telling that Meta didn't attempt to make compelling little AI clips for their ad. the commercial instead is just "this AI product will have AI," nothing more. bc they dont need to convince *why* anyone needs AI products, they just need to demonstrate they are burning money in that field

LLMs mean that no one has to write anything they don't care about, but they also mean that "writing anything" will get equated with "not caring" for most people. (If you really cared, you would video yourself talking about it on your phone.)

"the end of social media" takes often need to make a too-clean distinction between public broadcast platforms and private group sharing. a lot of social-media-like energy exists in the gradients in-between

still think about this enduring truth-telling function of cameras with most every big news event

am also dying at the ad in this video for a scam news app that will give you a fake number for how true articles are lol

Google has an AI "camera coach" in their camera app to help people forfeit their own eye and voice to make more productive images normalized by attention metrics (~2mins in)

everything, no matter how much it epitomized rational fake empty nothingness in its time, eventually comes to be something remembered as real and felt nostalgic for

was asked, along with some others, how i approach looking at every photographs everydayphotography.org/journal/eido... the eidolon centre is so cool

"the looking-glass self", Charles Horton Cooley (1902) lol this "new trend" is just what identity has always been

looks like shit but this stuff isnt failing at looking good, it is succeeding at selling the idea of total data enclosure and god view witnessing

One of the reasons I love going on @parismarx.com’s show isn’t just because we get deep into the issues but because I can also talk about Canadian media policy, which is super interesting!!

good! food delivery slop and AI image slop deserve each other. the fake images dont mislead, they accurately convey the desire for crappy food made and delivered in unethical ways

"Most of the slop we see is still made and distributed by real people, often with no AI assistance" kneelingbus.substack.com/p/slop-as-a-... such a key point

fun time at the @404media.co event in LA! i liked the conversation at the end about the dangers of protest surveillance vs people wanting to be filmed

*we have a product, and while we cant say what it is or how it works, it will give you everything you could ever want* www.meta.com/superintelli...

Constant exposure to algorithmic feeds makes it feel unusual and almost transgressive to conceive a desire that isn’t prompted or anticipated by the content delivery system

honestly a good and accurate phrase for algorithmic content, "empathy" as a superficial, consumerist spectacle

imagine thinking "funny" or any of these are some kind of linear slider this is so Zuck brained, the idea that sociality can be reduced to numbers, then sorted and ranked and made manageable

this made me realize how much cheffy fine dining, from the interiors to the food, has long looked AI generated. that same glossy, wasteful, visual appeal www.nytimes.com/2025/06/02/d...

It's a strange form of irony to illustrate an article on «human creativity as a natural resource» with blandest, most generic stock images available from the Getty archives – not to mention that if you think of «human creativity» as a «resource», you've already adopted an extractivist mindset

agree. the big problem here *preceded AI* critique AI but at the same time also critique anything AI can so easily replace (this is re:the Sun Times AI generated reading list)

Critical humanities discourse on AI will be doomed if it does not come up with better metaphors. Corporate AI is not a «cognitive entity» or some «other intelligence». It's a political project and a system of surveillance, extraction & exploitation 1/

this app asks the users to see the world as a machine does, to not just interact with AI but to develop an AI Vision of your world and your self [learned of it from here: www.phonetime.news/p/i-tried-th...

AI cheating, AI "slop," this stuff proliferates anywhere social relations had already been highly instrumentalized. fuck AI but lets not retcon systems so anti-social that AI could be successful within them

The thing about AI classroom cheating that gets me is that it's incredibly easy to solve BEFORE you start taking into account the various other pressures ruining American education. In a freshly conceived teaching environment, sure, no problem. But in schools as they exist it feels insurmountable

New from me! For Dilettante Army (& visionary editor Sara Clugage) I wrote a deep/dark analysis of the foul and tacky "golden pager" trophy that Netanyahu gifted Trump back in Feb. This is about trees, circuits, jokes, images, explosions, kitsch, evil. dilettantearmy.com/articles/gol...

interacting with an AI can only seem fulfilling because platforms trained these folks to treat other humans in such an instrumental way people are reduced to numbers when discourse is ranked with metrics and sorted through algorithms, so why not just speak to AI?

every definition and description of "AI Slop" reads to me as what for-profit, highly metricized, and algorithmic platforms have always done. making it primarily an "AI" issue lets the platforms and this general logic too much off the hook imo

"When communication is filtered through algorithms, it becomes as if spoken by algorithms" algorithms dont sort content, metrics dont measure it, both precede and *produce* content. and preclude sociality.

i disagree with the "AI is useless" critique for a different reason: valuing things only bc theyre useful is a dead end. uselessness rules

it's convenient to believe that one can be a person just by consuming media

hard to think of two people i’ve known that i respect more. last night was fun seeing Malcolm Harris and @mattdpearce.com talks about Mal’s new book What’s Left! which everyone should buy rn

I miss how we used to be able to talk about anything other than the horror of the hour on the internet

i really appreciate Drew here using non-AI examples to talk about "slop"

yes and especially this one

im being gaslit lol

(The idea that blockchains are anti-surveillance is just ridiculous as a baseline. That's just financial fraud cosplaying as "the good hackers".)

one way to understand this Silicon Valley administration is they abide by the Tech coders dream of speaking anything into existence. anything said on any platform can be de-anchored from the practical, rational, even legal and be made to happen. the metaverse didnt fail but became everything

focuses on how memes are used and not what politically and materially is being done. exactly the wrong approach imo

"Seeking attention for profit is perhaps incompatible with tolerance" robhorning.substack.com/p/watch-out-...

I blame Ted talks for all of this

drive.google.com/file/d/1O2qk... loving this by @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social

its no coincidence that generative AI is such a perfect fit for fascist futurism. re: futurism, AI is iconic. it can stand for "wealth-ness" and "future-ness" in a way real video can not re: fascism, AI is an assertion of the statistically standard, normal, hegemonic, and inevitable

AI is an especially useful tool for reminding people that they aren't permitted to think and that their attempts to express themselves will either be drowned out with slop or met with automated reprisals

this piece makes similar point about genAI art: acting as though it's an adequate replacement for art is also a loyalty test for aspiring sycophants newsocialist.org.uk/transmission...

New essay by me is live in the world but only in PRINT!! In issue #1 of @sfreviewofwhatever.bsky.social which I now have in hand (!!!) so here’s the first paragraph. Essay is about People’s Park, who gets to move freely and who is obstructed, rectangles, Judd, and Running Fence. sfreview.org

the self help framing around "brain rot" is funny to me. it's obviously not a medical condition but instead describing a pleasurable and intentional resignation to stimulus over concentration