The Internet is filling up with slop.
AI slop.
You know what I mean. Generic blog posts. Generic LinkedIn posts. Generic images of impossibly attractive businesspeople having meetings in offices that apparently don’t exist.
And increasingly, generic videos featuring people who may not exist either.
Now, I use AI. A lot.
In fact, I used AI to help me think through this video.
So this isn’t going to be another “AI is evil, throw your computer into the ocean” rant.
The problem isn’t AI.
The problem is that AI has made content incredibly cheap to produce.
And when something becomes incredibly cheap to produce, human beings respond in our traditional fashion:
We produce way too much of it. AI Slop, in case you don’t know, is low quality content – images, videos, blog posts – that are created by AI. Cheap to produce, rather dreadful to consume. If real content is real sugar, “AI Slop” is aspartame or saccharin. Leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Tastes a little like insecticide. Remember Tab? (If you don’t, you can buy a Tab T-shirt on Amazon – it was the first diet cola).
Welcome to “Marketing Philosophy.” I’m your host, Jason McDonald. “Marketing Philosophy” is where we use philosophy to understand marketing conundrums like how to produce authentic content at scale using paid influencers or even better AI-produced fake influencers using our product or service in such a way that it looks real, or real enough, to trick customers into considering our product. “Marketing philosophy” is where we realize that the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard who wrote the book “Simulacra and Simulation” (heavily influencing the movie “The Matrix”) has a lot to tell us about the “authenticity conundrum”.
What Is Content Marketing?
First, let’s define content marketing.
My definition is pretty simple.
Content marketing is creating something that people actually want to consume that ALSO accomplishes a marketing objective.
There are two parts.
#1, the content has to be useful, entertaining, interesting, provocative, funny, educational, or something.
People should actually want it. It has to be authentically engaging!
Second, it has to accomplish a marketing goal.
Maybe it builds your brand.
Maybe it generates a sales lead.
Maybe it sells something.
A hilarious commercial can be content marketing. For example, check out “Dr. Squatch – Natural Soap for Men.” It’s funny. It’s engaging. And it’s kind of authentic even though we know it’s a commercial.
A really useful webinar can be content marketing. A real you in front of a real camera at a real moment in time in front of real people. LIVE video vs. canned video.
A TikTok from Chipotle can be content marketing if it’s funny enough that people actually want to watch it while simultaneously reinforcing the Chipotle brand. For example, here.
So you’ve got:
Audience value plus marketing value.
And then along comes AI.
AI Solves the Production Problem
AI is fantastic at producing content.
Need twenty blog ideas?
Done.
Need a first draft?
Done.
Need ten TikTok concepts, fifty Facebook posts, an infographic, three pictures and a partridge in a pear tree?
Give it thirty seconds.
That’s genuinely useful.
But here’s the problem.
AI dramatically reduces the cost of producing content.
It doesn’t necessarily reduce the cost of producing something worth paying attention to.
That’s what I call the Slop Paradox:
- The easier content becomes to create, the harder attention becomes to earn.
If everybody can produce unlimited content, content itself isn’t scarce anymore. Think of it as supply and demand. The “demand” is humans wanting engaging content (that really has not changed). The “supply” is content, and AI Slop means flooding the content marketplace with low quality stuff it easy.
Human attention is the holy grail to make content marketing work.
And that’s where things start getting weird. Because humans want authentic content, and AI can start to figure out what “authentic” looks like. First we started with Tab, and now we have Coke Zero – infantly closer to the real thing, but still not yet there.
What Is AI Slop?
I don’t think AI slop should simply mean “bad content made by AI.”
Humans have been producing crappy content since somebody first scratched something stupid onto a cave wall.
And human-written corporate content can be absolutely dreadful.
“At Acme Corporation, we’re passionate about delivering innovative solutions that empower our customers.”
A human may have written that.
It still sucks.
So I’d define AI slop differently.
Slop is content that has become disconnected from any interesting underlying experience, insight, opinion, or reality.
Nobody really has anything to say.
But now we have incredibly efficient technology for saying it. AI just means you can create crap (oops I mean slop) at scale.
