Our Slop Era

I recently stayed in a Best Western in Grand Island, Nebraska and it was depressing and you aren't surprised by that. The problem wasn’t that the hotel was run down, although that was true. The problem was the failure of the simulation.

A long time ago, lower-end hotels figured out that they could get away with affecting some version of the “look” of higher-end hotels without spending the money required to actually be one of those higher-end hotels. Yes, we will offer you plentiful towels, but they will be cheap and thin. Yes, there will be a king-sized bed, but the mattress will lumpy. Yes, there will be furniture, but it will be made of pressed wood and painted the color of wood stain.

In Grand Island, it was just ugly. But it wasn’t ugly because of a bold choice that went awry. It was ugly because it was dreary, because it was bland, because every aesthetic decision was made by a committee whose primary goal wasn’t beauty, but cost-savings.

“Slop” is a new term we use to describe the products of artificial intelligence -- all those mediocre LinkedIn posts and that AI art and all the bad design that’s floating around. But slop, as a concept, isn’t new. We’ve been doing it awhile now. At some point after World War II, we overcommitted to the utilitarian, to the cheap and bland, to the brown and tan.

As a result, we no longer do architecture; we put up buildings. We don’t erect monuments; we re-purpose big box stores. We don’t make art; we buy prints of what someone tells us is good. This is a paradox, when you think about it. We’re supposed to have more time, more energy, more tools than ever. And yet, the only cathedrals we build are those financed by taxpayer dollars so sports team can bash around inside them.

Taken charitably, this might have been very Protestant work ethic of us. Maybe we were focused on what went on inside the buildings (or next to the art), and not the buildings (or the art) itself. Except I fear that mostly we were lazy. And greedy. We thought our quick construction and same-same design choices would bring us closer to God, but that God was money.

We need beauty. We need personality. We need something to aspire to, if only so we can make our mark before we die. Which is why I have a sense that we’re coming to a breaking point. Artificial intelligence isn’t the beginning of our Slop Era. It’s the end. Our phones were our final frontier. At least what was on there was pretty. Until it wasn’t, and we were forced to look up and reckon with that which we had wrought: a world (mostly) devoid of the bold and the beautiful—a world of Slop embodied by Best Westerns across the country.

Our Slop Era will end, and sooner than people think. We’ll get back to building things that are bold and beautiful, if only to remind ourselves we can.