Some people think slop = ALL content made a certain way?
In the 1950s, an author named Sturgeon was defending science fiction against a critic who claimed that 90% of the genre was garbage. He agreed, but countered that "90% of everything is crud"—meaning the vast majority of all fields (music, art, literature, etc.) is of low quality. In other words, 90 percent of all art is "slop".
With that reference in mind, I genuinely think that a sizeable number of people are using the term "slop" in a manner that's disassociated from the original, dictionary meaning.
The seeds of this conclusion came from a conversation with a friend. He admitted to having no critical exposure to the subject, just a general derision against AI's impact on jobs, environment, creativity -- the usual complaints, fine. To express why I like AI-assisted work, I showed him some really cool examples of projects done with the help of AI, and he said that they really were genuinely impressive.
In response, I said, "So, since they're so impressive, then that means that not all AI work is slop, right?"
Him: "No, 'slop' just means 'made by AI'."
So, I explained the classical meaning of "slop" and how it's meant to denigrate poor-quality works rather than to categorize an entire catalogue of work made with a certain tool.
To his credit, he agreed.
I moved on, thinking that his case was just an isolated incident, but then I found a thread, which apparently misconstrued the definition of "pencil-slop" in that exact same way:
Looking through the comments, there was a general throughline with how the subject was assessed: 'Pro-AI people use the term Pencil-slop, meaning that they think or act like all pencil art is garbage. What's next, Renaissance-slop? Great pencil art exists! Great Renaissance art exists! The Pro-AI people are arguing in such bad faith, or are so disassociated from the reality of how diverse art is and how there's so much amazing quality out there.'
Socrates has been attributed for saying, "The beginning of wisdom is the agreeing of terms" -- and I think that we need to have a preamble about the meaning of "slop" before we engage in debates about it, because it's apparently possible that, otherwise, we would be talking about two very different things. "What do you mean by saying 'slop'?"
Posted Jun 8, 2026, 10:17 PM UTC