Enshittification, slop and growth at all costs: how the relentless demand for more quietly degrades everything it touches — platforms, feeds and the culture they carry.
Matt Muir supplied the diagnosis, and refused the easy villain: “we ruined the web with human gunk long before AI slop came around.” Once attention pays, outrage becomes a business model, virality can be bought, and nothing online reads as organic. The Rules That Make Us panel added the cognitive bill — overstimulation, echo chambers, a generation not learning to think properly — while Jacob Stratfold pointed at the counter-current: people reaching back for vinyl and CDs precisely because frictionless turns out to be joyless.
The agreement was about the antidote rather than the argument. Muir’s advice: spend less time on social media and go find the websites that are still beautiful and silly and frivolous. Tim Malbon’s: be in a room together. The temperature: grim about the feeds, hopeful about everything either side of them.
In an era dominated by digital loneliness, AI-generated content, and remote work, physical gatherings provide essential, high-value human connection that cannot be replicated by digital tools.
“with all the kind of, you know, AI slop and algorithms and Microsoft Teams calls... I think it's even more special and valuable to be in a room together”
Tim Malbon
From: Tim's IntroIn an era dominated by digital loneliness and synthetic media, physical gatherings provide a unique and essential space for genuine human interaction that cannot be replicated by virtual platforms.
“real conversations matter. Being in the room matters. Yeah? The conversations between the conversations matter.”
Tim Malbon
From: Tim's IntroOnce payment is attached to attention, every post becomes suspect. Manufactured virality (the "clavicular" example: an estimated $0.5–2M a month spent flooding feeds with clips of a nobody) and pay-per-impression outrage mean culture is weighted by money you can't trace. Nothing reads as organic anymore. "Anytime you see someone saying something on the internet now, you don't know if they're being paid to say it. Sincerity is gone."
Matt Muir
From: Everything Online is Weird NowEver more fragmentation happens because we're all in our little echo chambers seeing pretty much the same thing.
Oliver Sweet
From: The Rules That Make UsStop spending so much time on social media and go find other websites. It can still be beautiful and silly and frivolous, and it can still make you cry.
Matt Muir
From: Everything Online is Weird NowIt almost becomes too easy for people. They miss that tension. So then you see people get back into vinyls or cassettes or CDs.
Jacob Stratfold
Head of Strategy, OK COOLWe ruined the web with human gunk long before AI slop came around.
Matt Muir
From: Everything Online is Weird NowI think overstimulation is an issue, because I think that we're not learning to think properly.
Oliver Sweet
From: The Rules That Make Us
