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this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2026
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Memes
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Post memes here.
A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme.
An Internet meme or meme, is a cultural item that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. The name is by the concept of memes proposed by Richard Dawkins in 1972. Internet memes can take various forms, such as images, videos, GIFs, and various other viral sensations.
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Laittakaa meemejä tänne.
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Assume it’s all AI and don’t engage. Go learn to play guitar.
This might need to be the way forward.
Internet was fun, that was a really sick 30 years, but GG.
But then you are just training and generating music with AI... (Acoustic Instruments)
Get an electric guitar then.
How to avoid AI Slop:
Step 1: Adopt a cat (aka: be adopted by a feline overlord)
Step 2: Observe the cat (but make sure to occasionally wink-blink at them)
I just adjusted my way of thinking. Before it was "this video is staged, until proven otherwise", now it's "this video is AI, until proven otherwise".
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I have a business idea:
Vintage social media.
Only media that verifiably exists on the internet before 2021 is allowed. That's still billions of cute animal photos and videos.
EDIT:
And a sister project: RAW-only social media. Only photo/video uploaded as raw sensor data (which even phones can take now) is allowed. Metadata is stripped, and they're post-processed by the site.
RAWs are technically possible to fake, but difficult enough to deter lazy slop spam. As a bonus, they can't be heavily edited either; they're unprocessed, unglamourous slices of reality. And they can be served in HDR with modern compression, as a cherry on top.
...Now I just need a few billion dollars to host it, and about a trillion to survive anticompetive attacks.
When I do search for something that is not a current event I will filter for at older results to avoid any inaccurate AI answers
Honestly, I don't think your edit is crazy at all. I have a hunch that all the fake, filtered, AI-processed, vtuber'd social media is going to result in a sharp backlash soon. Kind of like how over-the-top, image-focused glam and heavy metal of the 80s spawned a backlash in the rawer, more "real" feel of grunge and stripped down alt-rock in the 90s.
Maybe that desire for reality will be one of the triggers for the AI bubble bursting.
It’s still a fantasy though. People aren’t in control of their phones/feeds.
Heck, we can’t even get the world to support JPEG-XL or HEIF or anything, much less take RAW pictures.
And Twitter has convinced me there is absolutely no line these services can cross to get people to quit.
Well, I had a brief moment of hopefulness at least 😐
Fr your second idea is actually quite good.
I was thinking about digitally signing content and you can go check the author’s public key against it or something.
My spouse yelled at me after she showed me too many AI videos, and I would watch it and 1) if it's under 15 seconds, 2) too good to be true, 3) has unrealistic physics, and/or 4) has AI artifacts, I wouldn't enjoy the video, and just say "yeah, that's AI."
She just wants to enjoy the videos, and didn't care if staged or AI or what. She likes the concept of what's on the video. AI takes that away from me, and not her, apparently.
thats actually pretty interesting.
I'd be firmly on your side of that fence, the idea being its cute or cool cause it happened in real life. this is a recording of real life. if its a computer drawing using the severed and reconstituted husks of other things and did not happen, its just something completely different- would she watch a hand drawn cartoon of the same thing? Would she really?
Another possibly interesting way to tease it out, is say it's a video of her close friend being given an award from a prestigious institution and she feels a sense of pride. Or, its a video from the same friend where her partner does something very sweet and poignant. In both cases, she then finds out that this never happened, its just a computer drawing her friend made of these non-events. Too different to draw out the reason while real vs fake matters? Possibly.
Say the video of a cat that can accurately work and excel spreadsheet. Does that one matter (spoiler, its REAL)
Usually when people share a post, it's because the post evoked a reaction, and they want to share that with someone. Making the conversation about the provenance of the post truncates the exchange in an unsatisfying way. For a news story, propaganda, or the like, the source is important. For funny dog videos? Maybe the quality of the exchange is more important. A nice middle ground would be to react as if it were true, and then point out it's probably AI. Videos are easier to spot, but the difference between an image that's obviously AI and one that looks real is like 10 min of work in Photoshop. So we're often better off saving our faculties of discernment for the stuff that matters.
Nah, screw that. I am disgusted by the way AI looks. I'd rather people not send me anything than to send me slop.
I predict you'll get your wish.
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I've found, as I've gotten older, that my desire to believe things that are true is far from universal. It's mind boggling to me that people willingly delude themselves for a hit of dopamine or whatever, while they slowly lose the ability to tell the difference between reality and fiction
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But that's the point for the AI owners. To get people to not care about the destruction of your brain, the world, our income, our art, etc.
At that point, when we stop pushing back, AI slop peddlers have won.
Honestly I'll take staged videos. At least it's real humans doing it.
One of the things that makes a staged video less troubling is that the staging itself always comes with tells. Camera angles, cuts, framing, and of course actual staging.
AI videos can have that too, but they aren't the inherent tells. AI tells are unnatural: bodies that shift in subtle ways, objects warped or searching outside the center of frame. It's not stuff that you look for because it's not stuff that actually happens in nature, or even in human constructed CGI all that often. But it does add up to a sense of uncanny valley.
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I do hate being a cynical bastard but the slopification of the internet has made me this way.
Just another flavor of cynicism for me. Before AI, I would look at most "cute" animal videos and just see an animal performing a trained trick under the guise of "Omg, LOOK my dogs love spontaneously hugging each other, isn't that cute??!!"
People have ALWAYS lied on the internet.
There was a wave of "sleepy baby animals collapsing in sleep together" on Spez's site until someone figured out most of them were "sleepy" because they were drugged.
Just like a lot of animal rescue videos. Horrible, heartbreaking animal abuse, staged to look like an act of heroism.
I used to watch those videos on YT a lot, until I suddenly pieced it together, that two cats had the very same markings, and figured out what their scam was, I felt so disgusted I ended up making a massive rant and telling every person I knew for months.
next you'll tell me people don't always tell the truth on the internet or to not always believe what you read in the newspaper
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It's interesting to watch people sus this out in real time. Society as a whole will land on some sort of "solution", and I expect it's one most of you won't like.
What are your thoughts? I’m starting to lean toward avoiding any fakeable content (even though I’m contradicting myself by even posting here). That can’t be worse than pre internet times right?
It's shopped you can tell by some of the pixels also stopped being true after a few years and people just stopped caring.
We are just going though the same thing. People will just stop caring in a few years.
Is this cartoon made by AI? Must have? Or isn’t it? Can’t decide.
It is a great exercise to test your media literacy. That you can't even trust cute cat videos and art really does suck though.
I don't find AI cat videos half as offensive as the "I found this kitty shivering in the rain and rescued it on my hike" videos with a 3000 buck show quality Bengal.
Upside is that I now look a lot closer at the pictures in my feed.
As much as I vehemently despise AI, these days, I'll take positivity where I can get it.
Better quit browsing shorts and get a real dog instead
AI is more than the theft of art.
AI is the theft of joy. AI is the theft of trust. AI is the theft of intellectualism.
AI is control. AI is fascism.
i usually assume something is not AI unless its obvious or someone in the comments says its AI
I have begun policing myself for feelings of amazement. Seems to be the biggest thing slop tries to induce, followed closely by outrage. I know I can't control when something makes me outraged or amazed but I definitely can choose what I signal boost
Solution is to either enjoy for what it is or stop consuming it.
At least the ones where the cat or dog start Fortnite emoting at the end are obvious.
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