Flasz On Film

The end of the year is in sight, which means that wherever you look, you will find bajillions of listicles and summary pieces trying to wrap the experience of 2025 into a digestible piece of SEO-optimized content you can scroll through while dropping the kids off at the pool. It is also a time for numerous bodies to choose “The Word of the Year” in an attempt to encapsulate this experience in a single word or a phrase. This isn’t an exercise in highlighting the best new neologism coined this year—though it does happen—but rather finding the one verbal meme that reflects on the year most profoundly.

The Oxford English Dictionary went this year with “rage bait.” Understandable. Though, this is more likely to define the last ten years, or at least five, in which we have all clued into the fact that divisive and provocative content breeds engagement and ad revenue follows. Cambridge went with “parasocial” and Collins chose “vibe coding.” Dictionary.com decided to go for “6-7” as though to openly mock anyone raising a gen-alpha tween.

These are all fine choices, but with the exception of “6-7” they could all have been chosen in 2024. Some in 2023. That’s why I’m more on board with the word of the year chosen by the folks at The Economist—“slop.” Well, the Macquarie Dictionary also went with “AI Slop” so partial credit goes to them, but I think this word is the one I’d have chosen myself if anyone had asked my opinion.

However, here I am ready to caveat my support because their choice specifically refers to the widespread adoption of generative AI on social media and in content creation in general, which has led to complete enshittification of the online experience. By the way, the word “enshittification” was the word of the year in 2024 according to Macquarie, as though in anticipation of 2025’s award going to “slop.”

What I am suggesting here, is that the word “slop” ought not to be reserved for describing AI-generated content of nil value and questionable if at all existent artistic merit. I’m here to extend the perimeter of this definition to include any and all content created strictly to generate online engagement. No damn exceptions. From Sora-generated fake cat videos and DALL-E-made political caricatures that are as frightening as they are pointless all the way to human-generated seven-second reels with fake quotes, video listicles narrated by robot voices reading out Reddit posts, videos starting abruptly with a pun, numerous guides telling you how to get rich online by making slop content while peddling online courses and rage bait snippets of popular podcasts aiming to polarize the online community—they all qualify. Slop is not a term exclusive to AI. It’s a term encompassing the completely broken and unusable online experience spanning websites, news outlets, social media and video platforms where original voices have effectively been drowned out by engagement farming by all means; where users have no other recourse but to gorge on the brown, shapeless and tasteless sludge of content that offers no value to our intellectual wellbeing and keeps us all locked in a doom loop as we scroll through content that we know is absolutely terrible, but cannot stop because dopamine in our brains tells us to swipe up.

And it doesn’t stop at social media either. Movies and TV shows pumped out relentlessly and ceaselessly onto the streaming market, frequently designed to hijack your attention with in media res openings and culturally fertile thematic hooks, overwhelm us from all sides without even attempting to offer a chance to have a conversation about anything of value. There’s more to watch and engage with coming out every day than we could ever keep track of and in this veritable sea of—what’s the word?—slop any and all nuggets of greatness disappear never to be found and they  eventually dissolve in it too.

That’s how I’d caveat this choice. The word of the year that characterizes 2025 the best is “slop.” A word that sounds gross when pronounced and describes the thick and tasteless mass that billionaire-owned companies pour into troughs with screens and look at us with utter disgust and disdain as we gleefully keel over and slurp it all without a single word of protest. And it’s all well and good because their profit margins increase so the outlook is more of the same. A second helping of slop in 2026.

“Is There a Column in This?” is a series in which I stare at one of my intrusive thoughts until I find a way to write 800 words on the matter, if only to prove that it is possible.