Is slop the word of the year? Maybe so, or maybe it was in 2024 and I’m just behind.
AI slop seems to have mode us realize the other places where we’re already doing slop. Where good aesthetics are absent or have all flattened into a unified, white-fluorescent, expression.
And this tweet sums up what I mean:
In the year before and after Sadie and I got married, I was at peak effort with my clothes aesthetic.
Gradually, I’ve flattened into my own version of grocery-store-sweatpants. I don’t do that exactly, but perhaps I’ve been in a valley on the effort graph.
Across several dimensions of the culture and society, there’s an observable downtrend in care, effort, and concern for our presentation and effort.
Some of the bedrock understandings, or unsigned agreements between the country and its people, have broken down. Let’s just call this Grievance for now, but you can see it in several places:
- jobs
- financial security
- romantic relationships
- “institutions”
Meaning, in each of these areas you’ll find someone (many people I think) saying, “It’s not as simple or easy as it used to be (<insert member of their lineage who it was simple or easy for>).”
They have a point.
This post makes a great articulation for the financial security piece. I think it also generalizes across dimensions well to capture a kind of malaise or “fuck it we ball” that many stripes of young people express.
But it’s not just young people. Old people (older Gen X > Boomer) are just as much on “the phones” as young people are. They’re wearing sweat pants to the grocery store. Giving the iPad to the grandkid when it cries, even if the parent isn’t.
Does anyone dress in a tweed blazer and slacks anymore, across any generation?
And take that question as representative. It’s not literally that we’re not wearing tweed and slacks to the dentist, it’s that we’ve given up some sort of framework that we used to carry.
I don’t mean this as an old-man-shaking-fist-at-the-sky sort of take. My observation is that Slop and “fuck it we ball” are two parts of the same horse:
Some of the fundamental “way things are” that everyone has access to has broken down: housing, jobs, ‘pension’ and in it’s place you have some people choosing Slop and some choosing “fuck it we ball”.
This is a useful filter for that which you do not understand about someone or some thing (“what does 6 7 mean?”).
Yes, most of them are young people. Yes, most 30-50 somethings have always never understood the youth.
But, I think the misunderstanding is more meaningful than it’s ever been.
One last tweet. Many surely watched this and smirked an approving smirk and thought something like: “haha yep. shit’s crazy.”
This is a proto-thought. I saw the James Bond sweat pants tweet, recognized meaning in it immediately, and came to write some thoughts on it. It’s not well-thought out, but is just for exercising some part of that recognition.