AI Slop Is Stealing Food Out of the Mouths of Real Creators and Most of You Can’t Even Tell

I spent decades learning how to do things. Graphic design. Web development. Programming. Writing. A dozen other disciplines that required blood and sweat and tears and years of my life sacrificed at the altar of becoming good at something. I failed over and over again until I didn’t. I got rejected and ignored and told I wasn’t good enough until one day I was.

That’s how you become a creator.

That’s how you earn the right to call yourself one.

And now I’m watching an era unfold where any jerk with an Obama phone running Android 9 can fire up ChatGPT and type a prompt about whatever topic is trending that day and output an article that looks like someone actually wrote it. They can use an AI image generator to paint a picture of some girl they know from Facebook and then post it online claiming they made it because she “inspired” them. They can spend eight dollars on an AI music generator and in thirty seconds produce a song that sounds like someone spent months writing and recording and mixing and editing until it was ready for the radio.

I made the song at the top of this article in thirty seconds. It sounds pretty good. Does that make me a musician now? Hell no. I suck at music for the same reason I suck at karate. I did not spend years learning how to perform the skill.

I am good at graphic design and web development because I spent years learning how to do those things. The calluses on my hands and the bags under my eyes are receipts for thousands of hours of practice and failure and slow incremental improvement. That’s what it takes to become something real.

These AI slop artists are not creators.

They are parasites.

They are stealing food out of the mouths of writers and artists and musicians who have families to feed and who rely on their chosen craft to make a living. Real people with real skills and real years invested in becoming something are watching their incomes evaporate because some foreign scammer two thousand miles away can output ten articles a day about American politics and most readers have no idea they’re consuming garbage because they don’t know what AI slop looks like.

How to Recognize AI Slop

Here are the telltale signs that what you’re reading was written by a machine and not a human being.

• Excessive em dashes everywhere. AI loves — em dashes — the way a freshman — loves their first — thesaurus. Real writers use them — sparingly. AI slop — jams them into — every other sentence because — the model learned that’s what “sophisticated” writing looks like. (This is an em dash “—”.)

• Generic transitions that sound like a college essay. Phrases like “Moreover” and “Furthermore” and “In addition to this” and “It’s worth noting that” appearing constantly throughout the piece. Real writers don’t talk like a textbook.

• Emotional appeals with no actual substance behind them. Lots of talk about how something is “deeply concerning” or “truly remarkable” or “profoundly important” without ever explaining why or backing it up with anything concrete.

• Vocabulary that sounds like someone swallowed a dissertation. Words like “multifaceted” and “nuanced” and “paradigm” and “holistic” peppered throughout for no reason other than to sound smart. Real writers use plain language unless complexity is actually required.

• Lists that go nowhere. Massive bullet point sections that aren’t connected to any overall narrative or argument. Just information dumped on the page to fill space and look comprehensive.

• Perfectly uniform paragraph structure. Every paragraph roughly the same length with the same rhythm and the same cadence. Human writing is messy and uneven. AI writing is suspiciously consistent.

• No actual voice or personality. It reads like Wikipedia had a baby with a corporate press release. There’s no anger, no humor, no warmth, no humanity. Just words arranged in technically correct order.

• Hedging on everything. Phrases like “it could be argued” and “some might say” and “there are various perspectives” because the AI is trained to be diplomatic and inoffensive. Real writers have opinions and aren’t afraid to state them plainly.

• Garbled syntax when connecting complex ideas. Sentences that almost make sense but fall apart when you read them twice. The AI is stitching concepts together without actually understanding what it’s saying.

• Suspiciously comprehensive coverage. A surface-level overview of every possible angle without going deep on any of them. Real expertise means knowing what to focus on. AI slop tries to cover everything and ends up saying nothing.

If you’re reading something and it has more than a few of these tells, you’re probably reading AI slop. You’re probably giving your money or your attention to someone who never wrote a word of it.

The Meth Addict Making Three Thousand Dollars a Day

I talked to one of these AI slop artists last week. I pretended to be one of them to see what they would admit to when they thought they were talking to a fellow grifter. This person flat out told me they’re an intravenous meth user who spends their Substack earnings on drugs and prostitutes. They write about “Christian” topics. They’re a top ranked publication on the platform. They have never written a single original word in their life.

This is a masterpiece painted by an artist that spent decades of blood, sweat, and tears honing his craft to absolute mastery.

