On slop, revisited

This morning over coffee my husband mentioned a piece of writing a friend of a friend had prompted - “Claudeslop” he had called it. The label fit. The prompter - I can’t say writer - was not inarticulate himself, but simply chose to prompt for the text instead of writing it.

… my emotional reaction was revulsion, and it’s hardly been the first time I’ve felt it. You’ve felt the same, I’m sure.

I’ve been sitting with why that is.

The fundamental question I think is respect. If I present thoughts to you, decency requires I put in the cognitive effort to frame those thoughts myself. Human writing might still be a touch better in 2026, or at least still carry a bit of individual distinctiveness a mass-deployed model can’t. But the real reason is proof of work. That I write even a short note by hand is evidence that I care enough about the message - and more importantly about your time - that I be willing to burn a little piece of my own limited life to do it.

Otherwise, no matter what the words say or how well crafted they are - the real message conveyed is “you’re not a person to be communicated with, you’re an audience to be extracted from.”

More on edge cases and how that squares with my own use of Claude and Codex and Midjourney for code and illustration and more another time. There’s a line there, and I at least am still trying to discern exactly where it lies. But essays and notes at least are sacrosanct - the words are mine, or if they’re not they’ll be clearly marked.

Anyhow, back to work.