I Still Like Drawing and Various Other Arts (They Help My Activism and Journalism), Slop is an Enemy of Creative People
Recognise that slop isn't intelligence; it's a generational excuse for plagiarism and privatisation of not only the Commons but also proprietary knowledge (without authorisation)
As a young kid I was considered quite talented in the arts, including but not limited to drawing (which I didn't pursue or nurture much anymore... probably after age 10). I have extensive archives of my works, including sculpting. When I became a teenager I started doing digital art (on the computer) and it helped me develop skills that others lack. I've done digital drawings for well over 30 years already, so I can draw diagrams very fast (I favour the GIMP, but I used many other programs in my lifetime). I can code, but nowadays I do more writing than coding as I can write fast and people tell me I'm good at it. Communicating ideas is something everybody can do, but the question is, how quickly and how clearly...
A YouTuber I watched a lot around 2010 recently said he had fallen back on or reverted back to drawing and writing (also fell out of love with 'vlogging'); YouTube's changes diminished his audience (it fell by over 90%) and he developed or adopted new pastime hobbies.
For me, the ability to code and understanding of how computers work is essential for writing about computing. In some areas I did research (even as a postdoc) and peer-reviewed papers at the highest tiers, so I'm always quite familiar with what contemporary computers can and cannot do (all the hype about "intelligence" and "quantum" is clearly misleading). But at the core, I'm still into the arts: I love writing, drawing, and explaining things by combining available skillsets. I want to do this the rest of my life.
Some jealous, evil, narcissistic people don't want me to do this. But their rationale is so abundantly ridiculous and even outright malicious that it's bound to backfire on them (provided I can demonstrate their true motivations and projection).
I wasn't born into this planet to please and appease everybody; what I'm good at, I think, is exposing bad things, usually on behalf of anonymous sources who prefer to keep a low profile (and I know how to protect them). If I can help communicate their knowledge to the world, sometimes with some humour for good measure, then power to them. In the first 18 hours of today we served 1.5 million requests, so we seem to be on the right track (to paraphrase what EPO insiders recently told me).
My family and I want to be left alone (no abuse!) when I report bad things such as corruption; if people refuse to leave me alone and instead harass me and harass loved ones, then they too will become "the story" (and they won't like it).
Techrights has its unique style and tone. That's sometimes debated internally as we try to tune things for positive impact or material outcomes (e.g. crooked officials getting sacked). We don't wish to sound too combative or strident, but striking the right balance would likely mean a portion of scorn, ridicule, and humour. Yes, even when dealing with difficult topics.
From an artistic perspective, memes have their place, but some high-profile figures (such as judges) deem them "not serious", so we've decreased the usage of these last year.
I abhor slop in all its forms (images, text and more). It's not only an attack on creative types but an actual large-scale campaign of plunder, which they try to market as a form of novelty or higher intelligence. I know darn well what "genAI" is; I did that more than 20 years ago and when we made synthetic images we were trying to save lives, not plagiarise things by burning lots of fossil fuels (to obscure correlation to originals, to cull attribution).
The GAFAMware of 2026 is a laughing stock and a bubble that's imploding; instead of corporate media explaining that companies collapse (or shrink) because slop is a failure they try to sell us that this happens because slop is such a smashing success. This is the kind of media we need to get rid of. It's just a coy cheerleader for plagiarism. Slopfarms are a threat to such 'media' because their low quality is comparable; they're shallow and confidently wrong. They deserver each other. █
Image source: Cover for A Book of Images