Slop: Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year and What It Means for Our Digital Future

It's 11 PM. You're in bed, mindlessly scrolling on your phone. You see a recipe video that looks amazing, but the hands have 12 fingers. An inspirational quote that sounds profound, but also sounds like nothing at all. A clickbait news headline that actually never happened. You keep scrolling anyway.

Sound familiar?

That's slop. And Merriam-Webster just selected it as the Word of the Year for 2025.

What Is Slop?

Merriam-Webster defines slop as "digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence." Think absurd AI-generated videos, bizarre talking cats that populate your feed, junky AI-written books flooding Amazon, and "workslop" reports that waste everyone's time in meetings.

The word itself has a fascinating history. Originally meaning "soft mud" in the 1700s, it evolved to describe "food waste" in the 1800s before becoming a general term for rubbish or products of little value. The word slop has that visceral, wet sound of something you instinctively don't want to touch. And now, in 2025, it perfectly captures the feeling of scrolling through social media feeds increasingly clogged with AI-generated mediocrity.

What Slop Means to Me

As someone who spends a lot of time online (probably too much time, if I'm being honest), I've watched the rise of slop with a mixture of fascination and dread. I've seen thoughtful conversations drowned out by AI-generated nonsense. I've watched feeds become increasingly difficult to navigate, never quite sure if that inspiring quote or that shocking news story is real or just another piece of algorithm-optimized garbage designed to grab attention.

But here's what really gets me: not only does slop waste our time, it also erodes our trust. When you can't tell what's real anymore, you start to disengage not just from the fake stuff, but from everything. The good gets buried with the bad, and we all become a little more cynical, a little more tired.

What About the Kids?

This brings me to what worries me most: the impact on young people growing up immersed in this digital swamp. I watch kids constantly on their phones, toggling between apps like TikTok, Snap, and Instagram as they create, consume, and doom scroll through an endless feed of... what?

These kids are developing their sense of reality, their understanding of truth, their creative sensibilities in an environment where half of what they see is literally fabricated by machines. They are re learning to communicate, to create, to connect in spaces increasingly polluted by low-quality AI content designed purely for engagement metrics.

The concern goes beyond excess screen time. It's also about cognitive pollution. When you're exposed to hundreds of pieces of slop every day, does it affect your ability to recognize quality? Does it lower your standards for what's worth paying attention to? Does it make everything feel a little less... real?

I'm Not a Doomer, but a Realist

I'm not here to tell you AI is evil or that we're all doomed. I'm actually a huge fan of AI and technological advancement. I use AI tools daily in my work. I've been amazed by what's possible with tools like Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini when they're used thoughtfully. AI has the potential to democratize creativity, amplify human capabilities, and solve problems we haven't even imagined yet.

The technology itself isn't the problem. It's how we're using it. Or more accurately, how it's being misused at scale.

The rise of slop isn't inevitable. It's a choice made by platforms that prioritize engagement over quality, by content creators who prioritize quantity over craft, by businesses that see AI as a way to cut corners rather than enhance human creativity.

But we can make different choices and better utilize AI to our benefits.

• Create with intention: Use AI as a tool to enhance human creativity, not replace it. Let it handle the tedious parts so humans can focus on the parts that require genuine insight, emotion, and connection.
• Demand quality: As consumers, we can choose not to engage with slop. We can seek out and support human creators. We can adjust our algorithms by actively curating what we consume.
• Teach digital literacy: Especially for kids, we need to develop the critical thinking skills to identify slop, to understand how content is created, and to value authentic human expression.
• Build better systems: Platforms need to implement better detection and filtering for low-quality AI content. We need new tools that help surface genuine human creativity instead of burying it under an avalanche of algorithmic garbage.

The Future Is What We Make It

Merriam-Webster's choice of "slop" as Word of the Year isn't just linguistic commentary, but a wake-up call.

The digital age offers incredible opportunities for connection, creativity, and growth. But only if we actively choose quality over quantity, authenticity over automation, and human connection over algorithmic engagement. The technology is here to stay, and it will only get more sophisticated. The question is: will we use it to elevate human creativity or drown it in a sea of slop?

I want the future to be the one where AI is used as a tool that amplifies the best of human creativity, not a shortcut that replaces it with mass-produced mediocrity. The one where kids grow up with screens that inspire rather than numb them. The one where "digital content" doesn't automatically make you think of something you'd rather not touch.

The digital future is what we make it, and it's time we start making it better.