If you dislike GenAI, you refer to its output as ‘slop’.
It’s become lexi-canonical.
I think we can do better.
Slop sounds like Soft sounds like Plop sounds like Globule.
It slides down too easy; gets off too lightly.
There are some positives to a term, any term, becoming widely used as ‘slop’ is.
‘Slop’ is compact.
‘Slop’ says: this is formless trash.
It has no structure because it lacks intentionality.
It nicely captures GenAI’s laughable ineptness, while dismissing it as something of value.
It’s evocative and distinct, and I can see why we’ve settled on it.
But it’s also a bit too benign for my tastes.
“I’m a farmer!”
they declare, their palms proudly outstretched to present their chunky, reeking crop to the assembled board members.
“Look at all this corn I grew!”.
But you didn’t grow the fucking corn, did you Gary?
Someone else grew the corn.
You just shoved it into a hole and sat down for a bit.
And you didn’t ‘make’ that clip of Studio Ghibli does Severance either, you twat.
End product is product (acceptable), process is at best inconvenient, at worst vulnerable.
Very un-bro of you, bro.
Oh, you’re doing a little drawing?
Sounds pretty gay to me bro.
Bit sus, actually.
Bro, that is ice bath time, bro.
The only golden hour I want to hear about is one filled with shimmering shitcoins, bro.
Maybe it’s worse than gay.
Maybe it’s evendegenerate.
It’s 2025, bro.
Time moves fast; all speed, all fury.
For every second you spend choosing oil paints, one (1) Western civilisation dies.
Starting to come around to that whole ‘new aesthetic of fascism’ idea, honestly.
Cuckoolaid
I’m sorry for how convoluted this is getting, I truly am.
Thing is, most parasites have long, awkward latin names.
So I have chosen the brood parasitic Cuckoo, then cleverly portman-tied its name to ‘Kool Aid’.
The result: cult-like devotion to thieving wankery.
They are not evocative but reminiscent.
Appreciation of the source material is paradoxically both required and fundamentally incompatible with such parasitic vandalism.
Do not drink the Cuckoolaid, friend.
Crypto slop could also do with its own special nomenclature.
And then there’s games like Paradisethat seem to combine every flavour of slop under the sun.
I’ve just used ‘slop’ again three times in that paragraph.
It’s reign might just be unassailable, after all.
Then again, GenAI evangelists say the same the thing about their product.
I’ll leave the details to you, anyway.
It’s fun when you put the effort in.
