On Human Slop

"Real Talk."

I find myself straddling worlds between lamenting the fact that we have found ourselves squarely in a full-on technocracy, and at the same time being heartened by the changing tides in terms of access that has traditionally been gatekept, along with the rejection of elitist mores regarding creative work and its reception.

Maybe the latter is a product or result of pervasive anti-intellectualism — which I can see to some degree and find valid (notwithstanding that the term cannot be taken on its face without its connection to elitism, class, and race) — but maybe it’s deeper than that. For people who’ve been told all their lives that they would have no place in certain spaces, especially those who have not been credentialed through the rigors of academia, the idea that their output wouldn't have an audience has pretty much been slashed.

One must only open up YouTube or TikTok to find creators with a huge following, supported by people literally just watching them boil water on mute or go about other mundane daily activities for hours. In fact, people don’t just watch it, they return daily to consume this content.

It is easy to dismiss these viewers as “mouth-breathers” or use some other derogatory term for the so-called lowest common denominator of society (and to be clear, I’m not necessarily a fan of this trend). But I think it underscores something more humanistic and universal: that people have always wanted to connect with something real. They want to feel less alone in a world that is scary, oppressive, and suffocating, no matter where they come from or their background.

As excited as I am about being on a platform like Substack, where the average user’s taste seems to be a little bit more “highbrow,” if you will, I still find myself wanting to return to the basics. Not just in an analog sense (which is also where I’m at right now), but also in terms of just “talking my talk” (in fact, this was formerly a note that I decided to make into an essay; why force myself to adhere to arbitrary rules of formality or what constitutes something long-form/essay-worthy?).

In this age of “AI slop,” maybe a conversation should be had on the merits of “human slop” — on putting your unformed, messy thoughts out into the human sea and seeing who bites. Someone, somewhere, just might need to hear what you have to say, and hear it exactly the way you say it, regardless of whether the delivery is simple or grand.

Maybe that’s how we find our way back to our own humanity in this AI age.