Slop Content & the Quality of Entertainment
Prescription for Boredom: 16 Hours of Blue Light Injected Into the Retinas Daily
The word “entertainment” has been replaced with the word “content”, and in this linguistic rewrite, there’s a new definition to this otherwise ancient distraction. It no longer has to be agreeably diverting, not even amusing and gone are the days of pleasurable escapism and delight. The emotional aspect, however, hasn’t faded, but since having found out the strength in negatives, the circus has shifted its focus. Now the clowns seek to cause any emotional reaction, and the stronger the better; anger, sadness, and fear are the 21st century best sellers, and with the growing demands of a global audience, the new liberal economical market allows for anyone to get in and get a slice of the pie in their face.
Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, all aspects of life have been increasingly automated, making all production lines more effective and all goods and services available at a much larger scale. This churning out of products is true for all aspects of life, and while some of it has allowed for great advancements and improvements in general for the common man, we’ve also seen an increase in excess, and our enjoyment seems to only be derived from surplus. Recently a new floodgate has been opened with the help of AI, and while we’ve been paddling up shit creek for a while the last few years we’ve seen an explosion of nuclear proportions blowing up and infecting every aspect of our lives with a new kind of content. This tsunami of slop has filled social media, culture and the human consciousness and turned all matter grey.
This new form of content has always existed; it’s the fast food of art and culture, it’s quick and cheap to make, and it is delivered all over the world. Its opposite has also always existed and continues to exist; the difference we see now, however, is the ratio between these two forms of entertainment and the overall quality which we enjoy. The earworms have escaped the corporate radio stations, and the recipe for success has been copied and pasted by Chatgpt, and in the instructions, a misprint has caused a horrendous mutation of incomprehensible dialectics. What has caused this drop in quality, and why does the algorithm allow these maggots to fester on its digital flesh?
The Cause
The short and simple answer is that it’s profitable, easy to make and easy to put out there, and the reason it works is because most of us just go along with it, we’re too apathetic to care really. Worst case scenario, you scroll past it, but for every second you stay on this slop content, somebody somewhere is making a little bit of money, and when millions view these seconds, then that money adds up. Short form content like reels, shorts and TikToks all rely on mass production, and it becomes a symbiotic relationship between the platform and these creators, because the platform needs to just fill itself with as much content as possible, reaching and targeting as many viewers and customers as possible. The content creators need the same and are rewarded by how much and how fast they can pump this content out, and when we prioritise speed and cost, we neglect quality.
Modern tools like AI speed up this process significantly. No longer do you need to spend time to draw, write or do any of that useless artistic crap, and this doesn’t just affect social media. We see an influx of books, music and visual art that are all made using the same tools and principles, and as platforms and companies adapt to these rapid changes, we see a lack of moderation and a lot of this slop content is allowed through. Especially bad is this when misinformation is spread, especially if it’s dangerous. There are been examples of foraging books being made completely with AI and then sold on Amazon, and not only are they misguiding, but also sometimes flat out provide false information, which could lead to the unintentional consumption of harmful plants and fungi.
Slop content isn’t anything new, it’s useless and meaningless drivel there to just grab your attention enough to sell you a product or waste your time. Netflix funds a lot of movies and series, and while some stand out as high-quality cinematic experiences, a lot of them, especially the bigger budget ones, are just not good movies. Not because the audience’s understanding of what good movies are has changed, but because there’s no real passion or thought behind some of these big blockbusters, and this is a trick Hollywood has been doing for many years. You take big names, big actors and maybe even an established franchise, and you just reproduce or produce several installations, you pour a lot of money into it (mostly in advertisement), and you release this slop to the masses. The reason this works for Netflix is that it pulls people into their platform. They can put a big movie with famous actors on the front page for a little while, and while they may lose a lot of money on the production of it, enough people will click it and enough people will stay subscribed, consuming the slop they present to their customers.
Slop content is a curse cast on humanity by our own greed, and in our existential woe, we have carved new pathways in our brains, and in this labyrinth of self, we now struggle against the walls closing in. What effect does consuming this slop have on us? Is the time we enjoy wasting wasted?