And that brings us to a rather strange French philosopher named Jean Baudrillard.
Baudrillard, Simulation and the Hamburger
Baudrillard was fascinated by consumer culture, advertising, signs, and the distinction between reality and representations of reality.
SIDE NOTE:
Jean Baudrillard was a French philosopher and social theorist fascinated by consumer culture, media, advertising, and the relationship between reality and representation. His most famous work for our purposes is Simulacra and Simulation (1981).
His basic insight is that modern culture increasingly consists not simply of things, but of signs and representations of things.
A Nike shoe isn’t merely rubber, leather, foam, and shoelaces. Through advertising, athletes, celebrity culture, design, and decades of accumulated associations, “Nike” signifies athleticism, achievement, coolness, aspiration, rebellion, etc.
We don’t merely consume products.
We consume meanings.
Nothing particularly shocking there. Marketers have been doing this forever, usually while pretending they’re “building meaningful relationships with consumers.”
Baudrillard gets interesting when representations become increasingly disconnected from the reality they’re supposedly representing.
From reality to simulation
Think of a progression:
1. Reality
A real customer eats a hamburger and likes it.
2. Representation
The customer posts a TikTok:
“Holy crap, this hamburger was fantastic.”
There’s a real experience behind the representation.
3. Manufactured representation
Carl’s Jr. pays a celebrity to eat the hamburger in an advertisement.
The celebrity may actually eat it, but we’re now staging the experience to produce an association between celebrity and hamburger.
4. Simulation
A paid UGC creator makes a video that deliberately resembles an ordinary customer’s spontaneous TikTok:
“Okay guys, I wasn’t expecting this to be this good…”
Now marketing is manufacturing the appearance of authentic experience.
5. Simulacrum
AI creates a photorealistic person who doesn’t exist saying:
“OMG, you guys HAVE to try this…”
There was no customer. No hamburger was eaten. No experience occurred.
Yet we possess a perfectly convincing representation of an experience that never existed.
That’s where Baudrillard becomes extremely relevant.
The simulacrum
A simulacrum isn’t simply a fake.
It’s a representation that has become detached from an original reality.
That’s important.
Let’s take a hamburger.
#1 – REAL EXPERIENCE
A real customer goes to a restaurant, eats a hamburger, loves it, and tells his friends.
That’s reality.
Then he posts a TikTok saying:
“This hamburger was fantastic.”
Now we have a representation of a real experience.
#2 – BRAND SPOKESPERSON EXPERIENCE
Then the restaurant hires a famous athlete to eat the hamburger in a commercial.
Does the athlete really eat there?
Maybe.
Maybe the guy has a private chef making him kale smoothies and free-range endangered Himalayan chicken breasts.
It doesn’t really matter.
The advertisement creates an association:
Successful athlete. Cool person. Hamburger. Brand.
We’re moving away from the underlying reality.
Then social media arrives.
And something interesting happens.
People trust ordinary people.
#3 – UGC “REAL” CONTENT
Some woman sitting in her kitchen saying, “I tried this and here’s what happened,” seems more authentic than a celebrity commercial.
Marketers notice this.
Of course we do.
We’re marketers.
We ruin everything.
Manufacturing Authenticity
#4 – INFLUENCER CONTENT
Soon brands start paying influencers.
Then they start hiring people to create what we now call UGC, or user-generated content.
Except sometimes it isn’t actually generated by users.
It’s advertising deliberately designed to LOOK like user-generated content.
Bad lighting.
Handheld phone.
Bedroom in the background.
“Okay guys, I wasn’t even going to post this, but…”
Suddenly we’re manufacturing the appearance of authenticity.
#5 AI CONTENT IMITATING UGC CONTENT
And now AI turns the screw one more time.
Imagine an AI-generated woman.
She doesn’t exist.
She’s sitting in an AI-generated kitchen that doesn’t exist.
She’s holding a product she’s never used.
And she tells you:
“I’ve been using this for three months, and honestly, it’s changed my life.”
Nobody used anything.
Nobody’s life changed.
There wasn’t even a nobody.
But we’ve created a nearly perfect representation of an authentic customer experience.
