The SLOP Problem

[@Dragostatic]

My first time watching one of your videos, very underrated!

[@GalaxyArtStream-qd1qc]

We are fully in the slop wars!

[@LouisLuzuka]

Thank you for your kindness ❤

[@ahirusan1147]

Thanks Alex, that was a very insightful analysis! I quit social media in 2014. Life's been very busy ever since! I watched the video twice (which is super rare) to make sure I'll remember most of it.

[@LouisLuzuka]

*subbed* much love from Vancouver Canada 🎉

[@BoldBreak]

As a creative who tries to produce crafted content SLOP is depressing.. Great Video.

[@alexwr]

I quite agree... I don't know what's worse, that we now have AI that can create this garbage, or that oftentimes human made things feel AI generated because they are so generic and soulless.

[@BoldBreak]

@@alexwr AI Bubble will pop I just hope Sonner rather than later

[@dddux]

"... to keep them fed but not nourished." Like. 😆

[@alexwr]

Probably better said as "...fed but not not well nourished." Let's be real. Slop content is just the junk food of the internet. High calorie, low nutrients.

[@neounicorn2023]

Great point, it seemed to me that everyone suddenly became sarcastic, but they’re actually more of being lazy to produce something of real value

[@alexwr]

I always worry that I always sound sarcastic, but I think that's just my accent and low energy :P Yeah, there's definitely a fear of being sincere, especially on the internet...

[@StephenMendes]

Hey ..... well you will love my channel then cause it's EDUCATIONAL ...... no slop .... no AI .... no ads ..... everything done the "old fashioned way" .... plus I personally answer all comments 😁... seriously, Alex, I wish you the Best with your video efforts ! ..... and with your channel.... Happy Christmas !

[@tigeruppercut2000]

You forgot to mention crappy hypercasual games where you can't progress without microtransactions

[@alexwr]

At least I can just not download them, so they're easily avoided. Yes, they definitely count as slop! I think that's a topic for another day, but smartphone are not really built for anything other than simple, mindless entertainment.

[@nobody-u-know]

ummm... SOME AI stuff looks great. It's not complete garbage. It's been proven over and over that people that don't kow something is AI, really like most of it.

[@alexwr]

Some of it looks great from a purely aesthetic perspective. I would argue it still contributes to the overall decline though. For certain things, I think AI can make sense: - Sky replacements and object removal in photo/video. - Speech recognition. Really useful for live translation and accessibility. - Better text to speech. Again for accessibility. Small, localised and highly specialised AI tools seem to be the best ones out there. All these things can potentially be used for good or bad, but human nature is the path of least resistance. If an AI will get the job done, even if not well, then we will keep relying on them more heavily and neglect ourselves and our own development.

[@HoplaProductions]

I worked on my latest AI parody 10x more time than you did on this. This for sure falls under "slop" category.

[@alexwr]

Maybe AI could work for dream sequences specifically because it looks so uncanny... I'm certainly not denying that you have worked and put effort into your video. The shot choice is very good, and the pacing is great! It would have been even cooler to see a non-AI version, at least for the Peterson talking sections. You can't exactly compare the two videos in any meaningful sense. One is an experimental narrative about Kermit Peterson having a nightmare, and the other is a simple commentary video. I still had to write a script, film it, edit out the fluff, colour correct and grade. Obviously a commentary video, at least on the filming style is lower effort than a narrative because there's so many more choices to consider with narrative filmmaking. I'd like to see you develop your skills further because you've clearly got talent! You and I both need to start properly filming narrative stuff because it's good fun!

[@HububkiFilms]

