You deserve better than a slop bowl

In mid-December, as the year wheezed toward its end and everyone collectively stared into the psychic refrigerator to see what was left, Merriam-Webster announced its 2025 word of the year: slop.

Their corresponding release made it clear that just because the term was chosen doesn’t mean it was being venerated. “We define slop as ‘digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence,’” they wrote. “All that stuff dumped on our screens...