It’s hard to believe it’s only been a few years since generative AI tools started flooding the internet with low quality content-slop. Just over a year ago, you’d have to peruse certain corners of Facebook or spend time wading through the cultural cesspool of Elon Musk’s X to find people posting bizarre and repulsive synthetic media. Now, AI slop feels inescapable — whether you’re watching TV, reading the news, or trying to find a new apartment.

That is, unless you’re using Slop Evader, a new browser tool that filters your web searches to only include results from before November 30, 2022 — the day that ChatGPT was released to the public.

The tool is available for Firefox and Chrome, and has one simple function: Showing you the web as it was before the deluge of AI-generated garbage. It uses Google search functions to index popular websites and filter results based on publication date, a scorched earth approach that virtually guarantees your searches will be slop-free.

Slop Evader was created by artist and researcher Tega Brain, who says she was motivated by the growing dismay over the tech industry’s unrelenting, aggressive rollout of so-called “generative AI”—despite widespread criticism and the wider public’s distaste for it.

“This sowing of mistrust in our relationship with media is a huge thing, a huge effect of this synthetic media moment we’re in,” Brain told 404 Media, describing how tools like Sora 2 have short-circuited our ability to determine reality within a sea of artificial online junk. “I’ve been thinking about ways to refuse it, and the simplest, dumbest way to do that is to only search before 2022.”

One under-discussed impact of AI slop and synthetic media, says Brain, is how it increases our “cognitive load” when viewing anything online. When we can no longer immediately assume any of the media we encounter was made by a human, the act of using social media or browsing the web is transformed into a never-ending procession of existential double-takes.

This cognitive dissonance extends to everyday tasks that require us to use the internet—which is practically everything nowadays. Looking for a house or apartment? Companies are using genAI tools to generate pictures of houses and rental properties, as well as the ads themselves. Trying to sell your old junk on Facebook Marketplace? Meta’s embrace of generative AI means you may have to compete with bots, fake photos, and AI-generated listings. And when we shop for beauty products or view ads, synthetic media tools are taking our filtered and impossibly-idealized beauty standards to absurd and disturbing new places.

In all of these cases, generative AI tools further thumb the scales of power—saving companies money while placing a higher cognitive burden on regular people to determine what’s real and what’s not.

“I open up Pinterest and suddenly notice that half of my feed are these incredibly idealized faces of women that are clearly not real people,” said Brain. “It’s shoved into your face and into your feed, whether you searched for it or not.”

Currently, Slop Evader can be used to search pre-GPT archives of seven different sites where slop has become commonplace, including YouTube, Reddit, Stack Exchange, and the parenting site MumsNet. The obvious downside to this, from a user perspective, is that you won’t be able to find anything time-sensitive or current—including this very website, which did not exist in 2022. The experience is simultaneously refreshing and harrowing, allowing you to browse freely without having to constantly question reality, but always knowing that this freedom will be forever locked in time—nostalgia for a human-centric world wide web that no longer exists. 

Of course, the tool’s limitations are part of its provocation. Brain says she has plans to add support for more sites, and release a new version that uses DuckDuckGo’s search indexing instead of Google’s. But the real goal, she says, is prompting people to question how they can collectively refuse the dystopian, inhuman version of the internet that Silicon Valley’s AI-pushers have forced on us.

“I don’t think browser add-ons are gonna save us,” said Brain. “For me, the purpose of doing this work is mostly to act as a provocation and give people examples of how you can refuse this stuff, to furnish one’s imaginary for what a politics of refusal could look like.”

With enough cultural pushback, Brain suggests, we could start to see alternative search engines like DuckDuckGo adding options to filter out search results suspected of having synthetic content (DuckDuckGo added the ability to filter out AI images in search earlier this year). There’s also been a growing movement pushing back against the new AI data centers threatening to pollute communities and raise residents’ electricity bills. But no matter what form AI slop-refusal takes, it will need to be a group effort.

“It’s like with the climate debate, we’re not going to get out of this shitshow with individual actions alone,” she added. “I think that’s the million dollar question, is what is the relationship between this kind of individual empowerment work and collective pushback.”

