The fediverse used to feel pretty anti-ai, but over the past month or two I’ve noticed a LOT of generated memes and images, and they tend to have positive votes.
Has there been a sudden culture shift here? Or is there a substantial percentage of people just unable to tell the difference anymore?
If you went to a restaurant that made a high-quality, complex soup, for hundreds of customers per day with the help of machines, would you call it slop? I wouldn’t.
If the restaurant however made ramen from packets, threw in some starch to make it thicker, and they had a nice big ladle to slap that liquid into a vessel with a nice sound, I would for sure call that slop.
This is where the fundamental difference in attribution of connotations lies. From what you say, you perceive the term “slop” as a direct synonym to “low quality”, without any extras. I perceive it as something more of a synonym to “repetitive” but with extra connotations, the most accurate common divisor of which is “repetitive content produced at speeds suggesting low effort”.