The State of Slop
Welcome to the era of one-slop shopping. Press button. Get bullshit. Call it creative. Repeat until your brand sounds like everyone else's. Congratulations, you've automated mediocrity.
AI Is A Gazillion-Dollar Content Vending Machine
Marketing departments (and, let's be honest, lots of other departments) worldwide are gorging themselves at an all-you-can-eat buffet of algorithmic slop. Just look at your LinkedIn feed to see the state of slop. If your idea of marketing is cramming ten words into ChatGPT's mouth and expecting it to vomit up marketing gold, you are out of your mind. What you're getting is the literary equivalent of Cheez Whiz. Technically food, and maybe fine in desperate moments, but toxic if it's all you eat.
Sadly, we've collectively bought into the hype bros' story that this time, the tech is MAGIC, but skip the thinking and it's just ICK. What we have is a gazillion-dollar machine that churns out the average of everything ever written, so don't act surprised when the result feels like it was written by a committee of robots having a particularly boring day. Woof!
We've built a gazillion-dollar machine that churns out the average of everything ever written.
When I watch someone fire off a prompt, accept whatever AI serves up after two attempts, then sprint to the next task, it's like hiring a world-class chef and only letting them make dry toast. The capability is there, but the lack of thinking is starving creativity to death.
While Rome Burns, Smart Marketers Buy Matches
Two bets I'm making. Because everyone is flooding the market with AI-generated sludge, having an authentic human voice is becoming the rarest and therefore most valuable commodity. There's a massive opportunity hiding in plain sight. Being genuinely, unapologetically human is the secret to success in this AI era.
Here's my other bet. The more sophisticated AI becomes, the more valuable human weirdness becomes.
Does what you're writing, recording, or producing matter to you? Do you care about it? Do you really have something meaningful to say? You should lean into that. Because if you don't care enough to think and craft, why would you expect the push-button magic of AI to tickle the neurons of those you hope to reach?
The Great Convergence Where Human Meets Machine
The most sophisticated players aren't using AI as a replacement brain. They're using it as a thinking partner. One that coaxes, coaches and cajoles you into thinking deeper, expanding your knowledge. If you do it right, it helps you change your own mind, and honestly, that is a MAGIC trick I'm paying the tech bros for. When the machine can prompt you as much as you prompt it, it will tickle your neurons so you want to keep going.
So stop outsourcing your thinking. Start using the gazillion-dollar machine as a kick-ass partner that lets the authentic you shine.
Here's Where I Start (And Think You Should Too)
Start by reading, listening, and paying attention. I have help from some stellar apps.
I use Snipd to listen to podcasts. When I hear something interesting, curious or profound, I just tap. It saves a snippet and sends it to a Notion database.
I seem to listen to podcasts on the weekends
Next up is the tag team of Readwise and Feedly. In Readwise, I highlight the best bits of what I'm reading. I use Feedly to automate gathering articles from the internet I'm interested in.
With topics streaming in from what I hear and read, I start to have ideas on what I want to talk about. That's when I talk to the VoicePal app. It records what I'm saying, analyzes that info, and asks me three questions based on whatever I jabber about. I answer one of the questions, and it asks three more.
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
This AI doesn't tell you what to think, but forces you to think harder. It forces you to articulate your actual point of view. When I run into knowledge gaps, I go back to my Notion database or to Feedly to look for more inputs. This is how I build my unique point of view and discover interesting white spaces instead of getting stuck in the cacophony of sameness. I think of VoicePal as an AI sparring partner that pushes me to have a sharp opinion or creative idea BEFORE I ever touch an LLM like ChatGPT or Claude.
In my next post, I'll talk about where I go from here, how I get more out of AI to avoid the traps that earn you a dull brown badge in the State of Slop. In the meantime, comment below. It's always good to hear from a fellow human.