great piece and so many rabbit holes - I hope you're not actually done with slop.
what is "derivative?" isn't everything inherently remixing old value and adding new value?
for that matter, what are "normal" or "native" behaviors? trends are always partially driven by people trying to capitalize off those trends.
I also think there's a narrow boundary of when a meme becomes "slop." It seems that most trends genuinely start out as innate cultural trends, and then are remixed into slop - where is the line??
I think you're right -- that line is hard to draw, and in some ways it is just "taste" which feels kinda flimsy to me (thus the rubric-attempting in this post).
I think "derivative" to me means copying without citation, and not being "transformative" in these sense they use it to help define "fair use" in copyright terms. Although, just as it is in "fair use," that definition is so subjective.
"normal" and "native" behaviors are also hard to define -- perhaps what I'm getting at, which your comment exposes to me, is a kind of understanding of slop as a part of the normal functioning of things online, the way algae works in a pond -- but maybe what we see here is a sudden, violent algal bloom that throws things out of wack?
This reminds me of the book "AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH" by Postman - the author discusses how society's loss of media literacy during the height of TV as the global form of entertainment caused a sort of cultural death. Certainly, the slop being served on our present algorithms has the same effect. I believe the one way to combat this is curation of our feeds, even when dealing with an overwhelming amount of constant chatter.
great post! would love if the pictures had captions to explain how they relate to what you’ve written (unless they’re just things you’ve found interesting)
Agree with your definitions. I don't think we have to be authoritative when defining slop though, I'm happy to fall back on Justice Potter's "I know it when I see it"..
great piece and so many rabbit holes - I hope you're not actually done with slop.
what is "derivative?" isn't everything inherently remixing old value and adding new value?
for that matter, what are "normal" or "native" behaviors? trends are always partially driven by people trying to capitalize off those trends.
I also think there's a narrow boundary of when a meme becomes "slop." It seems that most trends genuinely start out as innate cultural trends, and then are remixed into slop - where is the line??
I'm probably not done with it for long :)
I think you're right -- that line is hard to draw, and in some ways it is just "taste" which feels kinda flimsy to me (thus the rubric-attempting in this post).
I think "derivative" to me means copying without citation, and not being "transformative" in these sense they use it to help define "fair use" in copyright terms. Although, just as it is in "fair use," that definition is so subjective.
"normal" and "native" behaviors are also hard to define -- perhaps what I'm getting at, which your comment exposes to me, is a kind of understanding of slop as a part of the normal functioning of things online, the way algae works in a pond -- but maybe what we see here is a sudden, violent algal bloom that throws things out of wack?
We read Animal Farm at class. And then I came here.
This essay hits like chewing strawberry bits before champagne, hoping to bring out the flavours in it. So far, there's a million
Finally a good lay use of Heidegger
i wanna live in the world that things like this are whats on the top of the trending pages for a universal social media
This reminds me of the book "AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH" by Postman - the author discusses how society's loss of media literacy during the height of TV as the global form of entertainment caused a sort of cultural death. Certainly, the slop being served on our present algorithms has the same effect. I believe the one way to combat this is curation of our feeds, even when dealing with an overwhelming amount of constant chatter.
great post! would love if the pictures had captions to explain how they relate to what you’ve written (unless they’re just things you’ve found interesting)
Agree with your definitions. I don't think we have to be authoritative when defining slop though, I'm happy to fall back on Justice Potter's "I know it when I see it"..