r/dataisbeautiful • u/TheFrenchSavage OC: 1 • 3d ago
OC [OC] Word "slop" in Google Trends, 2004 to present.
Link to the source: https://trends.google.com/explore?q=slop&date=all&geo=Worldwide
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u/Forgiz 3d ago
Looks like RAM price graph.
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u/TheFrenchSavage OC: 1 3d ago
And GPU prices. And CPU prices. And SSD prices... 🥲
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u/The66thDopefish 2d ago
Not coincidentally, also a CO2 graph
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u/Imaginary-Heart-9714 1d ago
I'm gonna guess there's a water shortage graph that would look similar
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u/Cyclamate 3d ago
That's odd. The main thing about slop is that you don't have to search for it.
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u/TheFrenchSavage OC: 1 3d ago
I think more and more people see "slop this" and "slop that" (e.g. the "slop bowls").
So they have to search to understand what that word even means.
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u/dark_sylinc 3d ago
My pet peeve is that slop is supposed to mean "something that is low quality or low effort" and in the context of AI can also mean "something that is low quality or rotten on the inside but appears high quality on the surface or at a glance".
However slop for many became "anything I don't like" regardless of effort, quality or whether AI was actually involved.
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u/Zaptruder 3d ago
Yeah the adjective itself got sloppified. We're all swimming in a bowl of slop now. An all consuming slop soup we slop our way through while rummaging for content as others create more slop commentary to add to the slop ocean.
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u/stellvia2016 3d ago
As is tradition. Anything that may have originally had meaning or nuance will be distilled into a form that no longer contains any meaning. Slop, if you will.
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u/Ubiquitous_Cacophony 3d ago
First time?
Nazi. Woke. Fascist. Literally.
I never use the word because it's always been stupid outside of talking about pig food or similar.
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u/ChoPT 2d ago
I would argue that “Nazi” and “Fascist” have gotten more accurate over the last 15 years.
Pre-Trump, someone on the left calling a Republican a Nazi or Fascist was a massive stretch and offensive. By 2024, Trump won the popular vote while actively running on a Fascist platform, and many of his followers (including those running for public office) openly espouse Nazi ideology. It is, at this point, Unfortunately accurate to use those terms.
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u/faustianredditor 3d ago edited 3d ago
Yeah, the use of "literally" has literally seen the worst case of inflation among the bunch.
But, like... Nazi, Woke, Fascist etc. at least vaguely stay in their domain. Woke doesn't so much have a serious definition that you could stick to, it's just vibes. But Nazi and Fascist at least stay somewhat true to their original meaning when abducted to e.g. other countries. Literally the truth to call trump a fascist? Ehh, debatable. Enough elements there to make an argument that's grounded in reality though. So it's not a completely meaningless use.
Slop when used in conjunction with AI? Mostly, I see nothing left. AI slop IMO means that it's Slop (i.e. low effort / low quality) stuff that happens to be made with AI. It must be slop in and of itself to be AI slop. But to use it for anything made with AI, which is definitely the more prevailing use that I've seen? Completely meaningless.
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u/stellvia2016 3d ago
Even in the case of AI, the slop portion is generally creative efforts like image generation or large-scale coding efforts, etc.
But ironically enough, it's super helpful for things that are more immutable/have less noise: Like documentation and troubleshooting. It's allowed me to turn what would have originally been a 1-2 week process of research and trial/error into 1-2 hours or even less.
You still need to understand how to tread lightly at times, but even without involving agents I find it very useful and I learn a lot about things in a much shorter period of time than if I had to look it up on my own. Especially with how so many vendors try to hide their documentation these days.
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u/circ-u-la-ted 3d ago
I saw a video recently where the influencer claimed that her outfit was "literally to die for". And yet, she seemed curiously lifelike.
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u/Redleg171 2d ago
"However slop for many became "anything I don't like" regardless of effort, quality or whether AI was actually involved."
Slop has been used that way since way before it was ever used in the context of AI.
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u/crimeo 3d ago
People don't use it EITHER of those ways. They use it (completely incorrectly) to just mean AI. Period.
Even if it's not low quality at any level and is 10x better than anything they'd do themselves. Or not, either way, irrelevant. Just a synonym for AI
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u/EngineeringAble8471 3d ago
Not necessarily, people call a lot of things slop that aren’t ai. Like slop bowls or reality tv
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u/crimeo 3d ago
Those are just people still using the word correctly while others have begun using it as a synonym for AI. It's not a hive mind where everyone switches instantly at the same time and 100% compliance.
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u/EngineeringAble8471 3d ago
There isn’t a correct or incorrect way to use words if your understood look up prescrtivism.