Baudrillard called something like this a simulacrum: a representation that has become detached from the original reality it supposedly represents.
Welcome to content marketing in the age of AI.
The Authenticity Crisis
And I think this creates a potentially enormous problem for marketers.
What happens when consumers realize that all the traditional signals of authenticity can be manufactured?
Bad lighting doesn’t prove anything.
A person’s face doesn’t prove anything.
A testimonial doesn’t prove anything.
A personal story doesn’t necessarily prove anything.
Even imperfections can be generated deliberately to make something appear more authentic.
Eventually consumers may start thinking:
I don’t know what’s real anymore. Maybe I am not real? Have you ever had that thought? Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
And if I don’t know what’s real, maybe I don’t believe any of it.
That’s what I call the Coming Authenticity Crisis.
When everything can look authentic, looking authentic stops being evidence of authenticity.
And here’s the irony.
I think AI may create an Authenticity Counterrevolution.
Authenticity Becomes Scarce
If AI makes content essentially unlimited, what becomes valuable?
Real experience.
Real expertise.
Real opinions.
Real customers.
Real personalities.
Real disagreements.
Real stories.
Real weirdness.
Take this video.
Yes, I’m using AI.
AI helped me research Baudrillard. It helped me organize these ideas. It challenged some of my arguments.
But I’m also a real marketer. I am nearly convinced I am a real person.
I’ve worked with real businesses. I’ve taught real students. I’ve watched real marketing campaigns succeed and fail.
And for whatever bizarre reason, I enjoy connecting existentialism and French philosophy to Internet marketing.
That’s me.
AI can help me express that.
But hopefully there’s some underlying reality here worth expressing.
And I think that’s the critical distinction.
The future isn’t:
Human content versus AI content.
It’s:
Reality-based content versus reality-free content.
Don’t Manufacture Authenticity. Document Reality.
So here’s my advice for content marketers.
Don’t stop using AI.
That ship has sailed, circumnavigated the globe, and is currently being piloted by ChatGPT.
Instead:
Give AI something real to work with.
Use real customer questions.
Real experiences.
Real company data.
Real opinions.
Real mistakes.
Real expertise.
Real employees.
Real customers.
Real stories.
Then let AI help you research, organize, edit, repurpose, improve and distribute that reality.
Use AI as an amplifier of reality, not a substitute for reality.
Because here’s the paradox.
The more artificial content we create, the more valuable genuine human experience may become.
Maybe people will start wanting live webinars again.
Maybe they’ll want to meet actual experts.
Maybe they’ll read books.
Maybe they’ll go to cafés and talk to strangers.
Here’s a paradox, however. Fictionalized content like the movie “Bad Mom’s Christmas” can actually be OK, be good for marketing. Because real people “relate” to the fictionalized content. The movie is honest – it’s a movie, but the experience that it portrays – Mom’s overwhelmed by Christmas who have to pretend that being overworked during the holidays is FUN – is something many moms (and dads) can relate to. So, relative / authentic does not mean “real” – it means resonance with the customer, the customer says, “Yeah, I get that. I have felt that way.” That’s what you’re looking for. Whether AI generated it or not. Whether humans generated it or not.
The Bottom Line
Baudrillard worried about a world in which representations become increasingly disconnected from the reality they’re supposed to represent.
AI may be building exactly that world at enormous scale.
And that’s the challenge for content marketing.
AI can fake the photograph.
It can fake the testimonial.
It can fake the customer.
It can fake the story.
Increasingly, it can even fake the quirky little imperfections we use to determine whether something is authentic.
So perhaps the competitive advantage of the future isn’t merely creating better content.
It’s having an underlying reality worth creating content about. It’s about creating consumer trust that what your company or brand is actually real.
AI can help you say almost anything.
Your job is still to have something worth saying. About conveying real hopes, dreams, experiences into content about your brand that helps you “sell more stuff.”
Marketing Philosophy
This has been “Marketing Philosophy.” I’m your host Jason McDonald, or I was your host until AI came in and replaced me with an AI generated avatar of Jason McDonald. The real Jason McDonald is on a beach in Cancun drinking Tab. Or is he?
