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Slop Cop

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Re: Slop Cop

#61

Post by Teever »

chromacity wrote: post #22

Like the original Grammarly, I think this can be useful for business writing because these tools help you get to the point. Many students are rewarded for using flowery language in school essays, but if you're composing an email or writing a design doc, just optimize for reading time and clarity. But for general use, I think this is misguided. The problem with LLM output is not that it's using em dashes or words such…

Flowery language is important but something like BLUF - Bottom Line Upfront[0] is important too.

While it's important for universities to continue to teach the ability to write using 'flowery' language I think that it is also important that schools teach students something like BLUF -- Bottom Line Upfront.[0]

Compare and contrast those two sentences. I'm fine writing a comment that us just the first sentence and the link without a footnote but I know as a message it won't go over well on a site like Hackernews. They looooooove their verbosity here.

So in some situations you have to gussy it up -- give it some of that Emeril "BAM". The deal is that you have to know your audience. The medium is the message.[1] shit like that.

Stuff on Linkedin is full of pointless words because that's what Linkedin is for -- it's about signalling to other people that you can string together a bunch of pointless words that are effusive and vaguely passive aggressive at the same time -- you know, typical business shit.

“Whether in a suit or in a loincloth people are ignorant little thorns cutting into one another. They seem incapable of advancing beyond the violent tendencies which at one time were necessary for survival.”

We can delve into this kinda stuff but really it just comes back to the know your audience and that the medium is the message. Also don't repeat your self.

Definitely don't repeat yourself.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLUF_(communication)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message

Re: Slop Cop

#62

Post by alfiedotwtf »

littlexsparkee wrote: post #41
Swizec wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I had a shower thought and I asked a chatbot to write five pages of text about it." I don't need prettier words, I need there to be fewer of them? Always judge an author by the length of their text. Decades of insights barely condensed into 200 pages? Great! Hours of thought expanded into 200 pages? Very bad. Same length of text but lands very differently. Same is true for emails, tweets, videos, and even just tal…

So many books that could've been an article. I try to save myself time by checking Goodreads but it's not always clear as I'm more critical than the average person. Reading a preview in Google Books helps but you only get so many pages before you're cut off. Appreciate that lately new books are sometimes featured in pubs with an excerpt.

There’s an interesting thought!

For hundreds of years there have been incentives (money) to publish books, and yet in 2026 we still haven’t worked out how to monetarily incentivise authors of single articles without bundling them with articles or other authors you wouldn’t read (because you only care about a single article damnit

Re: Slop Cop

#63

Post by comex »

jollyllama wrote: post #58
chromacity wrote: post #22

Like the original Grammarly, I think this can be useful for business writing because these tools help you get to the point. Many students are rewarded for using flowery language in school essays, but if you're composing an email or writing a design doc, just optimize for reading time and clarity. But for general use, I think this is misguided. The problem with LLM output is not that it's using em dashes or words such…

>The problem is not X. It's Y. Your writing style, if not your thoughts, have already been infected by LLM prose.

Just because LLMs overuse it doesn't mean it doesn't have its place.

The way the OP used the 'not X, but Y' pattern, the 'X' and 'Y' are two clear, specific, and (most importantly) distinct things, as opposed to stereotypical LLM usage where they're vague characterizations or metaphors. And there's a reason to emphasize that it's not X, because the Slop Cop website implicitly suggests that it is X.

Re: Slop Cop

#64

Post by m0llusk »

resters wrote: post #53

If prompted appropriately, LLMs can write prose that mirrors nearly any style you ask for. Not sure what the big hubbub about "slop" is. Honestly it's annoying.

That isn't really true, though, at least not when actual common usage is considered. As the studies of "Trendslop" have revealed, LLMs aggressively normalize output. What they do is generate content based on averages over large samples. This gives everything from them a strong tendency to revert to the mean from concepts to presentation and style.

Re: Slop Cop

#65

Post by tom_ »

jollyllama wrote: post #58
chromacity wrote: post #22

Like the original Grammarly, I think this can be useful for business writing because these tools help you get to the point. Many students are rewarded for using flowery language in school essays, but if you're composing an email or writing a design doc, just optimize for reading time and clarity. But for general use, I think this is misguided. The problem with LLM output is not that it's using em dashes or words such…

>The problem is not X. It's Y. Your writing style, if not your thoughts, have already been infected by LLM prose.

