Academic paper roundup on slop, brainrot, and enshittification
The European Journal of Cultural Studies released a Cultural Commons special issue titled Brainrot, AI slop, and the enshittification of the Internet. From the abstract:
What we will suggest is that the terms brainrot, AI slop, and enshittification signal a new phase of digital capitalism—one emerging in the wake of generative AI’s widespread integration into the foundations of platform culture. These concepts, we argue, exemplify a further intensification of what has been described as ‘platform capitalism’ (Srnicek, 2016) or, more recently, ‘vibes’ capitalism (James, 2025), where attention, data, and affect are relentlessly mined for value. In this context, ‘content’ is increasingly loosened from communicative or representational value, functioning as a means of modulating attention at scale and optimising the emotions, moods, and atmospheres that flow through platforms. This process can be seen and felt at many different cultural, social, and economic layers.
The special issue includes a number of papers, all of which look interesting. However, lacking the time to read these papers I am very grateful for our favour internet culture criticism podcast Neverpo.st who had an edition of their Paper Report series (where they each read a paper and discuss) covering the following four works:
- Doing the numbers: The operational aesthetics of AI slop
- Feed them slop: Alignment, attunement, and the affective lure of slopaganda
- Degenerative AI: AI slop, brainrot, and the gimmick of generative culture
- Computational Gallerte: Compressions of culture
This ep of Neverpost does an excellent job of weaving the various papers together, plus bringing in some of their own experiences and reporting. Highly recommended listening, especially if you can’t read the papers. One thing that is not really captured in this discussion (and maybe it is in one of the other papers) is the moving target that the term “AI slop” is turning into. They don’t really define it in the podcast, but mostly it seems to be centered around AI generated images and other visual creative works (although there is discussion of text… but not code — which is where “the Discourse” is happening right now on social media).
I have enjoyed Neverpost’s previous edition of the Paper Report and value these kinds of services. It is difficult to keep with all the academic work out there in various fields you might be interested in, so getting round-ups like this are super useful. It’s also why I use services like The Syllabus which does a quick overview, but collects works into themes and finds things you might not normally find.