A lazy Saturday is drawing to a close here in the UK. It began with the discovery of a surgically detached mouse head tenderly placed on the living room carpet by the cat. I appreciate him trying to bring me snacks, but I begrudge him the bloodstains on the rug. As my mother used to say to me and my siblings when we were raising hell as kids: “It’s a good thing you’re cute.”
Anyway. I had planned to spend the day dismantling several pallets friends brought me so that I can make planters with them, but it was raining. Instead, I read two articles: “Welcome to Slop World: How the Hostile Internet Is Driving Us Crazy” by Jacob Silverman in the Financial Times (paywall-free Archive.is link here), and “Ultra-Processed Minds: The End of Deep Reading and What It Costs Us” by University College London scholar Carl Hendrick, who studies the science of learning (it’s a Substack, sorry). It seems to me these two go well together.
Silverman’s column goes over ground that Anne Laurie has covered for us here for years: the “enshittification” of the Internet and how that has accelerated in the age of Generative AI slop and confident misinformation. (Take this gem, for instance:)
I am watching the movie Heat and I wanted to check if the actress is a young Angelina Jolie so I went to google and-
— Nicholas Kole (@nicholaskole.bsky.social) April 19, 2025 at 5:41 AM
Anyway. Silverman bundles together AI slop and enshittification and misinformation under the label “the hostile internet”. He talks about the toll it is taking on us as individuals and as members of online communities:
Weekend Reads: Slop World vs. Deep ReadingPost + Comments (132)