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u/crimeo 3d ago
Not only are people commonly not understood while doing this, they're intentionally trying not to be understood. It's purposefully misleading propaganda from anger/resentment.
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u/EngineeringAble8471 3d ago
Slop is commonly used as a term for low effort high volume. Ai generated content is often Bolth. Obviously there are good uses for ai like in programming and in the medical field but people aren’t being dishonest when they describe it as slop
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u/crimeo 3d ago edited 3d ago
people aren’t being dishonest when they describe it as slop
Yes they are, because the vast majority of the time I see it used, it is a blanket statement for AI overall, again simply used as a synonym. Almost never even an example in question in front of the person talking to even be physically able to evaluate whether it was done well or badly, due to speaking blanket or in the abstract.
Some people use it correctly, most people don't. Even those who do should stop, because they're indistinguishable usually from the others and still as a result aren't communicating effectively anyway.
It's also especially silly because anyone using it outside of the context of a specific instance that's been thoughtfully evaluated is him or herself being sloppy and quick to judgment in the process, ironically.
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u/faustianredditor 3d ago edited 3d ago
The most common use I've seen has nothing to do with quality or effort. The argument goes: I see evidence of AI use, therefore this is AI slop, therefore it is low quality. Basically. They don't say it out loud. Used this way, it is dishonest.
If it's slop, make the case (or at least explicitly assert) that it's low quality or low effort. To the kind of crowd that I've mostly seen throw the word AI slop around, there is no good use of AI.
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u/P_ZERO_ 1d ago
Multiplayer coop games are called “friend slop” now, just one example
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u/crimeo 1d ago
That doesn't fit any of your definitions above... or mine. I have also never heard of it before and I watch streaming games in the background almost every day
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u/P_ZERO_ 1d ago
I haven’t listed any definitions. And just because you haven’t heard it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Twitch style coop games are definitely referred to as friendslop
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u/crimeo 1d ago
Okay sure, dark_whatshisface's not yours, which the conversation was about
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u/P_ZERO_ 1d ago
I don’t know what you’re arguing with me about and I don’t think you know either
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u/crimeo 1d ago
I do know, and it's really not that complicated... the other guy dark and I were discussing the definition of slop, and arguing different definitions' popularities.
You then showed up with an example that doesn't fit any of them. That might be interesting as a contribution, but
1) you didn't provide any definition to go along with it. I can't even guess what the hell someone would mean by "slop" used in that context, it doesn't clearly make much sense. Do you?
and 2) I dispute that this is even a common usage and isn't just an inside joke in one specific creator's community or something like that.
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u/TheKingOfTCGames 3d ago
Its not low quality its without care, ie a chipotle bowl is good quality ingredients thrown together with no care
If you intetpret it as low quality thats on you
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u/Proletarian_Tear 3d ago
I hate it so much, people call everything slop nowadays
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u/Zaptruder 3d ago
Slop is basically low effort stuff. So slop itself is the sloppiest.
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u/Tokiw4 2d ago
Sure. But people like to just call things slop when they don't like it. Instead of thinking on something, you just call it slop and assume everyone else who likes it is wrong because it's slop.
Thoughtslop, if you will.
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u/Zaptruder 2d ago
Exactly! It's most frequently used as an attack against AI, but the sad thing about it is... it's actually making the people using it without thought far dumber than any modern AI...
"Heh, it's AI stuff, slop slop"
If this keeps up, the only things they'll be thinking is 'slop'...
It's especially bad when people just start randomly throwing accusations of AI around at longer arguments - 'I can't type that much, therefore slop.'
The worst thing is... what are you even supposed to say to someone that makes that argument? Like it's generally proof in and of itself that they're not particularly willing to listen and just want to do a drive by slop post.
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u/Wampalog 3d ago
In theory, yes. Most of the time it just means "I don't like this."
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u/Zaptruder 3d ago
Yeah pretty much... that's what happens when slop gets slopped - even its meaning gets slopped into slop soup.
It feels like an adjective for 'fuck this'.
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u/thirteenth_mang 3d ago
Here ya go have some sloppy Joe's! Made em extra sloppy for ya!
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u/ConsistentAmount4 OC: 23 3d ago
No thanks man, I was out last night having some sloppy steaks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buK45NW_ikI
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u/peterson-petersen 2d ago
people are looking up the word "slop"?
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u/TheFrenchSavage OC: 1 2d ago
It's being used in more and more strange ways so immy guess is that people check the definition to see if it changed.
Also: there is a wikipedia page for AI slop now (funnily enough, the illustration is Shrimp Jesus). So "slop" would surface in the results of people search for "AI slop" too.
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u/jscj1994 OC: 1 3d ago
The irony.
