#unconnected

my true home, I am lost,

a poor alien

on an unfamiliar world

unconnected to my soul.

.

Hello friends... so sorry I’ve been absent a while!

I’m posting this from my brothers PC... I’m temporally cut off from the internet. 😣  

Some dumb head telephone engineer cut my phone line off in the process of connecting my neighbour... no internet, no telephone and no clear promise of when I’m going to be reconnected either.   Will be back as soon as the chaos is sorted. 🙄

We are at a bit of a crossroads with real life and real life according to social media. It wasn’t always this way but right around the adoption of Facebook and other platforms like X/formally known as Twitter, I always called it Tweaker, and later apps like Snapchat, TikTok, Bluesky, and even YouTube, into our everyday lives, a whole new plethora of buzzwords and other terminology has started to take dominance in posts and comments.

It’s called DISCONNECT.

Disconnect is a word that can be tied to other phrases and words like AI Slop but in and of itself isn’t the same exact thing. Disconnect can be said and explained in different ways but I will try to simplify it best I can. Disconnect is when reality and perception stop matching. It happens when a person, group, company, institution, or movement becomes so convinced of its own viewpoint that it can no longer understand why other people think differently. The larger the gap between what is being said and what is actually being experienced, the larger the disconnect becomes.

Hence, they are disconnected from it or them.

A good example is Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Many fans disliked the film for reasons ranging from its treatment of legacy characters to the abandonment of story threads established in The Force Awakens. Whether those criticisms are fair or not isn't really the point. The disconnect happened afterward. Instead of acknowledging why so many fans were upset, the response often seemed to be that the fans themselves were the problem. The term toxic-fandom became the label used to describe anyone that didn’t agree with how Disney handled The Last Jedi. The people making the product and the people consuming it were having two completely different conversations while believing they were talking about the same thing. Both sides believed they were right and the other was wrong.

The more we try to simplify what disconnect is, the more convoluted it becomes. Disconnect is the inability or unwillingness to understand why other people think, feel, or react the way they do on a topic, or it can be when one side believes it understands a situation while completely failing to understand the people involved in it.

Welcome to a modern world where people increasingly talk ‘at’ each other instead of ‘to’ each other, while being completely convinced, they're communicating effectively. Most of us have gone through this in a relationship or two over the years but this is also a framework for how social media operates nowadays. And therein lies part of the problem.

Assumption…

People assume so very much based on so very little and what happens on the internet makes it worse because of the dopamine kick of assumed validation. People assume social media is still a social platform. It isn't.

People are mean on social media because social media rewards them for being mean, rewards outrage, rewards attention-seeking behavior, and many people have built entire identities around negativity, validation, and conflict. That is what gets clicks. That is what receives engagement. Both these things literally pay people. And nothing brings in attention like toxic negativity for negativity’s sake.

Some are lonely. Some are miserable. Some are angry. Some are simply addicted to attention. Some are ideological zealots. Some are narcissists. Some are bots. Some are professional outrage merchants, like your everyday crisis actor and/or paid agitators. Some just enjoy being destructive and watching things crumble. If you respond to it in any way, be for, or against whatever it is, you are now the target of someone’s rage and frustration. They simply want you to react to it. The system doesn’t care as long as its engagement and that engagement is rewarded in dollars and cents. Add enough of that up and it turns into real income for these people.

Social media is an attention platform.

Negativity, outrage, conflict, and tribalism generate engagement, and engagement is the product being sold. An addiction to the dopamine kick of getting a reaction. Some have tied their entire identity to arguing with strangers. The weird part isn't that people do it. The weird part is that we've normalized it and are paid for it.

Block and move on is probably the healthiest answer because most of these people aren't looking for conversation. They're looking for validation, attention, or a fight. They want you to argue with them.

