AI slop is killing online communities
AI slop is killing online communities
AI 垃圾内容正在扼杀在线社区
Like a young child coming home from kindergarten with their latest crayon scrawls, the internet is currently awash with people sharing their AI-generated work. And just like the young child’s drawings, much of that work should be proudly put up on the walls within the artist’s house—and no further. 就像一个刚从幼儿园回家、拿着最新蜡笔涂鸦的孩子一样，现在的互联网充斥着人们分享的 AI 生成作品。而就像孩子的画作一样，这些作品中的大部分应该被自豪地贴在创作者自家的墙上——仅此而已。
I am not an AI-hater. In fact, I think AI-haters are on the wrong side of history. It’s just that I know when to keep my crayon-drawings to myself ;) And I am getting increasingly sad and frustrated seeing communities that I value slowly wilting under the onslaught of shit. Often that shit is perhaps naïvely shared with no deleterious intent, but shit nonetheless it is. 我不是一个 AI 仇恨者。事实上，我认为 AI 仇恨者站在了历史错误的一边。我只是知道什么时候该把自己的“蜡笔画”藏起来 ;) 看到我所珍视的社区在这些垃圾内容的冲击下慢慢枯萎，我感到越来越悲伤和沮丧。通常，这些垃圾内容或许是在没有恶意的情况下被天真地分享出来的，但它们依然是垃圾。
Congratulations, you entered a prompt and pressed return. “I rewrote Kafka in COBOL” Great, enter it at your next science fair. Meanwhile stop begging for stars on your brand new GitHub repo that no-one’s touching with a bargepole. “I wrote a blog post about Kafka” Did you though? We can tell that Claude wrote it, and it’s a piece of garbage. “I made this video about Kafka” Cool story bro. Except AI made it, and it’s only of interest as a curiosity, not a useful learning artefact. “I’m self-publishing an ebook that I wrote about Kafka” What you mean is, you got Claude to scrape the internet and crap out a “book” that you should be ashamed to give away for free. Any fool can feed coins into a fruit machine and pull the arm. 恭喜你，你输入了一个提示词并按下了回车键。“我用 COBOL 重写了卡夫卡的作品”，太棒了，去你的科学博览会上展示吧。与此同时，别再为你那个没人愿意碰的全新 GitHub 仓库乞求星星了。“我写了一篇关于卡夫卡的博客文章”，你真的写了吗？我们看得出来是 Claude 写的，而且那简直是一堆垃圾。“我制作了这个关于卡夫卡的视频”，兄弟，故事不错。可惜是 AI 做的，它唯一的价值就是作为一种猎奇，而不是有用的学习资料。“我正在自出版一本关于卡夫卡的电子书”，你的意思是，你让 Claude 抓取了互联网上的内容，然后拼凑出了一本你本该为免费赠送而感到羞愧的“书”。任何傻瓜都能往老虎机里投币并拉动拉杆。
The pattern I see over and over seems to be: Step 1: Discover agentic coding. Mind blown. Step 2: Chuck a project up onto GitHub. Step 3: Have AI write a breathless blog post about your vibe-coded project. Share blog post and repo to any subreddit and Slack group that you can find. Not sure which is suitable? Post to all of them—people will love to see it! /s 我反复看到的模式似乎是：第一步：发现智能体编程（agentic coding），大受震撼。第二步：把项目扔到 GitHub 上。第三步：让 AI 为你的“感觉编程”（vibe-coded）项目写一篇激动人心的博客文章。把博客和仓库分享到你能找到的任何 Subreddit 和 Slack 群组。不确定哪个合适？全部发一遍——大家一定会喜欢的！（反讽）
Let me tell you now: pause after step 2. Take a really long breath. Think really hard about what you’ve created, and why you want to share it. If it’s “because it’s cool” then I’ve got news for you: agentic coding is no longer a novelty. It’s just how shit gets done now. If you can think of the prompt, AI can write it. Big deal. That’s so early-2026. Move on. 现在我告诉你：在第二步之后停下来。深呼吸。认真思考你创造了什么，以及为什么要分享它。如果是因为“它很酷”，那我得告诉你：智能体编程已经不再是什么新鲜事了。这只是现在完成工作的方式而已。只要你能想到提示词，AI 就能写出来。没什么大不了的。那是 2026 年初的旧闻了。向前看吧。
Still want to share it far and wide? Is it actually useful? Are you using it? Has it got really good documentation? Is it usable? Have you actually come back to the code again and again and put it through its paces? Or was it a one-night stand with Claude and the next morning neither of you thinks it was such a good idea? Still want to share it? If it’s software, are you prepared to stand behind it as something people will raise issues against, maybe submit PRs for? If it’s written, is it something you’d want to read? Is it actually adding to the cumulative understanding of the community, or is it just an LLM auto-completing its way through text that you can’t be arsed to write and I can’t be arsed to read? 还想广而告之吗？它真的有用吗？你在用它吗？它有很好的文档吗？它好用吗？你真的反复回到代码中并对其进行过测试吗？还是说这只是你和 Claude 的一夜情，第二天早上你们俩都觉得这不是个好主意？还想分享吗？如果是软件，你准备好为它负责了吗？人们会提出 Issue，甚至提交 PR 吗？如果是文章，你自己想读吗？它真的增加了社区的知识积累，还是仅仅是一个大语言模型自动补全的文本——你懒得写，我也懒得读？