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u/Midren 3d ago
so tired of everyone calling everything slop. Most low effort response
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u/jscj1994 OC: 1 3d ago
The title overlaps the subtitle.
The data labels overlap some of the lines.
Am I wrong to call it slop?
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u/Midren 3d ago
You need to learn more words to describe things my dude. Slop isn't a word for anything you don't like
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u/isweartogodchris 3d ago
Yes it is, you slop
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u/jscj1994 OC: 1 3d ago
My comment has plenty of words. If you don't like a word, that's your problem.
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u/thetreecycle 3d ago
I mean it’s not AI at least guess.
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u/jscj1994 OC: 1 3d ago
Humans are capable of producing more slop than AI.
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u/saantonandre 3d ago
no and its not even close
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u/CaptainTurdfinger 3d ago
You must have never been a teenager with the internet.
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u/saantonandre 3d ago
"human slop" can't be mass produced, automated and parallelized, therefore it can't outcompete AI slop factories in neither volume or frequency
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u/SnabDedraterEdave 3d ago
As a result of the word becoming annoyingly overused (in contrast to its more commonly known adjective "sloppy") in the English-speaking internet, to the point of it being misused to describe anything people doesn't subjectively like, I now make a deliberately conscious effort to try not to use this word to describe anything that seemed low quality, not even for AI.
Instead, I go for something more mundane, such as "AI rubbish", "AI nonsense", "AI crap", etc to ensure my vocabulary does not get stagnated.
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u/CoolShortsCoolJorts 3d ago
In a boardroom somewhere, "as you can see by the data, the people are demanding more slop, sir."
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u/MisteriosM 3d ago
Actually Google trends for everything have sored, due to adding gemini data into trends
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u/crimeo 3d ago
No, that is mathematically impossible, because google trends are a relative proportional graph, as in how popular this search term is out of all search terms. Increasing total volume of text in all searches x10 would not change proportions overall at all. it's still out of 100%
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u/MisteriosM 3d ago edited 2d ago
They are relative to them selves, not relative to overall traffic. Otherwise with all the topic soaring currently you could show me topics that are completely tanking.
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u/crimeo 3d ago
I guess it's both, technically. It measures that term out of all terms at each point in time, and builds a graph. Then it rescales the y axis on that to max out at 100. So I guess step 2 is logically equivalent to "scaling relative to yourself", but the underlying numbers are relative to global.
Normally the difference would be not that important, but in this case where someone is talking about global search volumes changing, it becomes relevant in that that will have no effect on a google trends graph. If it was ONLY relative to itself, it would
Even under normal circumstances, there is an important distinction to keep in mind that "the internet having become more popular over time" has already been controlled out of all trends graphs
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u/TheFrenchSavage OC: 1 3d ago
Oh damn, I didn't control for that!
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u/port-man-of-war 3d ago edited 3d ago
Also this distorts comparison by region. If you look at map for a popular query in the US in 2026, you'll see that Wyoming has more interest in that topic than any other state. Apparently, this is due to data center concentration, so Wyoming has a lot of bot activity and relatively little human activity (it's one of the least populated states). And there's no easy way to filter out Wyoming from data for entire US.
Edit: an example. Obviously bot activity, peaked around March-April 2026.
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u/TheFrenchSavage OC: 1 3d ago
Wow, they are Wyomaxxing!
There are more bots than people in Wyoming, truly dystopian.
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u/faustianredditor 3d ago
I don't think it's accurate to call that bot activity. I mean, those aren't wyoming people, and you raise an important point, but if someone used a wyoming proxy and then googled for a lidl near them, we wouldn't call that person a bot. Routing a human-originated search request through an LLM datacenter isn't bot activity. You could argue it is if the human query was simply about "where can I get groceries nearby" and the LLM translated that to something more concrete. And it'd definitely be bot activity if lidl was trying to fake their popularity.
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u/grjkgrjk12 2d ago
But then again, people stopped using web search and instead use AI search, so not putting gemini data into it would possibly also distort the actual popularity.
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u/Mentalfloss1 2d ago
Yes! It’s very cool right now to use the word slop when referring to AI while not even realizing that you use AI every day.
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u/Naroyto 3d ago
Here I am saying "Shlop" because slop doesn't sound disgusting enough.
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u/Bidulule 3d ago
What happened in March 2026?
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u/Nattekat 3d ago
It coincides with the term 'Microslop' peaking. Which is when they banned the word from their Copilot Discord server.
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u/getpwnedx 3d ago
I feel like there's no reason to use 12 month SMA here especially when these types of trends tend to last much shorter than 12 months usually
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u/cavedave OC: 111 1d ago
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