommy Wiseau really cared about it. That doesnāt mean many people are ever going to want to watch it unironically. āFridayā by Rebecca Black is really bad music, but itās not slop.
(Incidentally, in the same way, āslopā also doesnāt mean soulless, anodyne, corporate, or misguided. Again, all slop is those things, but humans can do that on our own, too; even if we try real hard!)
Not all bad art is slop; that doesnāt make it good art, it just makes it bad art by humans who tried hard (or at least tried a little bit) and did a bad job, or humans who were terrible people and that oozed out into their work.
Isnāt that already covered without the additional metric of āeffortā?
Itās not just that, but I do think that is a large part. The corporate and soulless part you called out.
I think the ājust wanted to give the fans what they wantedā and Doyleās ability to actually do just that saves it from the ālittle to no valueā bit, which makes it pandering but not slop. The same can be said for a lot of movies, music, etc. Meanwhile a lot of street art is sloppy as hell from needing to rush due to illegality but that doesnāt necessarily make it bad either.
I think both that and the āDear Aliceā video are examples of reclaimed slop. Someone saw the ālittleā value in the ad and opted to amplify it. I would classify those and similar examples as memes distilled from slop.
āMisguidedā doesnāt feel like itās a necessary part of āslopā but I otherwise agree.
Going the other way with examples, I think we can both agree that Fruit Love Island is absolutely slop, despite many viewers caring a lot about itās existence. But why exactly? And is it more or less āslopā than the original Love Island? Honestly Iām having a hard time justifying why Fruit Love Island isnāt an example of a āmeme distilled from slopā when I really want to call it āslop distilled from slopā.
I donāt think so. The effort is an important part of it.
Thatās a good distinction, and I think one we should hang on to.
I think we may have hit upon another definitional difference here. āSlopā isnāt linguistically descended from āsloppy,ā but rather both are descended from an older form of āslop,ā referring to the gooey scrap that is fed to pigs. It is something which exists in great quantities but low quality, and which the farmer quickly and carelessly tips into a trough for the pigs to eat, caring little for it beyond that it exists.
āSloppyā derived from that word, carrying with it the quick and unappealing connotations, while the modern definition of āslopā brought with it the carelessness, quantity, and force-feeding connotations.
I donāt think so. I think it was artists doing a job they could get paid for, but making good art within those constraints.
On reflection, thatās totally fair. I move to have that stricken from the record.
Huh. Well, today I learned about something against my will.
Anyway, yeah, definitely slop. I think itās because the creator didnāt care about it, and expended almost no effort toward creating it. You can tell they didnāt care because they gave it all up. This is getting me less certain about the desire of the audience being important to somethingās slop status; thatās probably way more subjective than this term needs.
That is an interesting question. Having never watched either, I donāt know that Iām qualified to respond. I will say that the people who work on reality TV are pretty hard-working, though; so Iām inclined to think itās not slop. Bad art? Yes. But not slop.
Why? If someone is baking cookies it doesnāt improve the cookies if they have to run a mile for each ingredient. What am I missing? Is it just that someone being willing to run and get each ingredient demonstrates a level of care?
Good catch! I do think thatās a big part of the difference! In my old age Iāve definitely seen it go from sloppy->slop and in that process reclaim the old connotation of ālow quality, high quantity animal feedā. Specifically, back in my day, it wasnāt uncommon to be using/hearing Microslop to refer to the company and itās shitty half-ass product implementations since at least 2018 (with Edge and Bing specifically), but it was more about being āsloppyā than āslop for the massesā yāknow?
It makes 100% sense that the more popular definition wouldāve lost the āsloppyā association and gone back to the ālow quality, high quantity animal feedā.
However, bringing it back to the original topic, I do think that definition/perspective is more damning of Kurzkesagt. Their videos are rushed but they do take great care to not be sloppy in that way.
I think this is where we flip sides on the āsloppyā vs. āslopā distinction. I do think that objectively good art (if we pretend thatās a thing) can be slop if itās purpose is āhigh volume animal feedā. That might be coming from the culinary association of things like sloppy joes, casseroles, mashed veggies, biscuits and gravy, MREs, etc. as āslopā and sometimes even ātasty slopā.
I second that motion! The core concept was valid and beneficial a single extra word shouldnāt detract from that :P
ā¦Sorry to curse you with thatā¦ I have a friend who is really into both reality TV and tiktok+Instagram who was absolutely raging about it when it was popular and assumed it was more common knowledgeā¦
Iāve tried watching a couple episodes of Love Island with said friend and, for me, it felt like some of the most soulless TV Iāve ever seen. To avoid cursing you with that experience as well, my experience of it was that everyone on set looks dead inside, theyāre all kissing eachother all the time but it doesnāt look like any of them are having any fun. Then the producers intentionally do a āgameā that breaks the norms of monogamy and then all the contestants robotically do a big show of performative jealousy, hurt and anger before going back to some of the most depressing and uncomfortable kissing Iāve ever seen.
I was using that and Fruit Love Island as a foil because I half joked that the FLI characters at least had more soul and personality, albeit cartoonish, than the contestants in the original show and my friend agreed.
