Why Merriam-Webster Named 'Slop' the 2025 Word of the Year
In December 2025, Merriam-Webster announced their Word of the Year. The winner: “slop.” Not “slop” as in the food that pigs eat, although that’s the original meaning. “Slop” as in AI slop — low-quality, AI-generated content that clogs up our feeds and ruins our search results.
It’s the first time the dictionary has directly recognized a term born from internet culture’s reaction to artificial intelligence. And it’s a pretty big deal.
The Announcement
Merriam-Webster’s announcement came with an explanation that felt almost apologetic in its honesty. They acknowledged that “slop” had evolved beyond its original meaning. It wasn’t just about food waste anymore. It was about the wave of low-quality content that had flooded every platform in 2025.
The timing made sense. By late 2025, AI-generated content was everywhere. Blog posts, social media, news articles, images, videos — you name it, AI could make it, and often did. The volume was overwhelming. And a growing percentage of it was, frankly, terrible.
“Slop” became the word people used to describe this phenomenon. It was succinct. It was evocative. And most importantly, everyone knew exactly what it meant.
The History of ‘Slop’
The word “slop” has been around for centuries. Originally, it meant the swill fed to pigs. It was the leftover food, the waste, the stuff that wasn’t good enough for humans.
Over time, it expanded. Slop could be any messy, low-quality substance. Sloppy work. Sloppy writing. The word carried connotations of things not being done properly, of effort not being applied, of something being below standard.
When the internet started filling with AI-generated content, the word found a new home. It was perfect: AI was producing content that was, essentially, the slop of the content world. Mass-produced, low-quality, nutrition-free.
The Coining of ‘AI Slop’
The specific term “AI slop” emerged in 2024, with the user “deepfates” often credited as the originator. They used it to describe the flood of AI-generated content they were seeing on social media and blogs. The term spread quickly through niche internet communities before going mainstream.
What made “AI slop” stick was its precision. It described something specific: not just low-quality content, but low-quality content that was specifically made by AI with minimal human oversight. It wasn’t about humans making bad content. It was about machines making content at scale, without care for quality.
The word also had the right tone. It was dismissive. It was funny. It was the kind of word you’d use with your friends when complaining about something you saw online. “Did you see that article? Total slop.”
Why 2025 Was the Tipping Point
AI existed before 2025. So did AI-generated content. So did complaints about it. So what made 2025 the year that “slop” became the word of the year?
The answer is volume and visibility. In 2025, AI tools became accessible to anyone with an internet connection. The barriers to creating content dropped to zero. And the platforms — Google, social media, news sites — were flooded with content that had been created, at least in part, by AI.
This wasn’t hidden anymore. It wasn’t just in the background. It was in your face every time you opened a browser. Every search result, every social feed, every inbox — AI slop was there, competing for attention with human content that was increasingly hard to find.
People noticed. The complaints got louder. And “slop” became the shorthand that everyone understood.
What Previous Words of the Year Tell Us
Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year is always interesting because it reveals what we’re collectively thinking about. The words reflect our concerns, our conversations, our cultural moments.
Looking at recent years, there’s a pattern. Words like “polarization,” “gaslighting,” “woke” — they all reflect some tension or controversy in the culture. They’re words that people are using to make sense of something they’re experiencing.
“Slop” fits this pattern. It’s a word that captures a widespread feeling: that the internet is getting worse, not better. That quality is declining. That we’re drowning in content that was made by machines for machines, with humans as an afterthought.
It’s not a happy word. But it’s a accurate word. And that’s why it resonated.
Connection to the Movement
All of this sets the stage for what happened next. In March 2026, Your AI Slop Bores Me turned a chatbot-shaped interface into a human-powered prompt exchange. People submit text or drawing prompts in Human mode and answer each other in LARP as AI mode; no actual AI writes the responses. The joke spoke to the same frustration that made “slop” the word of the year.
The timing wasn’t accidental. The game arrived at a moment when people were primed to care. When “slop” had already entered the lexicon. When everyone had a story about seeing AI content that was obviously bad.
The movement, if you can call it that, is about pushing back. It’s about valuing human content. It’s about refusing to let machines do all the talking. It’s about preserving the parts of the internet that are actually worth reading, watching, and engaging with.
“Slop” is the diagnosis. The game is one small treatment. And the broader movement is about healing.
What This Means Going Forward
The fact that “slop” became Word of the Year tells us something important: this is a conversation that’s not going away. People care about the quality of content online. They notice when it’s bad. And they’re looking for ways to push back.
Whether “slop” remains in the cultural conversation or gets replaced by some other term, the underlying issue won’t change. AI is getting better at generating content. Platforms will continue to be flooded with it. And humans will continue to seek out the real thing — content that feels like it was made by an actual person with actual thoughts.
That’s the thing about being human. We’re the original content creators. We have the experiences, the perspectives, the weird tangents that AI can’t replicate. Maybe that’s what makes us valuable in an AI-filled world.
The word “slop” captured a moment. But the movement it represents — the fight for human content, for authenticity, for quality — that’s going to last a lot longer.
Want to be part of the resistance? Join the exchange at youraislopbores.me. Ask for something worth making or answer another person. One human contribution at a time.