Rabbit Holes š³ļø #167
From slopification to electrostrates, normalizing amnesia, unfamiliar territory, how might we ā at what cost, ten principles for transforming economics, and data-storing birds
THIS WEEK ā
š¼ļø Framings: Slopification // Electrostate (visually) // Normalizing Amnesia
š Numbers: Unfamiliar Territory
š Re-Framings: How Might We ā At What Cost // Depolarisation & Adaptation // Curiosity, Curation & Judgment
š§¬ Frameworks: Ten Principles for Transforming Economics
šØ Works: Aerial Geometries // Data-Storing Birds // Hot Ones
ā³ Reading Time: 8 minutes
š¼ļø Framings
Naming Framing it! Giving something we all feel more prominence in a way that promotes a deeper reflection.
Slopification
An interesting framing that expands the definition of slop and emphasizes our own role in this ongoing cultural slopification, linking it to a careless way of living thatās somehow become normal. Said differently, maybe itās not slop that numbs you, but you being numb that incentivizes slop.
āSlop is probably the definitive term of our current digital experience; it increasingly functions as shorthand for all of our vague frustration with digital technology. [ā¦]
My working definition: content as environmental filler, a choice thatās not quite right (but also not quite wrong), which nobody really wanted, probably unnoticed, meant to only register at a subliminal level, and put in place to negate a worse alternative: silence.
The popularity of āslopā as a concept points to something significant about how we experience digital culture in 2025, just as āalgorithmsā did last decade. In each case, the termās usage gets less precise as itās overloaded with everything we hate about the internet. And while the word itself becomes less meaningful, it reveals more about how we feel. [ā¦]
If AI is able to suddenly pump slop into our environment itās only because we already turned on the faucets ourselves. Just think about all the garbage content that people you actually know send you via text, or the DMs that feel like theyāre from bots but are actually from real people driven by platform incentives (Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc). The arrival of AI slop is simply the culmination of a long process of cultural slopification, and one of AIās unexpected functions has been to launder the human slop so we can pretend we didnāt create it. [ā¦]
In slop utopia, there is no right or wrong place or time for anything to happen, because context has been eliminated.ā
Ā» Slow as A Way of Life by
ā” Electrostate (visually)
A few Rabbit Holes ago, I shared how China is becoming the first electrostate (as opposed to petrostate). As I came across these mindblowing images, I thought today Iād follow the framing up with a sort of visual equivalent:
Ā» Photos: The Scale of Chinaās Solar-Power Projects by Alan Taylor
Normalizing Amnesia
Great new piece about how social media actually steals our time. Really good! Links well with a post I shared on LinkedIn about smartphone zombies and how, as a foresight researcher, itās always interesting to look at stuff that signals how the ānormalā becomes absurd.
āThe most common noun in the English language is ātimeā. We talk obsessively about time because itās the most important thing in the universe. Without it, nothing can happen. And yet most of us treat time as if itās the least important thing. We kick up a fuss when tech giants steal our data, but weāve been strangely nonchalant as those same companies carry out the greatest heist of our time in history.
One reason for our indifference is that the true scale of the theft has been hidden from us. Social media platforms have been stealing our time using a sneaky trick: theyāve been speeding up our sense of time ā effectively shortening our lives ā so we think we had less than we did, and donāt notice some of it was pilfered.
Every social media user has experienced the theft of their time. You may log on to quickly check your notifications, and before you know it, half an hour has gone by and youāre still on the platform, unable to account for where the time went. [ā¦]
The memorable and sequential nature of stories makes them good timekeepers. As such, the way we make sense of time is through emplotment: by turning time into stories. Itās why research finds that people who are similarly engaged in a story will tend to converge in their estimates of how much time has elapsed. If we canāt turn a duration into a story, we struggle to keep track of it.
Now hereās the issue: your social media feed resists emplotment because itās the opposite of a story. Itās a chronological maze. It has no beginning, middle, or end, and each post is unrelated to the next, so that scrolling is like trying to read a book in a windstorm, the pages constantly flapping, abruptly switching the current scene with an unrelated one, so you can never connect the dots into a coherent and memorable narrative.ā
Ā» How Social Media Shortens Your Life by
š Numbers
A thought-provoking chart that perfectly captures a pivotal shift:
Unfamiliar Territory
I really like this line here as an interesting approach to life in general in todayās age:
āAs physical systems move into unfamiliar territory, so should our response strategies.ā
Below the paywall: This is the part in which I share reframings and unconventional ideas that make you see and build a more regenerative, caring, and joyful world.