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My first friend was the garbage man.
His clanging truck, with its great trash masher, clattered down my street every Tuesday morning. My three-year-old self was drawn to this spectacular disruption to his quiet day.
“Where’s Eli?” he asked my mom one morning.
“He started nursery school this week,” she replied, “so, he won’t be around on Tuesdays anymore.”
My mom doesn’t remember my friend’s reaction, but the toddler who’d obsessed over his visits for months would never see him again.
The purple truck rumbled away.
Let’s get one thing straight: Obsession is a sign that we’re still human. And some have said that, as a kid, I was more obsessive than most.
Which brings me to my latest: the word “slop” (shows how far I’ve come from garbage).
Slop—or, shhhhlop—as I like to say, presents itself the same way it sounds. Mushy. Indistinct. An uncanny reminder of something, even if you can’t put your finger on what.
It’s used these days to describe AI-generated content, but it applies to just about anything.
Slop is, at its core, a cheaper, blander, and more accessible alternative to the version we love—what we call the “original.”
I care deeply about original experiences. It’s the stuff that makes me feel alive and creative, going all the way back to that garbage truck.
Long after my family moved from that house, movies like Titanic and The Great Escape triggered obsessive reactions in me for their portrayals of trauma and heroism. I made icebergs in the freezer to set against my toy boats. A friend and I once spent a summer trying to tunnel under my house, to the chagrin of my parents’ lawn guy.
After college, an episode of The Chef Show inspired me to develop a pizza dough recipe to serve to friends on Friday nights. This grew into a welcome diversion from the banality of weeknight cooking.
Each of these episodes show how someone else’s obsession—a noisy truck, ocean exploration, honoring prisoners of war, mastering junk food—could benefit others.
Slop is what you get when you remove all human obsessions, except for one: the obsession to produce. The result isn’t bad per se. It’s maybe even better than mediocre. Just close enough to original to fool someone who’s not paying attention.
If you’re still with me, I hope you’re paying attention.
Because this isn’t about shlitppity, shloppity, shlop. It’s about humanity.
Lately, I’ve started to ask a question of every thing I meet throughout my day:
Does it come from someone, or was it made for something?
When something comes from someone, a human obsession bleeds through. Take the examples of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, or Todd Graves’s Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers. Passion, art, billion-dollar breaded goodness.
But when something is made for a system, when it’s optimized as a best guess at what people should like, it hollows out the original intent.
I ask the same question a couple of times a day, and I try to focus on the experiences with a point of view and a little vulnerability baked in.
It makes me feel like I’m reclaiming humanity, little by little. Not just that I’m avoiding “slop” but that I’m recognizing someone who has put themselves out there.
I have a feeling a lot of us could use that right now.
So try it. Ask the question three times a day.
A restaurant menu. A brand email. A movie sequel. A LinkedIn post. Even your own habits.
From a person or for a system? Slop or obsession?
See if it gives you any perspective on what you value. Maybe you’ll take fresh notice of the shawarma place that opened on the corner. Or the annoying Instagrammer whose posts keep tripping up your feed.
If you’re thinking to yourself, “Eli, your test is too limiting, almost everything is made for a system,” then you have arrived at the point. We’re drowning in slop, because it’s easy to make and easy for us to accept.
But you don't have to accept it every time.
Choose to do just one thing because you can tell it was someone’s obsession.
And notice the way it makes you feel. Maybe you’ll be obsessed, too.
Hope to see you soon.
Slop it to Me
Seriously, if you find yourself asking the for/from question and it leads to a new experience, I want to know. Shoot me an email here.
Looking back: Last week, I laid out the virtues of a good New Year’s Eve celebration.
Coming up: I’ll talk about my first love after college.