Whenever someone trolls me or a comment I always just thank them for their engagement and that their comment literally pays my bills for the entire summer and summer just started. Just think about that for a second. A person that doesn’t really work anymore having all their bills paid for a 4-month stretch because someone said some negative ass poop-comment to them in a post or comment. Kind of puts a different spin on the whole thing. These same people will remove the comment thinking the system doesn’t notice. It does and doesn’t care because even though you deleted the comment, you only deleted the comment on the public side of the system. In the backend, the AI knows, stores, and credits those that need to be credited from how the system works.

I said this in the good-ole MySpace days. The average of people that use technology stuff and/or social media platforms rarely know how it works. They just need it to work. Take a car. Few actually know how it works—from the engine and battery to how fuel is processed inside the engine to create power. They don’t know, and they don’t care. Just start, and drive. Ignance is bliss. And apparently profitable now. Dopamine and money are great motivators. So is spite.

Notice how people just blindly follow whatever "influenced-thinking" they grew up around or fall into at the influence of others lately? People are so easily influenced by the other sheep in the flock of ‘whatever’ camp they belong to, that the pressures of standing up for one’s self within any tribe becomes harder and harder. The more you try to stand up and explain yourself the more you are labeled as a “social pariah” in and out of all social circles, including the potential that your job may even yield to the pressures of the flock of sheep or whatever tribe they belong to.

This shares a lot with the definition for AI Slop.

AI Slop is what happens when that disconnect gets industrialized. When content is generated at speed and scale, assembled cleanly enough to pass at a glance, but built with little to no real direction, understanding, or intention behind it. It looks like effort. It imitates effort. But it is often just polished output masquerading as something meaningful. Very great looking noise pretending to be signal. And the people have begun to notice.

More and more now if we just look at what the subcultures are doing we can see the disconnect in real time. Subcultures are increasingly becoming allergic to AI Slop. There is an expectation mismatch. People can tolerate AI when the case for using AI feels practical and more like augmentation. People absolutely hate AI when authenticity is part of the product and emotional connection is central. AI used here feels like replacement instead of assistance. The human element is part of what the audience expects.

AI slop, as a term, has now carried over and there is now SLOP all over the internet. Not just AI slop, but influencer slop, political slop, triggering-content slop. All equals Slop. Slop is everywhere now and some of the niches are paying attention. Some of the general public are too, but most work multiple jobs, take care of kids or have a hundred other things taking up all their time and attention. So, their doom scrolling is down to a bare minimum.

SLOP…

Everything I see online that the intention of it being posted is to draw up controversy to gain likes, hearts, attention and engagement just for dollars and cents. I call this SLOP. Not because of the subject matter or political-whatever you want to call this/that. Just based on the lack of comments and the lack of serious takes for either side of a thing being posted, tells me everything I need to know about it. That is why it’s slop. It’s disconnect from both sides of the aisle here. The post might be about 1, 2, 3, and mentions 4. People on one side talk about 5, 6, 7, and the other side talks about 8, 9, 0. Both sides don't talk about 1, 2, 3. That is the textbook definition of what Disconnect is.

SLOP says this is what happens when that disconnect gets industrialized.

This is what everyone is reacting to. Me just commenting and even pointing it out actually adds to it. So, a comment on a post is completely wasted because it will not clarify the slop. It will just enhance it even more so. I get there are valid points on both sides of many arguments and sometimes there aren't. People are passionate about what they believe in. People are also passionate about feeling and being right even when they are not. Unfortunately, social media has very little incentive to resolve disagreements because unresolved frustration generates engagement. The disconnect remains because the disconnect itself is profitable. Discussion doesn't generate nearly as much engagement as outrage does. Frustration, anger, and conflict keep people clicking, commenting, and reacting. For me this falls on deaf ears and you can't tug at my heartstrings because I play an air guitar. What strings to pull?

What I find myself scouring the internet for more and more is objective originality rather than endless subjectivity and reaction-based concepts. Every topic becomes a reaction. Every discussion becomes a performance. Every opinion becomes a personal brand.