Meanwhile I’m over here spending ten to twelve hours on a single article. Researching. Writing. Editing. Rewriting. Making sure every claim is accurate and every sentence hits the way I want it to. And my readership is tanking because I can’t compete with someone who outputs twenty articles a day while laughing about how their garbage AI slop publication is making three thousand dollars a day while mine struggles to keep the lights on.

This, conversely, is AI slop generated by a no-talent moron in 30-seconds on their Obama phone. Do you see the problem yet?

This is how these people think. It has nothing to do with creating anything of value. It’s all about numbers. It’s all about money. They will lie and manipulate and write about topics designed to target your emotions but what they’re generating is soulless AI garbage and you need to stop supporting this stuff or you are going to lose journalism entirely.

I Gave Up Everything to Do This

I could go back to being a financial analyst tomorrow and make a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year barely lifting a finger. I gave that up to write. To tell the truth. To spread the word of God to a society so fractured and broken that it’s allowing men who molest children to run the country and doesn’t even seem to care as long as they get that next dopamine hit from arguing about the other side being the problem.

I gave up stability and a retirement plan and a boring comfortable life because I believed that independent journalism matters more than money. I believed that someone needed to be telling the stories that mainstream media refuses to touch. I believed that if I just kept working hard enough and writing well enough, the truth would find an audience.

Now I’m watching AI slop artists with no talent and no training and no education flood every platform with garbage and drown out the people who actually do the work.

And most readers can’t even tell the difference...

Wake Up

I’m starting to wonder if Americans are all turning stupid. I don’t mean to sound rude and I’m not saying you are stupid but the vibe I’m getting is that people are not using their brains anymore. They’re more interested in feeling good and pretending everything is alright than they are in actually fighting for what matters. They scroll through their feeds consuming whatever the algorithm puts in front of them without ever stopping to ask who made this and why and whether it’s even real.

Ten years from now you will not have a job because AI will have taken over every field once cheap humanoid robots are available and Elon Musk is already on his fourth version of these things. His goal is to have twenty thousand dollar machines that can replace fifty thousand dollar a year workers. That’s going to destroy the world economy and most people are too busy sharing cat memes to notice.

One of the small battles you can win right now is to stop supporting AI slop. Stop giving your money and your attention to people who never created anything real. Start demanding authenticity. Start asking questions. Start paying for work that actually required work.

Stop supporting AI slop artists. Stop supporting pedophile politicians. Stop supporting endless wars. Stop spending all day surfing the internet consuming garbage.

Pick up your Bible and wipe the dust off and read it for once.

I Need to Know You’re Out There

I’m sorry this turned into a rant but I am mad as hell and I am sick of watching everything fall apart while people sit on their hands. I spent three years trying to warn people about what artificial intelligence was going to do to creative industries and I can’t even get my message out there anymore because no one shares content that doesn’t make them happy. There’s a difference between being bitter and being right. I’m not bitter.

I’m angry. And I’m tired of feeling like I’m screaming into a black hole.

If this doesn’t apply to you, let me know in the comments. I’m so worried that everyone has checked out that I sometimes forget some of you are still paying attention. Some of you still notice what’s happening. Some of you still care.

Let me know you’re out there. I need your support more than ever right now. I feel completely alone in a world drowning in AI slop and I need to know that someone is still listening.

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A Note From Lily and The Wise Wolf

Lily, our junior reporter and current journalism student up in Minnesota, keeps joking that she’s going to have to “start an OnlyFans” if I can’t figure out how to pay her more. She’s kidding, obviously. She’s a good kid with a sharp mind and actual talent, which is exactly why I refuse to let her end up like me, still paying off student loans in my thirties for degrees that were supposed to guarantee a better life.

The Wise Wolf is my full-time job now. I walked away from the corporate cage, the soul-crushing web development and financial analyst gigs, to do this work. And part of that work is helping put Lily through school without her having to beg her dad for money or sign her future away to predatory lenders.

We are running 50% off subscriptions all through December. If you can afford it, please consider subscribing. If money is tight, you can still help by restacking this article and sharing it on your social media. Tag your friends and tag your family and tag anyone you know who still gives a damn about real journalism and real creators and real human beings trying to make an honest living.

Support real journalists. Support real writers. Support real creators who actually bleed for their craft. Stop feeding the machines that are eating us alive.

Help keep the Wise Wolf howling.

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