Clockwise from top left: Shrimp Jesus, Nayib Bukele, Justin Bieber and Super Cat League. Clockwise from top left: Shrimp Jesus, Nayib Bukele, Justin Bieber and Super Cat League. In the algorithm-driven economy of 2025, one man's shrimp Jesus is another man's side hustle. AI slop - the low-quality, surreal content flooding social media platforms, designed to farm views - is a phenomenon, some would say the phenomenon of the 2024 and 2025 internet. Merriam-Webster's word of the year this year is "slop", referring exclusively to the internet variety.

Taylor Swift fans are not endorsing Donald Trump en masse. Kamala Harris did not give a speech at the Democratic National Convention to a sea of communists while standing in front of the hammer and sickle. Hillary Clinton was not recently seen walking around Chicago in a MAGA hat. But images of all these things exist. In recent weeks, far-right corners of social media have been clogged with such depictions, created with generative-AI tools.