By Joshua Tyler
| Published
Has your favorite streaming series devolved into a disastrous mess? Have you watched season after season as the writing devolves until nothing you’re watching makes sense anymore? Blame the Slop Eaters.
Slop Eaters are the ones bingeing those terrible AI-generated YouTube videos. They’re the creatures still watching new episodes of The Simpsons, even though it stopped being relevant fifteen years ago. It’s the Slop Eaters who keep the ratings numbers from going to zero when a series has been abandoned by everyone else. They’re the million or so people still watching Doctor Who. They’re the people streaming new episodes of Marvel’s Echo. It’s the Slop Eaters.
If you’ve ever wondered, “Who’s watching this?” the answer is always the same. It’s the Slop Eaters.
A Slop Eater is someone who likes what he’s watching, no matter what it is. A Slop Eater has no palate, nerve-endings, or opinions. A Slop Eater is someone who stares at a screen and likes everything on it. They’re addicts. They’re ruining everything.
Slop Eaters are easy to spot online. They defend their slopism with a series of catchphrases. The most commonly used one is, “How about you just let us enjoy a thing we like?”
It’s used to diffuse any criticism of what they’re watching. Should you push further, they’ll become angry and combative, rather than discussing what you’re saying. That’s a sure symptom of a psychological phenomenon known as cognitive dissonance.
Cognitive dissonance is the mind’s way of protecting itself from being wrong. When it’s triggered, a person will do literally anything to shield themselves from facing reality. Slop Eaters are swimming in it, and that makes them dangerous.
Cognitive dissonance causes Slop Eaters to become the loudest and most vicious voices online. They simp for the people who made the slop they’re consuming while threatening and insulting anyone who challenges their lack of opinion.
They spew nonstop positivity, and that gets them followers. Followers give them power. They then use that power to block and harass any opposing viewpoints and form a border wall around the creators of whatever slop they’re currently watching.
If you’re making a terrible television show, you probably think these people are your core fans, because they’re going to be the loudest voices and the ones you see the most. But they’re the most visible, because they’re suffering from psychological distress.
That’s a problem because, speaking as a writer myself, writers thrive on feedback. They crave it. They need it. And if you’re writing for The Bear, you’re not getting any feedback about how you did. You probably think the show’s latest season is the best thing you’ve ever written, because the Slop Eaters said so. Meanwhile, you’re baffled when you see the ratings numbers and realize your audience has vanished.
That’s why when something you’re watching takes the long, slow slide towards being terrible, it almost never recovers. Because the people making it have no idea how awful it is. They think they’re brilliant artists. They think they have legions of fans. But all they have is the Slop Eaters.
