This is per the 2026 discussion of AI “slop” writing.
One of the things I buy at an annual local rummage sale is cheap physical media like books. This year, I picked up a book by a cartoonist who I like and respect. I thought his book would be funny and prescient from the standpoint of the publication date (1995). The book is 250 pages of mostly slop. Humans wrote lots of slop and it got printed by publishers who had a captive audience.
Why did I have such high expectations for a printed book? I think it is because, as of 2026, we are more selective about what we print. A filtering has happened. Many novels printed 100 years ago were junk.
When I think of “books” today, what it really makes me think of is “classics” or the top 0.01% of books.
So, score one point for the slopistas. Human writing was not universally smart or inspiring.
What I hate about slop is seeing it in spaces I used to trust. There was a time when I could log in to LinkedIn and see human writing from people who I had chosen to follow because I like them as people. There was a contract for my attention that is broken with slop.
I sense some push and pull in the algorithm whereby the sites might be suppressing slop, right now, relative to what I was seeing weeks ago. I went to LinkedIn on 7/17/26 to do a slop check and saw none. They might be trying to preserve the lead that James identified earlier this year: The Hot Social Network Is… LinkedIn?
Oddly, one of the worst bot-infested spaces I tread into is Facebook groups about sourdough bread making. I think the space is not important enough for Facebook to police, and the human users are not very sophisticated when it comes to tech. I logged this observation back in January.
Consider this an update to by 2023 post What We Are Learning about Paper Books
Economist Writing Every Day 