This isn’t a super deep or long post. I just need to put this somewhere so the shouting will stop in my head.

First, my favorite new slang I learned recently is “slop.” It’s the AI garbage that is now all over search engines and social media. I do a weekly check in on social media to see all the travel, dogs, babies, weddings, meals, etc. Yes, social media is a wasteland. Yes, there’s not many of us left on Facebook, but there’s like 3 people and they post a lot and sometimes it’s nice. Leave me alone. I’m making this up, but it feels like 60% of my feed is bizarre AI slop. Like this:

Seriously, what the ****? The AI slop on Facebook started out a few months ago as like the face of Jesus in a farmstand of broccoli. Or a kid with a prosthetic leg with a sign about it being his birthday held by hands with more than 5 fingers. A week later that kid was holding hands with Jesus. Now comes this dada-esque atrocity of an ouroboros camel.

I really want to report this! (As if Facebook cares at all about what content is on its site.) But my sense of ethical do-gooderness was yelling at me to report this! I clicked the report button, hoping I could choose an option that says “This AI garbage is not just terrible, it’s disturbing.” This is not an option.

Clearly there is no human running these accounts. They’ve just been set to run and probably to learn from the clicks and comments.

I don’t comment on this slop either because whatever bot runs this account would be getting clicks, which is revenue, which they use to sell the profile later or to monetize the page. What am I even doing on Facebook? I know what I’m doing, I’m trying to find a local restaurant’s hours! It should be a federal law that all businesses get a free website that is just their hours, phone number, and address.

Okay, so that post and the ones like it are so bizarre they are laughable. Then yesterday, I’m watching the Olympics and just living for the commercials. Seriously, 80% of Olympics commercials make me cry. But not this one. It’s a commercial about a little girl who just loves running and her hero is a female Olympian runner. And her dad asks Google AI to write a fan letter to the athlete for the little girl. Google, are you drunk? Are you suggesting that little kids should send AI-written fan letters to their heroes? Are you hearing yourself?

I keep the letters that students have written to me over the years. One is on my bookshelf here in Minnesota, where we spend our summers. It was written to me when I was teaching at a drama camp after college and a kid wrote, in his own handwriting, that I helped him develop a love of performing “Shakesphere.” I treasure that letter. I know that a 13 year old wrote it.

Was no one in the room in the making of that ad who piped up to say that maybe this ad was saying the ugly part out loud? Was no one like, “Um, this seems like we’re not really keeping with the spirit of childhood, excellence, or personal connection? Tone deaf, anyone?”

So, let me tell you this now. It’s gross. Stop, Google. You are becoming the weird camel.

I bet if I asked AI to write a letter to an athlete it would sound something like this:

Dear [Name of Athlete],

I am a child in the 4th grade and I wanted to take this opportunity to express to you my deepest and most heartfelt respect of your athleticism and physical grace. Allow me a moment to delve into the myriad reasons I idolize your recent physical achievements, and hope to emulate your exploits myself.

1. When you were a high school athlete in New Jersey, you came in first place at an invitational meet, which was covered by your hometown newspaper, whose data I have recently scraped for information and training in my writing style. (Hat tip to journalist Maggie Stevenson for teaching me how to use semicolons and em dashes! Isn’t it great how much training data there is on the Internet? And it’s free!)
2. Your Wikipedia page says that you have three world records. There were footnotes and links to sources, but I haven’t been programmed to follow those to confirm the information. Also, I am not trained to question the veracity of Wikipedia.
3. I, a small human child, also want to be an award winning athlete. I want to consume high amounts of calories to fuel my wet meatsack of a body so that I can locomote very quickly on a oval shaped rubberized track over hurdles, which are defined as upright frames over which an athlete must jump. I’ve heard that running is hard and can cause physical pain. Humans generally do not like pain, but there seems to be some reason I, a 10 year old child, am interested in enduring the pain of running over hurdles. It might be for the gold medal–but that only contains 6 grams of gold, assuming I win the “gold” medal, and actually only copper, zinc and iron if I get bronze. But that’s if I even make it through the Olympic qualifiers with more than 1,800 competitors. Based on the probability, I should probably be encouraged to keep up with my studies an academics.

In closing, I hope to emulate your spectacular feats of strength and endurance when I mature into an adult woman. It is due entirely to your tenacity and indefatigability that I have set my sights on such a portentous achievement of physical prowess.

With heartfelt gratitude and sincerest adulation,

[Insert your name here]