The Curse
This flood of slop content makes it difficult to find high-quality content, and when algorithms feed you more of what you’re consuming, you can inevitably drown in your own echo chamber of low-quality garbage. Slop content is easy to consume, it’s easily digestible, and it’s mindless. It used to be the afternoon TV series running in the background of the family get-together, and nowadays it can be a feed of short-form video consumption during the bathroom break or YouTube drama playing as you do your dishes. Before, people had less of cultural choices, but with the expansion and development of the internet, these boundaries have broken down over the years, and with everything at our disposal, we are free to choose what we consume and what we don’t. If we don’t watch our mental diet, we’ll soon find ourselves addicted and stuck. The more slop you consume, the more you’re recommended, and the harder it becomes to find something worthwhile. Being exposed to something also makes you adapt and eventually come to accept it.
Continuous consumption of cultural sludge lowers our standards and expectations of art. Art can be so much more than unimaginative noise, and can profess profound truths about life. Art can be a form of therapy disguised in metaphors and allegories, and its archetypical story structure functions as a map of human consciousness, boosting morale and quality of life. The hero's journey has become a trek of trudging through mental mud that does nothing but smear our windows and block our vision of the future. More than growing accepting of low-quality content, we also allow it to fester in our minds and not only mentally but also physically burrow into our brains, leaving our brain tissue looking like Swiss cheese.
A little frying of the brain might be fun, but overexposure to the brainrot leaves our dopamine receptors burnt out, and the smoke from it leaves a residual tar of brain fog, slowing down our mental processes.
One appeal of slop content is that it can make us feel smarter, as it often involves people in unflattering situations. Drama content relies heavily on the ill-informed choices of others, and blissfully ignorant of our own shortcomings, we project our insecurities on others and distract ourselves from our inadequacies. This, of course, isn’t true, and slop content while it may temporarily make us feel better about ourselves, doesn’t do anything to improve us, and it doesn’t help develop our characters, morals or deepen our knowledge. It does nothing for us except help us waste our time.
Don’t confuse this idleness with rest - they are quite different. Indeed, when we gorge our minds and put our heads into the feedthroughs of digital slop, there is nothing restful about our mental decay. We might try and fool ourselves into thinking we’re learning something, but the truth is that most of it is in one ear and out the other. Its existence as background noise is its only true purpose, and if we can ignore the distractions it provides, there is a cure for staying afloat in this dark sea of slop content and finding true high-quality entertainment to fill our lives with.
The Cure
The cure to all overconsumption is temperance. Developing patience and discernment are crucial in realising the harm the slop is causing to our poor brains, and using these two traits, we can develop and strengthen our temperance. It’s honestly more difficult than it should be, which is a crazy thought: you wouldn’t eat any random piece of food you came across when out walking, but when we are internet spelunking, we often so carelessly expose our minds to whatever junk there is in our way.
We can remove distractions all we want, but unless we live the spartan lives of monks, we are bound to be exposed to contemporary culture in some ways, and being exposed to it, we are bound to be exposed to its mass production and mass distribution. There is no escaping the machinery which creates the slop. Perhaps if we’re benevolent and assume the slop content to have the same characteristics as mud, there are some cleaning and soothing effects to it that we shouldn’t overlook. Slop content varies, and even what exactly it is depends on person to person, but some of the qualities of the slop remain the same. It’s low quality, and it's fast to produce. By far the best way to prevent the spread of slop is by turning to ourselves.
We are responsible for what we consume and what we create. We don’t have any control over others and their actions, and so we can only ever see to ourselves and what we do. If we are mindful, we can choose not to feed the beast and instead turn our sight towards something higher, something more meaningful. We can choose to create something meaningful, something worthwhile and higher in quality. Be inspired by the greats and write your own story.
One of the greatest lies we’ve been told is that we’re so small and insignificant, and while sure on a cosmic scale we are small, that doesn’t make our lives meaningless. The sentiment of that sentence is that it sounds scientific and even philosophical, but its roots are shallow in existentialism and artificial in truth. Every small thing contributes to a larger whole, and on a microcosmic level, our choices affect the macrocosm, and by our choices, we can not only change ourselves but the world itself. It’s important to realise this and to align oneself with the Truth.
The cure to slop content is to make better content and to engage with content that really resonates with you, your values and personal beliefs. Don’t have any values or beliefs? Maybe start there. Take a good look at yourself, you are what you eat and don’t feed your mind this shit. Go outside, touch some grass, or don’t - I’m not the boss of you.
