Stop blaming AI: Humans were the original slop machines

Everyone's blaming AI for the flood of crappy content. But the feeds were full of it long before ChatGPT wrote a single word.

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Everyone’s losing their minds about the proliferation of AI slop - me included!

The online world is awash with people lamenting how AI is “destroying content quality” and “flooding the internet with garbage.” My feed is littered with ‘thought leaders’ warning about the tsunami of AI-generated junk and how we all need to be “more human” while - and I love this - posting the same recycled, surface-level content they’ve been posting for years.

Oh, the irony!

Let’s take a step back for a minute - there’s something I think we’ve all conveniently forgotten:

AI didn’t create crappy content. We did. AI just scaled it.

The platitudes, the hollow hot takes, the recycled wisdom - none of that is new. The feeds were full of it long before AI entered the picture. Trauma dumpers, I’m especially looking at you!

The difference now is volume and sameness. There’s vastly more of it, much of it with a very similar look and feel.

If people weren’t willing to put in the effort to share interesting ideas and create original content that contained their unique perspective before, they’re certainly not going to start now when they can churn out a post with a single keystroke.

Humans were the original slop machines

Let's not pretend our social feeds were a bastion of quality before AI showed up.

Recycled platitudes dressed up as insight: “I’m humbled to announce” humble-brags. Hot takes on trending topics from people with zero skin in the game. Wisdom borrowed from genuine thought leaders, repackaged seventeen ways and presented as original thinking.

That wasn’t AI. That was us. Dutifully playing the game the platforms built for us to play.

And boy did we play it hard.

We posted daily because some guru told us the algorithm demands consistency. We wrote hooks instead of arguments. We dumbed down our thinking because someone said “write at a Year 8 reading level.” We optimised for engagement when we should have been optimising for trust.

We turned ourselves into content machines, proudly. Then AI showed up, did exactly the same thing, and we had the nerve to complain about the quality.

If someone can type a one-line prompt and produce the same content we’ve been producing all along, what we were doing wasn’t worth much to begin with. The tool isn’t the issue. The standard they set for themselves is.

Please, let that sit and swirl for a second.

The platform doesn’t care about your reputation

Let’s get something straight about the social platforms you’re operating on.

LinkedIn doesn’t make money when you build a reputation. Instagram doesn’t profit when someone trusts you enough to hire you. X doesn’t benefit when a decision-maker quietly bookmarks your post and calls you six months later.

They make money when you produce content. Lots of it. Frequently. They make money when you engage - argue, react, comment, share. They make money when you stay on the platform, scrolling, posting, performing.

Their entire incentive structure rewards volume and engagement. And while LinkedIn has genuinely moved toward rewarding quality and expertise, it’s still an advertising platform. It still needs your attention, and the tension between those two things allows shallow content to flourish.

Many of the major platforms reward frequency over depth, because more posts means more time on the platform. They reward engagement over usefulness, because a polarising hot take gets more traction than nuanced insight. They reward performance over substance, because emotional reactions keep people on the platform longer than thoughtful content does.

This machine was running at full capacity long before generative AI entered the picture. All AI did was remove the last remaining speed bump: the effort it took to produce the junk.

AI is the scapegoat. The platform is the enabler. And most people have been happy to play along.

Stop blaming the tool. Question the game.

Here’s what intrigues me about the “AI slop” debate: all the energy is aimed at the tool, while the game itself goes completely unquestioned.

Not enough people are asking: why were we producing crappy content in the first place, before AI made it effortless?

Not enough people are asking: what does it tell us about the system that AI didn’t change the nature of the content, it just homogenised it and produced more of the same (with a heap more em dashes)?

Who actually controls how your expertise shows up in the world? This is a question we need to continually ask ourselves.

If what you publish is dictated by what the algorithm rewards, you’ve handed your professional reputation to a system that couldn’t care less about it. That was a problem before AI. ChatGPT et al just turned up the volume and made it easy for people to jump onboard the junk content train.

Because the people who were already producing crappy content manually? Hey, they’re likely now producing it at industrial scale. You know it, I know it. And if you’re watching this unfold, wondering how anyone is supposed to cut through the noise with anything of substance, then you’re on the money.

The credibility tax

I need to say this directly, because the “just be visible” crowd never will: for credible professionals, shallow content is not neutral. It can actively works against you.

You can see it happening in real time. When an experienced consultant starts posting generic motivational carousels or obvious engagement-bait hooks, the people whose opinion actually counts - the decision-makers, the referral sources, the serious peers - notice. And not in a good way. The perception shifts: from “deep expert” to “content creator.” For professionals who’ve spent years building genuine authority, that’s a demotion.

Every lightweight post makes it incrementally harder for people to take your substantial work seriously. It’s death by a thousand carousels. And the cruel part? The algorithm keeps telling them it’s working because the likes keep coming.

But likes aren’t contracts. Impressions aren’t invitations. Followers aren’t clients.

AI didn’t create this credibility tax. You could always undermine your own reputation with junk. AI just made it effortless. And many leaders and professionals who should know better are lining up to pay it.

Reclaiming sovereignty

I’m not going to give you a framework for “better content.” And you certainly don’t need another five-step system.

What you need is a decision. And if you’re reading this, you may have already made it, because you’re the kind of professional who looked at the junk machine and chose not to be part of it.

The question now is what you do instead. Sovereignty - i.e. owning and controlling how your professional reputation is built and communicated (I’ve written about this in depth) - means operating on your terms, not the platform’s.

Prioritising quality over frequency. Not because there’s nothing to say, but because credible professionals refuse to publish anything they’re not proud of. Silence beats noise every time.

Choosing depth over reach. A newsletter that a few hundred of the right people read with intent is worth infinitely more than a post that 5000 people scroll past in a fog. If the goal is to be trusted by the people who can actually hire you, refer you, or collaborate with you, then reach is a vanity metric.

Lessening your reliance on rented social platforms. Build something you control alongside your social media presence. A newsletter. A podcast. A body of work. A place where the relationship is direct and the value exchange is honest.

Playing a completely different game. One where the metric isn’t impressions, it’s invitations. Where you’re not the person who posts the most, but the person who gets asked. Asked to speak. Asked to advise. Asked to lead. Because you’ve demonstrated depth, not just frequency.

The slop era is your advantage - if you’re willing to take it

Here’s the twist that’s staring us all in the face.

The flood of AI-generated slop is the best thing that could have happened to credible professionals - if you refuse to join in.

Because the more crappy content there is, the more scarce substance becomes.

The more generic content fills the feeds, the more a deeply considered, genuinely useful piece of thinking towers above it.

The more people get burned by polished copy with nothing underneath, the more they seek out the real thing.

The bar for content volume is in the basement. The bar for credibility and trust is through the roof.

That shift favours you, if you’ve done the work. If you have real expertise. If you can stay the course and let your substance do what junk content never could: build lasting trust with the right people that converts into opportunity over time.

So while everyone else complains about AI but keeps publishing the same crappy content they were producing before - just faster now, and probably with improved grammar! - you have a choice.

Opt out of the shallow game. Reclaim your sovereignty. Invest in the hard, slow, unsexy work of building a reputation that means something.

Don’t hate on AI for crappy content. Blame the system that incentivised it and the people who are too lazy to put in the work. And then decide - right now - that you’re done playing along.

Your reputation is yours. Stop lending it to the machine.

Onwards!

TY

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In case we haven’t met yet …

Hi, I’m Trevor. I help genuine founders, experts and thought leaders build visibility, influence and trust - on their terms, in their voice.

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