To celebrate the 35th anniversary of the Super Nintendo’s launch in Japan (where it was called the Super Famicom) designer Gustavo Bonzanini created an homage that blends ‘90s fashion and technology. The AIR SNES are a heavily customized version of the Nike Air Max 90 inspired by other gaming-themed sneakers like Bull Airs’ ShoeBoys, but Bonzanini’s creation doubles as a functional retro console.

Given the size of the Super Nintendo, and the chunky cartridges it used, Bonzanini decided against trying to trim down and shrink the console’s electronics to fit inside a shoe that was still wearable. They instead opted to go the emulation route and used a compact Raspberry Pi Zero W. It has more than enough processing power to play 16-bit SNES games using the RetroPie emulator that Bonzanini customized to match the look and feel of the sneaker.

But you won’t find the microcomputer hidden away in the sole of the Air Max 90. All of the electronics, including a battery with enough capacity for up to 30 minutes of gameplay, can be found inside the sneaker’s tongue. The Raspberry Pi Zero W includes an integrated Mini HDMI port, but to “make the design feel like it could exist in 1990,” Bonzanini added a small analog converter so the AIR SNES connects to a TV using retro RCA cables.

The sneakers even work with an original SNES gamepad, but to keep the cable wrangling to a minimum Bonzanini upgraded the controller using an 8BitDo Mod Kit so it connects to the Raspberry Pi wirelessly over Bluetooth. Given the ever-growing popularity of retro gaming nostalgia and sneaker culture there’s little doubt Bonzanini could sell as many pairs of AIR SNES as they could make. But unfortunately they’re just a one-off creation with no plans to commercialize the design.

weaver-z:

I heard this metaphor growing up, and in my case, it backfired supremely, because I went out into my neighbor’s backyard where a rose bush was growing, and the one I tested had like 30 petals (it was yellow, but definitely a rose of some kind), and as a very logical lass, I came to the conclusion that you could have premarital sex AT LEAST ten times before your future husband would even notice something was up. Moral of the story? Test your metaphors on the weirdest and most neurodivergent child you know before writing your weird religious propaganda.

holy-muffins:

myfatfuckingface:

feathersescapism:

Every time I see this quote I realize how poor even very smart people are at looking at the long game and at assessing these things in context.

One of my favourite illustrations of this was in a First Aid class. The instructor was a working paramedic. He asked, “Who here knows the stats on CPR? What percentage of people are saved by CPR outside a hospital?”

I happen to know but I’m trying not to be a TOTAL know it all in this class so I wait. And people guess 50% and he says, “Lower,” and 20% and so forth and eventually I sort of half put up my hand and I guess I had The Face because he eventually looked at me and said, “You know, don’t you.”

“My mom’s a doc,” I said. He gave me a “so say it” gesture and I said, “Four to ten percent depending on your sources.”

Everyone else looked surprised and horrified.

And the paramedic said, “We’re gonna talk a bit about some details of those figures* but first I want to talk about just this: when do you do CPR?”

The class dutifully replies: when someone is unconscious, not breathing, and has no pulse.

“What do we call someone who is unconscious, not breathing, and has no pulse?”

The class tries to figure out what the trick question is so I jump over the long pause and say, “A corpse.”

“Right,” says the paramedic. “Someone who isn’t breathing and has no heartbeat is dead. So what I’m telling you is that with this technique you have a 4-10% chance of raising the dead.”

So no, artists did not stop the Vietnam War from happening with the sheer Power of Art. The forces driving that military intervention were huge, had generations of momentum and are actually pretty damn complicated.

But if you think the mass rejection of the war was as meaningless as a soufflé - well.

Try sitting here for ten seconds and imagining where we’d be if the entire intellectual and artistic drive of the culture had been FOR the war. If everyone thought it was a GREAT IDEA.

What the whole world would look like.

Four-to-ten percent means that ninety to ninety-six percent of the time - more than nine times out of ten - CPR will do nothing, but that one time you’ll be in the company of someone worshipped as an incarnate god.

