Welcome to slop world: how the hostile internet is driving us crazy
To be online today means navigating an environment whose design feels adversarial and manipulative, forcing you to wade through toxic sludge to get to the thing you want.
Moynihan Train Hall at New York’s Penn Station is a classic case of hostile architecture, with few places to sit but plenty of big screens playing ads. Bloomberg
In Novi, Michigan, an apparently delusional woman staying with her 20-year-old cat at a cheap hotel has a message for the world. What it is, I am not exactly sure, but I have been following her attempts for weeks while she posts updates on X and YouTube.
They’ve been popping up as ads in my feed – signified by a small grey “ad” label in the top-right corner – so I now have a decently tuned sense of her antics, which include posting videos of herself wandering into other people’s rooms, arguing with hotel management and being visited by police, who politely ask her to tone down her activities. She has posted the hotel’s address and asked Elon Musk and President Donald Trump, whom she supports, to come and help her.
