Servers Became "Cloud", VR Became "Metaverse", Now Bots Become "Agents" (of Slop)
They've created a toxic mess online
We are still seeing - out there in RSS feeds for the most part - a set of slopfarms (akin to spamfarms but with slop) like linuxsecurity, linuxteck, linuxiac, linuxjournal, and fosslinux. There aren't that many of them. Some experimented and died, some experimented and then stopped (thankfully they woke up soon enough). About a handful still go on. They wrongly believe that someday, somehow, slop will "pick up" and earn "respect" (or respectability).
That won't happen. Slop is a passing fad and more people go out of their way to actively, if not rather stubbornly, avoid all of it. It's not because they're foolish or Luddites. They're "clued up". They know what slop is and it won't improve.
The slop industry has therefore decided to morph and rebrand - sort of like a moving target.
"Agent" is nowadays the corporate buzzword for bot. They don't like to admit they experiment with running companies by bots that lack agency. Today in RSS feeds we saw the terms "native agents" ("AI-native" also), "productivity agent", "agentic execution", "AI agent" (automation by bots), and even "agentic hallucinations".
The attempts to cast everything as "agents" is relatively new (since around 2024, more so 2025). So they're running away from one toxic buzzword to another, like "Advanced" to "Generative". But worry not, the "masses" will catch up and catch on; even all this "agentic" and "agent" stuff will be avoided and discouraged. Changing the name of things won't prevent rejection, only delay the negative reaction some more. █