No More Slop, Please

Over the past years, digital critics have started calling more and more AI output “slop.” Technically speaking, slop has three characteristics: it looks plausible at first glance, takes almost no effort to produce, and can be generated endlessly at industrial scale. Like the pig feed after which it’s named, AI slop is engineered for cheap consumption, not nourishment.

How did we get here? Well, the internet is kind of like one big untrained mind, generating thoughts not because they’re useful, but because they arise from association, recombination, and prejudice.

You can see this in your own mind. Someone uses the same tone as your father and suddenly: “I’m in trouble.” One awkward interaction gets stitched together with three old insecurities and suddenly: “Nobody here likes me.” Your partner says, “We need to talk,” and suddenly: “This relationship is falling apart.”

The Buddha called this process papañca, often translated as “mental proliferation”: a twinge of pain in body or mind produces a flood of quick, compulsive, exaggerated thoughts. But papañca can also mean “objectification,” because, as with AI slop, we start mistaking our own projections for reality.

The key to working with papañca is not to feed on it. You can’t stop the slop, but you don’t need to look to it for nourishment. When you get caught in a spiral of thought, simple questions like “Is this useful?” “Do I need to think this way?” can interrupt the mind’s habit of feeding on what makes it sick.

As for living in this digital world, the same principle applies: consume less, slow down, don't identify with the mind’s output. You are not your thoughts. You are not even your creativity. You are certainly not the comment you leave on someone’s post at 1:32am.

Machines are starting to out-produce us in the same way our mechanical minds have been out-producing us for millennia. There’s a human in there somewhere. Find her.