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The AI Slop-pocalypse

+ Hawk Tuah's Twitch pivot, New Face syndrome, Gen Z divorcés, Sam Altman shoplifting slop, cockroach spies, brain rot pop, Forbes vs a gun violence activist, and how 'I’ve Had It' is going mainstream

Taylor Lorenz
Oct 01, 2025
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This week, OpenAI announced a new a TikTok-style app that will deliver users an endless feed of AI generated videos. The news is just the latest example of how AI slop is rapidly taking over every platform.

As WaPo reported: “The flood of financially incentivized slop has given way to a strange new internet, where social media feeds overflow with unsettlingly lifelike imagery and even real videos can appear suspect. Some viral clips now barely rely on humans at all, with AI tools generating not just the imagery but also the ideas.”

There’s YouTube Slop, Instagram Reel Slop, Slop all over TikTok, LinkedIn, and X. But who’s behind this deluge of deranged and often extremely surreal content?

Drew Harwell is a journalist who has been digging into the slop economy. He joined me to talk about the mad rush of creators using AI video tools to flood the internet, how they’re making money, and what the future of content looks like as slop eats the world. WATCH HERE!

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