Merriam-Webster chose “slop” as its Word of the Year, a pick that neatly sums up how algorithmic feeds and generative AI have reshaped what we scroll, watch and share. The phrase has burst out of niche internet slang and is now shorthand for mass-produced, low-value digital material that swamps attention — and often, trust.
In naming “slop,” the dictionary is recognizing a plain truth: that synthetic content has gone from novelty to default in many parts of the web, and audiences are beginning to learn how to name what that feels like.
What Slop Means in Merriam-Webster’s Framing
According to Merriam-Webster, “slop” is digital content that’s churned out in volume, often with the use of AI, and without obvious editorial oversight. Try to imagine bot-written product roundups, pages of recycled listicles, slightly uncanny nature videos and the flood of search-optimized content that manages to say plenty about nearly nothing.
More than one thing came together to attach to this use. Generative tools no longer reside only in labs; text, image and video models are built into consumer apps and creator workflows. (Tools like OpenAI’s Sora or Google’s Veo are reducing the cost of synthetic video; image models have been embedded in social platforms and productivity suites.) The output pipeline is frictionless. The net result: more content than ever, but not necessarily more value.
Why Slop Rose to the Top of Online Conversation
The conditions are measurable. Increased angst around misinformation is turning up in other ways: In the Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report, 59 percent of survey participants said they found it hard to tell real news from false information online. NewsGuard said it had found more than 1,000 websites that seemed to be publishing artificially generated articles with little human oversight. At the same time, media monitors and election watchdogs were alerting authorities to deepfakes and synthetic voice scams proliferating through messaging apps and social platforms.
Slop isn’t only a matter of fraud, however. It’s about volume, and it’s also about sameness — for one thing, content that is optimized not for readers or viewers but for engagement metrics. Linguists frequently observe that new terms flourish when a community has to find an easy shorthand for indicating quality. “Slop” does the trick: It is short and bright, with a whiff of exasperation that embodies audience fatigue.
From Insider Jargon to a Widespread Cultural Symbol
What started as an internet in-joke has since become a form of media criticism. Creators use the label to fight click-churn: you’ll notice video descriptions saying “no AI used,” and now some publishers are even adding labels for whether content is from AI, or credentials that it wasn’t written by AI. The label has drifted into entertainment talk, too, where fans invoke it to lambast formulaic spin-offs and franchise filler — yet another indication that “slop” is now shorthand for sameness, not just a synthetic origin.
Merriam-Webster generally considers lookup spikes, continued use and editorial judgment when selecting its Word of the Year. On those terms, “slop” is the subject of widely shared, sustained conversation that plays far beyond tech industry circles. It channels the emotional temperature of the feeds: bemused, overwhelmed and more and more doubtful.
The Stakes for Platforms and Policy in the AI Era
Labeling and provenance are emerging as the counterweight. One such proposal is from the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), with support from companies such as Adobe, Microsoft, and the BBC; it advocates for putting cryptographic “content credentials” in front of audiences so they can see how a photo, video or audio file came to be. Both newsrooms and camera makers have started road-testing those standards. Regulators are circling, too: The F.T.C. has cautioned against misleading AI endorsements and doppelgängers, while election officials are considering disclosure rules for synthetic media in political ads.
None of this makes low-quality output disappear — automated text and video generators can produce infinite pabulum at near-zero marginal cost. But it does provide a clearer signal for readers who’d rather avoid the onslaught, and an incentive for publishers to keep a record of the human labor that brought them this or that story, track or clip.
Why the Language Matters for Media and Audiences
Words crystallize norms. By raising “slop,” Merriam-Webster has offered the public such a term — for the vast fuzzy phenomenon. That common language can also increase consumer expectations, inform platform policies and enable educators to teach media literacy by way of a modern case study.
There is an upside, too: the backlash to slop is already powering a counter-trend in favor of provenance, craft and context. Same goes for you as a newsroom using content credentials; a creator fronting process, or a platform that prioritizes source transparency; same message, different packager, still lands. The internet does not lack for content; it lacks trust. “Slop” calls out the issue so the rest of us can fix it.
