"The violent federal occupation of Minneapolis - and the subsequent killings of two residents at the hands of immigration agents - began with a vlog. Nick Shirley, a roving 23-year-old with a smartphone and a taste for outrage, made a YouTube video with unfounded allegations of fraud at daycares operated by the local Somali American community. Like so much partisan media in history, he was trying to rile up the right-wing base. But he was also playing to another audience: the algorithm."
"We mostly talk about it in the context of AI-generated material, but slop does not need to be synthetic - AI slop is just a subgenre of a larger type of content that is made quickly and cheaply and poorly. The same lukewarm financial advice peddled by thousands of literal talking heads on Instagram Reels is slop. Falsehoods and oversimplifications about breaking news or contentious celebrity drama that snowball to millions of views is slop."
An influencer's vlog with unfounded allegations about Somali-American daycares triggered a violent federal occupation of Minneapolis and led to two residents' deaths at the hands of immigration agents. The vlogger exemplifies influencers who tailor style, tone, and merchandise to attract algorithm-driven attention and parasocial followings. Such creators produce algorithm-friendly, quickly made, low-quality content called 'slop' that includes lukewarm financial advice, breaking-news falsehoods, oversimplifications, and engagement bait. AI-generated material is only one form of slop. Slop's design for maximum engagement enables misinformation to snowball to millions of views and to produce real-world mobilization and harm.
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