No one forces me to read this stuff. Why am I so bothered by it? Because like bindweed, it’s slowly strangling the organic life out of communities. When I open up Reddit now, it’s increasingly overrun with vibe-coded AI stuff. Whilst much of it is well-intentioned I’m sure, it does nothing to contribute to the community. AI slop is driving up the noise, and making the signal more and more difficult to discern in communities. This risks becoming a downward spiral; as communities become more polluted by this stuff, members will get frustrated from wading through AI slop and draw back, thus diminishing the life of the organic community even further. 没人强迫我读这些东西。为什么我这么烦它？因为它就像旋花草一样，正在慢慢扼杀社区的有机生命力。现在当我打开 Reddit，它越来越多地被“感觉编程”的 AI 内容所淹没。虽然我相信其中大部分是出于好意，但它们对社区毫无贡献。AI 垃圾内容正在推高噪音，使得社区中的有效信息越来越难以辨别。这可能会陷入恶性循环；随着社区被这些东西污染，成员们会因为在 AI 垃圾中挣扎而感到沮丧并选择退出，从而进一步削弱有机社区的活力。
You may have noticed that AI Slop has become the mot du jour. The broad use of the term that I’m generally familiar with is as a negative description for low-effort material created by AI and foisted upon those to whom it is of no benefit. However I learnt recently that there are those—probably correlating strongly with the AI-hating crowd—who brand anything written about AI as “AI Slop”, even if not written by AI. Material created with the assistance of AI is not bad in itself. It’s the purpose to which it’s put. A good use of AI is when it enables people to do something they couldn’t do before, to contribute to a community when they couldn’t before. Done with the care and good intent of a human behind it, this is a nett positive. Bad AI slop, on the other hand, is monkeys throwing crap over the fence for a purpose other than furthering the community. This includes spam, engagement farming, and simply thoughtless noise in a space which is not for that purpose. 你可能已经注意到，“AI Slop”（AI 垃圾内容）已经成了流行词。我所熟悉的这个词的广泛用法，是指对 AI 创建的、强加给那些不需要它的人的低质量内容的负面描述。然而，我最近了解到，有些人——可能与仇视 AI 的群体高度重合——将任何关于 AI 的文章都贴上“AI 垃圾”的标签，即使不是 AI 写的。由 AI 辅助创作的内容本身并不坏，关键在于它的用途。AI 的良好用途是让人们能够做以前做不到的事情，在以前无法贡献时为社区做出贡献。如果背后有人类的关怀和善意，这就是净收益。反之，糟糕的 AI 垃圾内容就像猴子为了非社区发展的目的而向围栏外扔粪便。这包括垃圾邮件、为了博取关注而进行的创作，以及在不合适的空间里制造毫无意义的噪音。
The standards of common decency and taste, that’s who. Let’s take a step back. Sharing content online is wonderful. It’s pretty much what made the internet what it is today. The knack is to understand what you’re sharing, to whom, and why. If you were born before around 1980 you’ll know that there was the Geocities era. Every high-school nerd had a homepage. Just because I built a homepage on Geocities, complete with ‘Under Construction’ anigifs, a web counter and a web ring banner, does not mean that I should be sharing it to anyone who’ll listen. Amongst my friends, sure. My parents, of course—they’ll be proud of anything I build. But to the general internet? Who cares. And now with AI-generated content, whether a vibe-coded app or a blog post, the same applies. 谁赋予了我作为互联网守门人的权力？是基本的体面和品味标准。让我们退一步看。在线分享内容是很棒的。这几乎是互联网之所以成为今天这样的原因。诀窍在于理解你在分享什么、分享给谁、以及为什么分享。如果你出生在 1980 年左右之前，你会知道 Geocities 时代。每个高中书呆子都有一个主页。仅仅因为我在 Geocities 上建立了一个主页，上面有“施工中”的动态图、访问计数器和网页环横幅，并不意味着我应该把它分享给任何愿意听的人。在朋友之间分享当然可以。父母当然也可以——他们会为我建造的任何东西感到自豪。但对于整个互联网呢？谁在乎呢。现在对于 AI 生成的内容，无论是“感觉编程”的应用程序还是博客文章，道理是一样的。