This doesn't apply here - I don't think? The article claims X; so it is surely no sin for the post rebutting it to straight up state that X is, in fact, not the case.

The LLM tic, by contrast, has a noticeable tendency to be deployed even when X has never been previously mentioned. It is a valid rhetorical technique, and I assume that's why the LLMs have picked up on it - but it has to be deployed judiciously. Which is something LLMs appear absolutely incapable of doing. And that is why people notice it, and think it sucks.

Re: Slop Cop

#66

Post by jollyllama »

chromacity wrote: post #60
jollyllama wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The problem is not X. It's Y. Your writing style, if not your thoughts, have already been infected by LLM prose.

No. I've been using that construct long before LLMs and I don't think there's anything wrong with it. It allows you to succinctly state the position you're disagreeing with before putting forward another hypothesis. LLMs overuse it for needless emphasis, with the negative example usually reduced to a single word.

It's never been so prevalent as now, it's everywhere. I didn't mean any of this as a bad faith thing, it genuinely is changing how people think, speak, etc. Also, I don't consider hedging or defensive writing or negative definitions succinct (it's not a wall of text, granted) and in ordinary times it did indeed have its place.

Edit: I would add that you literally followed the formula in every respect except for a single word, and IMO LLMs are already changing to avoid the single-word formulation.

Re: Slop Cop

#67

Post by foxfired »

One thing I learned is that AI written text is not hard to spot. Usually, when I meet slop, I close it one or two paragraphs in. Although tools like this will become more common, they usually serve to win an argument, or confirm what you already believe.

Also, it was painful to learn that my very first blog post I wrote in 2013 is AI generated. But I'm fine with it because I read this:

> A short punchy opener (≤10 words) followed by two or more substantially longer elaboration sentences — the LLM "hook then evidence pile" rhythm.

... and realized that the entire app is AI generated.

Re: Slop Cop

#68

Post by flexagoon »

slopinthebag wrote: post #49
chromacity wrote: post #22

Like the original Grammarly, I think this can be useful for business writing because these tools help you get to the point. Many students are rewarded for using flowery language in school essays, but if you're composing an email or writing a design doc, just optimize for reading time and clarity. But for general use, I think this is misguided. The problem with LLM output is not that it's using em dashes or words such…

> Many students are rewarded for using flowery language in school essays Not to nitpick, but I actually had the opposite experience in uni. My prof docked me marks for my flowery language, and honestly, good for her, my lazy writing style honestly sucks (see how I used "honestly" twice in the same sentence, lol). Not to take away from your post or anything, just realising I got lucky with my prof. I agree that LLMs p…

In uni, maybe. But my experience in middle/high school was that hitting the minimum word count was much more important than actually good writing.

Re: Slop Cop

#69

Post by flexagoon »

jedbrooke wrote: post #44
SkiFreeWin3 wrote: post #43

[dead]

Honestly, I get pretty good improvement from just adding a “Emoji are forbidden” and a small list of banned words and phrases (the usual suspects like “it’s not just x, it’s y” etc)

Banning bold font and saying to avoid lists and tables as much as possible is an immediate massive improvement to LLM output quality

Re: Slop Cop

#70

Post by UqWBcuFx6NV4r »

jollyllama wrote: post #58
chromacity wrote: post #22

Like the original Grammarly, I think this can be useful for business writing because these tools help you get to the point. Many students are rewarded for using flowery language in school essays, but if you're composing an email or writing a design doc, just optimize for reading time and clarity. But for general use, I think this is misguided. The problem with LLM output is not that it's using em dashes or words such…

>The problem is not X. It's Y. Your writing style, if not your thoughts, have already been infected by LLM prose.

Anyone over the age of 25 actually developed their writing style before ChatGPT came about. Getting all uppity about these surface-level LLM ‘tropes’ is just stupid. I am thankfully yet to run into a situation where someone with this attitude is actually in a position to be able to negatively affect my life. I’m sure that there’s a correlation. Take the “ew, em-dash” stuff back to Twitter.
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