Defective, Amplified, Contested: Folk Conceptualizations of AI Slop

AI slop has flooded social media feeds with overprocessed and derivative content–Jesus fusing with a shrimp, a humanoid orange chubby cat shoplifting, and a “hero” dog rescuing a human child after a plane crash. This might be no laughing matter, as waves of media coverage have taken a distinctly negative bent, emphasizing its low quality, ethical concerns, and threats to human creativity. Despite extensive attention from politicians and technologists, the perspectives of everyday users–the very audience most exposed to this phenomenon–remain largely unexplored. This descriptive work explored how Reddit users experience, conceptualize and contest AI slop. Inductive thematic analysis of posts and comments across six slop-related subreddits identified four themes covering constitutional defects, algorithmic overreach, user resistance, and entertainment outcomes–ranging from anxieties about eroding agency, moral norms, creativity, and existential questions to defensive distinctions between quality AI content and slop. We derive a user-driven definition: AI slop is audience-contested AI-generated content characterized by constitutional defects and enabled by platform logics. We operationalize slop through a facet-theoretical framework to inform future research into this fuzzy category.