If you think the artists and performers attacking and showing up people like Donald Trump is meaningless try imagining a version of the world wherein they weren’t there.

(*if you’re curious: those stats count EVERY reported case of CPR, while the effectiveness of it is extremely time-related. With those who have had continuous CPR from the SECOND they went down, the number is actually above 80%. It drops hugely every 30 seconds from then on. When you count ALL cases you count cases where the person has already been down several minutes but a bystander still starts CPR, which affects the stats)

That Vonnegut quote brings this particular moment to mind:

Yes, it’s just a pie. Yes, the pie itself doesn’t do much direct damage in the grand scheme of things. But the pie is resistance, and resistance inspires resistance. Resistance inspires survival. Throwing pies sometimes starts a movement. Throwing pies sometimes saves lives.

And of course, we haven’t spoken about the inherent morality of throwing pies at oppressors in a world where oppressors have outlawed pie throwing. At the very least, pie throwing is a reminder to the oppressors that no matter how much money they have, no matter how much power they have, there are still some people, some moments they can’t control.

I’d rather go out throwing pies than just rolling over and accepting that pie throwing isn’t going to solve anything. Yeah, the pie throwing doesn’t immediately solve the problem, but it doesn’t have to because it’s just a starting point. So throw the damn pie.

So throw the damn pie

Reporters interview Eric Meyer outside of the Marion County Record office in Marion, Kansas, the site of a 2023 police raid, after an Oct. 7, 2024, court hearing for Gideon Cody, the former Marion police chief who led the raid. Meyer and others reached agreements with the county Monday for its role in the raids. (Photo by Anna Kaminski/Kansas Reflector)

TOPEKA — The county involved in a small-town Kansas newspaper raid in 2023 will pay a cumulative $3 million to three journalists and a city councilor.

In two of the four agreements, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office also crafted a statement admitting regret.

“The Sheriff’s Office wishes to express its sincere regrets to Eric and Joan Meyer and Ruth and Ronald Herbel for its participation in the drafting and execution of the Marion Police Department’s search warrants on their homes and the Marion County Record. This likely would not have happened if established law had been reviewed and applied prior to the execution of the warrants,” the statement reads.

Marion County’s board of commissioners approved agreements Monday with Eric Meyer, the owner and editor of the Marion County Record, and Ruth Herbel, the Marion city councilor whose home was raided in tandem with the newspaper office, and two other journalists. The agreements coincide with consent judgments expected to be submitted in their federal cases against the county.

The county was a secondary player in the raids, in Meyer’s eyes, but the agreements could play a part in the paper’s ongoing cases against the city.

“Everybody involved in this is 100% convinced we are going to go to trial with the city,” Meyer said. “This will make that easier in some regard.”

The county’s agreements with Deb Gruver and Phyllis Zorn, local journalists whose lives were upended by the raids, are more akin to settlements and don’t include admissions of regret.

The county agreed to pay Meyer $1.5 million, Herbel $650,000, Zorn $600,000, and Gruver $250,000, according to copies of the agreements obtained by Kansas Reflector.

Insurance covers most of those funds, but the county must pay Meyer $50,000.

In another lawsuit against former Marion police chief Gideon Cody, who is also facing criminal charges, Gruver settled earlier this year for $235,000.

According to Meyer, Zorn has retired from her position at the Marion County Record, effective immediately.

Monday’s deals settle the county’s obligations within four federal lawsuits against the city of Marion and Marion County governments and officials in the wake of the raids. Five cases were consolidated into a single federal lawsuit, and the four agreements give the county and the sheriff’s office immunity from any future legal action related to the Aug. 11, 2023, searches and seizures at the Marion County Record, Meyer’s home and Herbel’s home.

The county agreed to make available Marion County Sheriff Jeff Soyez, Detective Aaron Christner, and Undersheriff Larry Starkey for official interviews, which could be used in other legal disputes. Previously, the cases were stalled, preventing interviews from taking place.

Claims against the city of Marion, its police department and other officials, including former Mayor David Mayfield and former police chief Gideon Cody, are not involved in the agreements.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect the total sum of Phyllis Zorn’s settlement and her position at the Marion County Record.

