Maybe they spend time online because they’re unhappy.
If you spend it on social media, sure. Which probably is like 99.99% of people today.
Yep. It’s the damn phone.
Well for one thing, the Internet used to be cool and interesting. Now it’s shitty and sad.
8/10/12 hour days at work with people you only maybe like, but perhaps hate. 16/14/12 hours a day for sleeping, eating, cooking, cleaning, etc to take care of yourself, and maybe interact with people you like and enjoy being around in a social context, an attempt to remain informed while trying to avoid AI slop, misinformation, trolls, and media intent on rage baiting you, and making you feel inferior so it can sell you something.
On the list of things that degrade my quality of life, AI slop is without a doubt at the very bottom of that list, barely even making it on there.
I don’t know about you, but AI slop has made my quality of life considerably worse. I can’t find anything online. It’s all slop sites.
If encountering increased amounts of AI sites has made your life considerably worse, you had a really nice and carefree life with minimal friction before. Good for you, I’m envious.
I value my privacy too much to elaborate on how AI slop has fully impacted me, but I am confident you would agree I am not living a good life at the moment.
The destruction of the internet was merely the cherry on top that everybody can relate to.
Is that really a big QoL impact compared to what you eat, how much it costs, how much free time you have, how well you sleep, how much you sleep, where you live, how far you have to travel, the quantity and effort of chores
This is exactly my point. AI slop makes a little worse, but nothing compared to these things.
AI slop has affected all those things to some people.
Have you had your insurance claim get denied by AI yet? Have you started rationing your remaining medication? Did you lose sleep over it? Did you stress out so hard that you developed a twitch? Pushing away family and friends so they wouldn’t see you at your worst? Have you tried searching for where to get your medicine only to find… slop?
Have you had AI increase the shelf price on a food item because you looked like you could afford it? Did you skip a meal because you know you can’t qualify for SNAP, but also don’t have income because you are one of the 101,000+ laid off due to AI? Have you tried searching for sales and coupons only to find that they are all slop?
How demoralizing do you think it is, having all that happen, yet spending hours daily on job applications, only for them to be dumped in the trash by AI before a hiring manager even sees your qualifications? or even better: the job you found online was never real to begin with.
Do you know what it feels like to have a countdown to homelessness? Unable to find any helpful resources online because every. single. website. is. slop.
Do you know what happens to a person who recognizes their deteriorating mental health, goes to a therapist, and is forced to first converse with an AI?
Thankfully I’m nowhere near that deep in the hole, but there are people out there that are. I’ve got coworkers who fell hard. It’s not pretty.
All you’re describing is AI making the other things slightly worse than they already were without. They were still there before AI, and still caused massive amounts of stress and despair. Sure AI affects these things too, but they were already bad and AI only made it slightly worse. Which leads me back to my first comment; AI is not nearly as bad for QoL as any of the other things causing stress and despair.
