Each year, the dictionary chooses a Word of the Year based on popularity and significance.
It kind of gives you a snapshot at the main theme of that year.
There are many dictionaries and the Word of the Year varies depending on which one you look at.
But interestingly enough, quite a few agreed on the Word of the Year for 2025.
Slop As an artist and content creator, I had a particular reaction to this word.
Why does slop summarize the time we're living in?
Wasn't AI supposed to unleash our creative potential and make our wildest imaginations become reality?
The ability to create anything is right at our fingertips.
And yet, we haven't got an abundance of masterpieces that inspire us with awe and wonder.
No, what we have got is an algorithmic sewage pipe of never-ending sludge.
A vapid, unoriginal, forgettable slop.
Humans are tool users.
When we discover a tool that works, we pick it up quickly.
Every time we pick up a new tool, we gain something in the short term, but we also lose something, and what we lose is often subtle and takes a long time to play out.
Look at some of the significant inventions of the past.
Take agriculture, for example.
Before agriculture, man was one with Earth.
Every planted animal was animated with a sacred spirit.
Humans were part of a rich, mystical ecosystem.
When farming was invented, the buffalo became the puller of the plow.
Nature was now something separate from us, a resource to serve man's needs.
We began to sever our harmonious connection to the Earth.
But this trade-off was worth it.
Who could say no to consistent food, security, and survival?
Then take the invention of writing.
This moment was detailed in the philosophical myth found in Plato's Phaedrus, where Socrates describes the Egyptian god Thoth presenting the invention of writing to the Egyptian king Themis.
Thoth tells King Themis that writing is a potion for memory and wisdom, claiming that it will make the Egyptians wiser and improve their memories by allowing them to record knowledge.
King Themis argues the opposite, stating that writing will cause people to lose their internal memory because they will rely on external written symbols rather than their own inner recollection.
King Themis predicts that people will hear much without being properly taught, leading them to appear wise while remaining ignorant.
The inventions of agriculture and writing were massive changes, but they were slowly deployed over many generations.
Fast forward 6,000 years and the rate of change has increased rapidly.
In the 1900s, electricity came along.
Who could say no to an invention like that?
But after lighting up our cities, we began to lose our connection to the night sky.
Many people in dense urban areas have never really seen the stars.
They are unaware of our planet's orbit, the patterns of meteor showers, the cycles of the solar system and our place in the greater cosmos.
We used to be able to navigate the land and orient ourselves in space.
Now, with GPS, we need help getting to a place that we've been to 20 times before.
That's only a few miles from our home.
This list could keep going, but you get the idea.
Each time we gain something with technology, we lose something as well.
And what we lose is often hard to see until much later.
This arrives us neatly to AI.
We can all sense that AI will be the single biggest driver of change in the next decade and may very well be our last invention.
There's no denying that it's a tremendously powerful tool with limitless potential.
But what are we losing as we adopt AI into our everyday lives?
What are we losing by letting AI make our decisions, do our critical thinking, and create our art?
For many, this could erase our reason to exist.
There is a growing fear that AI will replace us all.
As AI proves to do everything faster and cheaper than humans can, the unavoidable question is what will humans do?
What are we good for?
What purpose will we serve?
Why get out of bed when everything's already done for us?
Why try to gain a skill when that skill is obsolete?
Who's even going to be able to buy stuff if all the jobs are taken?
There are countless videos and articles spelling out doomsday scenarios concerning the near future of AI.
Most of these concerns are completely valid, but I'm not here to do that.
The fact that slop is the word of the year actually gives me hope.
It shows on some level that people are rejecting the idea that we are all replaceable.
It reveals that there is something fundamental that humans can do that AI cannot.
Since the Industrial Revolution we have treated people like cogs in a machine to do monotonous, repetitive tasks in factories and offices and assembly lines under fluorescent lights.
We've pretended that copying numbers from one spreadsheet and pasting them in another is important work.
All of a sudden, AI comes along and floods the market with agents that do repetitive tasks quicker and cheaper than any human worker can.
It's killed the value of generic work.
It's ended the need for humans to do dehumanizing labor.
A great YouTube channel called Medieval Mindset argues that the 2030s will be the new renaissance because in the next few years quote the AI flood will make unsimulated humanity the ultimate luxury good.