Automattic, the company that owns WordPress.com, is asking Automatic.CSS—a company that provides a CSS framework for WordPress page builders—to change its name amid public spats between Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg and Automatic.CSS creator Kevin Geary. Automattic has two T’s as a nod to Matt.

“As you know, our client owns and operates a wide range of software brands and services, including the very popular web building and hosting platform WordPress.com,” Jim Davis, an intellectual property attorney representing Automattic, wrote in a letter dated Oct. 30. 

“Automattic is also well-known for its longtime and extensive contributions to the WordPress system. Our client owns many trademark registrations for its Automattic mark covering those types of services and software,” Davis continued. “As we hope you can appreciate, our client is concerned about your use of a nearly identical name and trademark to provide closely related WordPress services. Automattic and Automatic differ by only one letter, are phonetically identical, and are marketed to many of the same people. This all enhances the potential for consumer confusion and dilution of our client's Automattic mark.”

Automattic “requests that you rebrand away from using Automatic or anything similar to Automattic,” Davis wrote.

Geary posted the full letter on X, where Mullenweg replied, “We also own automatic.com. You had to know this was a fraught naming area.” 

“AutomaticCSS is called ‘automatic’ because it's the only CSS framework that does a lot of things automatically,” Geary replied to Mullenweg. “Congratulations on owning the domain name for a generic term. Let me know when that fact becomes relevant.” 

In its trademark filing, Automattic lists the word “automatic” as a disclaimer, meaning an unregistrable word, “such as wording or a design that doesn’t indicate the source of your goods or services or is otherwise merely descriptive of them,” according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

This beef has gone on for months. On July 14, Mullenweg asked Geary publicly: “is it possible to get some text on automaticcss.com clarifying it has nothing to do with automattic?” “Sure, we'll add it to the footer,” Geary replied. Automatic.CSS has a disclaimer on the bottom of the page that says “(not affiliated with Automattic).”

And just a week before Automattic sent its request to Automatic to change their name, Geary and Mullenweg were beefing about whether making websites without coding expertise is sustainable... or something. “Best of luck selling your solution, I hope you can do so without creating FUD and dissing WordPress in the process,” Mullenweg said, midway through the argument. “You sound completely out of touch. When is the last time you coached someone on learning web design? For me it was yesterday. I’m the one that’s most in touch,” Geary replied. 

Geary and Mullenweg have frequently sparred on X, especially after the legal battle between WP Engine and Automattic began last year. In September 2024, Mullenweg started publicly accusing WP Engine of misusing the WordPress brand and not contributing enough to the open-source community, which led to the companies volleying cease and desists, including Automattic demanding WP Engine change its name. “Your unauthorized use of our Client’s trademarks infringes on their rights and dilutes their famous and well-known marks,” Automattic’s September 2024 cease and desist said. This eventually escalated to WP Engine suing Automattic, claiming that Automattic extorted the company by suggesting WP Engine pay “a mere 8% royalty” on WP Engine’s roughly $400 million in annual revenue, which would amount to about $32 million.

Employees Describe an Environment of Paranoia and Fear Inside Automattic Over WordPress Chaos

Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg made another buyout offer this week, and threatened employees who speak to the press with termination.

404 MediaSamantha Cole

Last week, Automattic filed counterclaims in that case, claiming, “This case arises from WPEngine, Inc.’s (‘WP Engine’) deliberate misappropriation of WordPress-related trademarks and its false attempts to pass itself off as the company behind the world-renowned open-source WordPress software,” and that WP Engine “sought to inflate its valuation and engineer a quick, lucrative exit” as part of a deal with private equity firm Silver Lake, and “exploited the reputation, goodwill, and community trust built over two decades by counterclaimants Automattic, Inc., Matthew Mullenweg, WordPress Foundation, and WooCommerce Inc.”  

WP Engine told Techcrunch in a statement: “WP Engine’s use of the WordPress trademark to refer to the open-source software is consistent with longstanding industry practice and fair use under settled trademark law, and we will defend against these baseless claims.”

Geary and Davis did not respond to 404 Media’s request for comment.