⁠I just want to ask a question… because you’re kind of coming off a certain way, and I want to make sure that you’re intending to come off this way… and that it’s not something that’s just unintentional… Are you saying that people who don’t have the time or the resources to do things the “right way” are just putting out “slop”? Because it is very very common for this particular type of conversation to start out as “oh just typing in a few quick prompts and then pasting it online to try to get a bunch of views and then doing that a bunch of times to hope your channel can grow so you can make money is probably not the best way to do things”. And then, eventually if not rather immediately, it devolves into “anyone that uses any of these tools is cheating and uninspired and undisciplined and taking shortcuts and compromising artistic expression and should do everything the way it was originally done, otherwise they are thieves and plagiarists”. That is an age old gatekeeping attitude and behavior that has prevented many individuals over the course of history from feeling confident in expressing themselves for fear of ridicule for not living up to the standards of the people who police the communities of self expression. I think everyone agrees that if you’re just clicking a button and then posting what comes out, you’re not really having any creative input on what’s being generated. The only purpose someone serves in that scenario is merely to initiate the process by which some new piece of content comes into existence, which plausibly fails to meet the basic criteria for expression or creation. But the second a person starts curating what gets put out, and refining it to get something that is more like what they are trying to say, then they are already transitioning from a passive initiator to that of a creator using technology as a means to express him or herself. I agree that people should become fluent, as much as is within their resources and opportunities to do so, in all the different types of tools and tactics for self expression, but that is ultimately a personal choice, and it doesn’t inherently handicap or degrade that person’s potential output. In fact, there are a great many examples of timeless and distinctive art that existed within its own bubble or vacuum, outside of the perspective or the culture or knowledge of conventions considered to be basic disciplines or procedures to bring that art about. Often the most distinctive art can be made by those who are ignorant of its rules and culture. And part of that unconventionality includes new ways to automate the process itself. I believe it does have value to gain the perspective of learning about the more primitive methods of how a task has been accomplished in the past, regardless of whether someone actually has the time or the resources, or the inclination, to try the old-fashioned way themselves, but they also have the right to make the choice to cut that part of the process out and focus more on the parts of the process that give them the most inspiration, or that give them the best opportunity to express themselves as fully as they can within the bounds of whatever their limitations are( be they monetary, physical, social or temporal…) without fear of reprisal and humiliation rituals. This is the most frustrating aspect of this debate, and it really bothers me, because I don’t disagree that there’s a glut of lazy quick clip and paste content (and AI is streamlining that) but I genuinely believe that most people, especially as they get older than like five or six, will start to gravitate towards the content that actually has something significant to say, and then the only real difference is that we all have different sensibilities. Endlessly generating effortless and meaningless content is unfulfilling. It’s sort of self regulating. The gatekeeping comes in with determining for yourself (and by the natural extension of your level of clout or respect in a given community for a much larger group of people) what is and what is not acceptable. Some of us like basic or simple or silly content, some of us like complex or analytical or provocative content…some of us are introspective, some of us are plain spoken, but that doesn’t mean that any of it is bad or wrong, which is why I really don’t like the concept of nourishment in regards to art. Patrick Stewart loves dirty limericks. He loves Beavis and Butthead. Other people will look at that type of art and say “oh I don’t know how anyone with a working mind could like something like that. It’s just complete junk. Honestly, it shouldn’t even exist. It’s not real art.” This will always bother me. Because art is subjective, it is always in the eyes and the ears and in the perception of the beholder…as is the value or merit or what you would call nourishment. The human body has certain basic material and chemical needs that it cannot function without, but the human mind is far less limited in that capacity. That’s part of the reason that the world can be kind of scary sometimes, because what one person finds inspirational another might find maniacal. Just my two cents. Sorry for the novel. TL:DR Gatekeeping=bad, the value of expression is subjective.

[@cbnewham5633]

Oh dear. Another anti-AI video. It's a tool and will produce "slop" if you want to use it that way. One could say that videos like this are "slop" - just lazy criticisms ("anything AI") that don't advance anything.

[@alexwr]

Anti-generative AI, for the most part. There are other uses for neural networks beyond stealing artists work and puking out the leftovers. You're right, all these things are tools. But AI is more than a tool because it is intended to replace humans. LLMs replace human conversation. Generative AI replaces artists. Each generation of tech has removed more meaningful jobs from the public sphere, but we've never had a technology that tries replaces so much in one fell swoop. Not just mindless jobs, but artistic endeavours too. One could say that my video is slop. They would be wrong. There's nothing lazy about writing, filming, colour grading and editing a video, trying to keep it as concise as possible so as to try not to waste people's time. Criticising something that other people have already criticised doesn't make it 'slop' or pointless. It means there are probably issues that people should be paying attention to with this tech because enough people are speaking out about it. Damn right I hope it doesn't advance anything. I hope it encourages less advancement. We need to have serious conversation about the way we are moving forward as a society if this is what we are doing with the resources we have available.

[@cbnewham5633]

@@alexwr If you believe AI is "stealing" artists' work then you need to do some more study on how AI works. It's sad that your video is just the usual Luddite diatribe with nothing useful to add. Best of luck to you - I hope that one day you can join the large number of artists who are already using AI to their advantage. Merry Christmas.