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Can you spot vintage slop?

CJ Chilvers
CJ Chilvers
— 2 min read

Slop is nothing new. 

For decades, we’ve been taught to avoid clichés and jargon in our work. AI just made the list of slop-coded words a bit longer.

You might be surprised by the words and terms other generations questioned that we perceive as normal (and human).

While scanning my grandparents’ records, I recently discovered a program from my grandma’s 50th high school reunion in 1983. I wanted to share two insightful pages with you.

  • A list of “50 Things Unheard of 50 Years Ago,” which is just inherently interesting
  • A list of terms “no one said in 1933,” which is a rare look at what was considered slop to the “Greatest Generation”

It reminded me of the many times George Carlin joked about new (to him) terms like “senior citizen” and “hopefully.” Spoiler: he wasn’t a big fan. He famously complained, almost four decades ago, that modern soft language and euphemisms, “take the life out of life.”

I think that’s a better argument against slop than anything I’ve heard in the AI era.

It also makes me wonder why all this technology has yet to compete with the creativity of a grumpy old man with a pen.

— CJ

P.S. If you want to show up in AI citations (especially in B2B) adding stats and quotes from relevant sources can boost your AI visibility by up to 40%. Being the origin of those citations is the goal. Businesses aren’t getting that message. B2B SaaS companies have increased the number of blog posts they’re publishing by 151% since the debut of ChatGPT (curious, huh?). However, only 2.4% of these posts included “original research or perspectives.” Seems like an opportunity to me.

P.P.S. Everyone in newsletter publishing seems to be agreeing on few things this month: LinkedIn newsletters have stopped working. LinkedIn posts are working incredibly well for AI visibility. The discoverability advantage at Substack has plateaued. Regular email newsletters are still the underrated safe haven in all this chaos.

P.P.P.S. Fast Company has decided to finally side with us on the advantages of human-based marketing with their new piece, Personality Is the New Fuel for Marketing. Yes, welcome to 1995.

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