Sorry I apparently needed to vent about that, lol -ā _ā -ā ;
I had to have a good think about this, because no, performative or unproductive effort doesnāt add anything. Butā¦
ā¦I think this gets closerāthat the idea is important enough, that they cared enough, to put in the time and energy. But it has to be meaningful effort; the running-a-mile analogy wouldnāt qualify, but thereās a difference between someone serving me cookies that they worked at for hours to bake, and the same person handing me chemically-identical cookies that they purchased at the grocery store. Knowing that they cared enough to do that means that what theyāre trying to express means a lot to them (or at least that I do).
Sloppers donāt have any messages that mean anything to them. They just care about the quantity; and in the case of AI, they literally canāt care about the message. But the Chobani animators and the poster designers in 19th century Paris have a message that means a lot to them, and they bury it under the advertisement so that their art gets out there and they can also feed their family.
Oh man, remember Windows Vista? That was a slop-y and sloppy trip.
Yeah, I think partially because itās superficially quite polished. If you look closely you can see AI artifacts, but on a first glance it looks like an uncanny valley version of a polished, final product.
Hmmm. Iām going to have to think about it, but I really do think that the people there actually are putting in a ton of effort. And sometimes doing a bad job anyway, but I donāt think they put out a large enough quantity to reasonably call it slop. Still, Iām intrigued by the question.
Interesting. I donāt agree, but because at the end of the day, slop isnāt made for humans, so it canāt ever be objectively (granting your premise) good to the human palate. Guilty pleasure, sure. Perverse curiosity, yeah. But that isnāt saying much, as the āLove Islandā conversation is about to talk more about.
That said, I think I see where youāre coming from. I do like me some sloppy joes and biscuits and gravy. Not all together, though.
Nah, I knew the risks when I signed up for this gig.
Dang. That sounds awful. Why do people subject themselves to that sort ofā¦oh, prize money, right
That is one impressive bit of self-awareness, honestly. lol
That unfortunately tracks with overall American culture and it having deeply ingrained protestant work ethic. I was really hoping there was something more to it though
Why? Even my āall ads are slopā position doesnāt preclude ads from having a message the creators and/or artists do care about. I unfortunately do think that most slop peddlers do genuinely, and often passionately, have a specific message/idea/belief they are trying to communicate/perpetuate.
The problem comes from not having rigorously interrogated that message or engaged with it in any fundamental way. I would agree that an issue with AI is that it shortens the time from idea->creation such that the creator has even less time to engage with what theyāre creating and is even less likely to interrogate the message being spread. I would point to āDear Aliceā as a perfect example of how thatās not an exclusively AI thing though.
You mean back when windows was good :P
Ooh, thatās a real good phrase! Iām stealing that!
I would agree! And I do understand they do seem to be trying to do their best given the environment they exist within.
Would comparing them to a prison chef be a good metaphor? Itās a hard job that takes a lot of work and theyāre doing the best with what theyāve got, but the final outcome is still slop. Theyāre prisoners like the rest of us and I understand why they donāt defy the guards(funders and platforms) and raid the commissary, serve us the same meals that they provide for the guards, show up in solidarity during a strike, etc. but I do respect them significantly less for it.
I can see the distinction youāre pointing at but I donāt see the difference, it āfeedsā millions of people.
I donāt follow. Then who is it made for?
ā¦ On self reflection I might have a problem with high slop tolerance because I immediately went āif done right that could actually be pretty good!ā
To be fair, I guess half the āfunā of Love Island is the lack of personality? The explanation I got was that it was like watching someone stream playing āSimsā. The streamer then fucks with the āsimsā to see what happens giving the audience the āwhats going to happen next!?ā high. As the audience you can project whatever personality you want onto the characters and the soullessness gives a blank canvas that allows the viewer to fill in the blanks which allows for a better reality tv show with broader mass appeal than could otherwise be created?
ā¦ Yeah I donāt really get it, but to each their yum.
Iām definitely not a grindset guy. I donāt mean this in a āprove yourselfā sort of way, I mean it in a āmaking stuff that doesnāt matter is easyā sort of way. Maybe Iām too manipulated by the modern world, but I canāt think of a way to show that something matters to you aside from making some kind of sacrifice; of time, or energy, or whatever. I donāt mean ātoiling for weeks on a tweet,ā I mean āat least thinking about it for a few minutes.ā
I think thatās the distinction Iām trying to make, though. If itās slop, the creator doesnāt care about it. Doesnāt care enough to put in any actual effort, tries to flood the zone instead of thinking about it long enough to produce anything meaningful.
Yeah, so I think here youāre applying my definition to your example and pointing out that it doesnāt match. Which is what I would expect. Hence the conversation (which is excellent, incidentally).
Thatās more or less what I mean by āeffort,ā though said in the negative. Well put.
Iām not sure what you mean by that.
Oh man, we were having such a nice conversation, and now weāve gotta fight? Bummer. ;ā -ā )
With my warmest regards.
Fantastic analogy. Especially:
Agreed, same.
But now I think Iām starting to see that our disagreement is more one of very small degrees than of anything substantive. Maybe you figured that out a while ago.
The algorithm. It just has to pass muster long enough that the algorithm serves it up to a real human. I guess in this analogy, the algorithm is the uncultured swine. I think I buy that.
I think the problem there would be the tomato. Itās too sweet and tangy: I donāt think thereās much way to make it work with the creamy flavor of the sausage gravy. Source: sometimes I get a bit of jam in my biscuits and gravy, or ketchup in mac and cheese, with a somewhat unpleasant result.
When you put it that way, Iām annoyingly much more ok with it. So itās a dating sim that youāre just not playing.
Not my thing either, but I guess I get it a little more now.