The internet used to feel like a place where people created things because they were passionate about them. Now much of it feels engineered from the opposite direction. The goal is no longer to create something meaningful and hope people find it. The goal is to attract attention first and worry about meaning later. The content itself becomes secondary to engagement, monetization, affiliate links, sponsorships, algorithms, and whatever trend is currently feeding the machine.

AI has only accelerated this process. It can produce endless amounts of slop-content, but quantity has never been the same thing as quality. The problem isn't the technology itself. The problem is intention. When the primary goal shifts from creating something worthwhile to simply generating clicks, views, reactions, and revenue, the audience eventually notices. They may not always be able to explain why, but they can feel the difference.

Perhaps that is another form of disillusioned-disconnect. The creator believes they are building something valuable. The audience increasingly feels like they are being marketed to, manipulated, or farmed for engagement. Both sides think they are participating in the same exchange while experiencing something entirely different.

The disconnect is not purely AI. The disconnect is not only influencers. The disconnect is not just monetization.

The disconnect is when the creator thinks they're creating value while the audience increasingly experiences the content as a transaction or desperation.

There is another side to disconnect that social media rarely gets blamed for directly. The longer people remain inside highly curated information bubbles, the more difficult they become to understand outside of them. It doesn't matter whether the bubble is political, ideological, cultural, religious, or algorithmic. Eventually the person inside begins speaking a language that only makes sense to others trapped in the same system.

That is why so many conversations online feel like two completely different discussions happening at the same time. Both sides are using the same words, but the meanings behind those words have drifted so far apart that meaningful communication becomes nearly impossible. One side believes the answer is obvious. The other side believes the same thing. Neither understands why the other cannot see it.

This is the same disconnect we have been talking about. Social media amplifies the process because it rewards certainty far more than curiosity. Doubt doesn't go viral. Nuance doesn't generate engagement. Admitting you might be wrong doesn't produce clicks. The system rewards conviction, confidence, and outrage. Over time people stop asking whether they understand the world correctly and begin asking where they can find others who already agree with them.

The result is isolation disguised as connection. People become surrounded by thousands of voices and yet find themselves increasingly unable to communicate with anyone outside their chosen tribe. They demand to be understood while making little effort to understand anyone else. The disconnect grows larger, the walls grow taller, and eventually everyone wonders why communication feels impossible.

As a species we have demonstrated we are nothing more than clever apes with no morals addicted to drama and driven by emotional addictions we do not even understand.

Noise pretending to be structure…

Quality versus Quantity, but Quantity has a Quality all on its own…

"You're my brother, and I love you, but you have a problem." "No, Walmart has a problem, and the problem is me."

"Sometimes, language gets in the way of communication." "Trust me to break, and trust me that I can put myself back together" "Unfortunately, 'not all bad' is often not good enough, and sometimes worse than outright bad if he thinks he is doing good."

"The only reason that I believe in Hell is that I think that there must be a place for people like you."

"Don't ever say you're prepared to pay anything, unless you're prepared to pay everything. Not everything you have now, everything you will ever have. Decent folks, they'll only ask something equal to what you gave, or ask you to do something solid for them in return. That's if you're lucky. Others, they'll demand things of you you won't recover from giving. Your works, the ones that you didn't ever plan to see the light of day. Your future, and all that comes with it. Your loved ones, led to them by their trust in you. Some of them, they'll just ask you for a favor. And when they come to collect it, you'll wish you sold your soul."

"You cannot explain us into nonexistence."

"What is kindness but justice by another name?"

"I have never thought of the ten commandments as a checklist."

"Can you, though? Or is free will but an Illusion?" "If it's an illusion, I at least have more opportunities to pretend."

"You don't fight injustice with injustice. It's like loading fire hydrants with kerosene."

"Violence may be for cowards, but I can use it too."

"Honor is for suckers: let it warm the dead in their graves."