So many of us are worried that AI will replace us.
But very soon there will inevitably be a grand realization that AI can only replace.
The drudgery will be left with the work that requires a soul and some real critical thinking.
It's going to be a movement from an economy of quantity to an economy of quality, where we shift our focus to doing things that the machine cannot.
End quote.
AI does not know how to produce anything meaningful.
Meaning cannot be manufactured.
Meaning is found in suffering, especially in the pursuit of something noble.
The more we suffer to reach our aim, the more meaningful the journey becomes.
AI does not know what hard work is because it doesn't know struggle.
It will never have to grapple with a tough decision.
It doesn't feel shame for being wrong, or the joy that comes from failing 100 times and finally succeeding.
Wrestling with suffering discomfort, risk and adversity is an integral part of what truly makes us feel alive.
It reminds me of the beautiful monologue from Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting, where he tells Will that just because he's read a book on Michelangelo doesn't mean he knows what it feels like to stand underneath the Sistine Chapel.
Just because he can recite Shakespeare doesn't mean he knows what it feels like to fall in love and be vulnerable.
To have knowledge is one thing, to have experience is something entirely different.
If there is no experience embedded in creation, then the creation is like a superficial gift, one with dazzling wrapping paper, but which is ultimately empty on the inside.
And this is why movies, poetry, paintings, and music produced by AI feels hollow.
It's a violation of human expression.
It may look or sound cool to our senses, but it doesn't touch the heart.
It's not rooted in any experience, struggle, or triumph.
This is why I'm actually really excited for the next few years.
I believe that AI will devour itself, at least in creative terms.
There's nothing left for it to train on.
The only thing left is to regurgitate a regurgitation of a regurgitation.
I foresee a renaissance in the near future where humans discover what it means to be human again.
We are tired of the sanitized AI hologram.
We want something real, imperfect, authentic, and surprising.
Unsimulated humanity will become the ultimate luxury good.
Carpenters will take pride in crafting a chair again.
Businesses will use hand-drawn labels on their products.
Speakers will express their spontaneous feelings, and we will enjoy their ums, ahs, and stutters.
We will applaud the squeaky noises caused by fingers sliding against the strings of a guitar.
Diners may even laugh when a human waiter gets their order wrong.
People will want to live in colorful funky, decorative homes instead of the mass-produced concrete boxes we see now.
Maybe we can even get back to building extraordinary monuments again, like cathedrals, temples and pyramids.
Of course, there will always be people who don't care about meaning.
They will just want the final product.
They don't want artwork that touches their soul.
They just want to be entertained.
AI slop will get better and better at capturing people's attention.
It will get better and better at pleasing our senses.
There will be many people who will choose an AI robot partner over the messiness of real romance.
But I'm encouraged because I've noticed a growing trend of young people who seem to be aware of the brain rot.
They're being force-fed and they're taking their lives back, rejecting AI slop and these algorithms that are robbing them of real experience.
Surprisingly, many of Gen Z and younger have traded in their smartphones for dumb phones.
They've committed to reading physical books, going outside, and having real face-to-face adventures.
They are seeking to reconnect with something modern civilization has lost, a soul.
This is really what afterschool has been about for so long.
In a sea of mindless slop.
I want this channel to stand out as a beacon of light which appeals to your conscious mind.
I'd like you to walk away from each video feeling like you learned something of value to your life, hopefully something meaningful.
Yes, the temptation to use AI is there, and I'm not here to condemn anyone using it.
But for me, the joy of making these videos does not come from the final product.
The joy comes from the creative process itself.
Making these videos is how I learn.
I don't have a content strategy.
I simply make the videos about things I'm curious about.
And through this endeavor, I've learned a lot.
I've changed a lot.
I look back at my old videos and cringe at who I used to be.
But the reward for the struggle is not what I've gained.
It's who I've become.
So I encourage you to strive to create something meaningful.
Believe in yourself, make mistakes and turn your imperfections into your strengths.
We could be accelerating out of a dark age into a renaissance, the dawning of a new age where we shake off the fog in our minds and rediscover why we are here.
The beginning is near.
Thanks for watching this episode.
I truly believe we humans are put here on Earth to create.
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