In his slop era
What AI-generated memes say about the Trump Regime
404 Media’s Matthew Gault has called out the Trump Regime as the “AI Slop Presidency.” It’s a near-perfect moniker. Gault doesn’t mince words as to why it fits:
This has become the Slop Presidency, and AI-generated images are the perfect artistic medium for the Trump presidency. They're impulsively created, grotesque, and low-effort. Trumpworld’s fascination with slop is the logical next step for a President that, in his first term, regularly retweeted random memes created by his army of supporters on Discord or The Donald, a subreddit that ultimately became a Reddit-clone website after it was banned. AI allows his team to create media that would never exist otherwise, a particularly useful tool for a President and administration that has a hostile relationship with reality.
These AI-generated images continue to make news, because even after all these years, it’s still jarring to see this kind of crap on official government accounts. But what I can’t get out of my head is how derivative and unoriginal it all is. A poor imitation of the meme culture from 2015-17 that fueled Trump’s initial online popularity. Gault isn’t wrong to cite all of the organic meme content that Trump fanatics created on forums like r/the_donald during his first campaign and Administration.
Back then, Trump’s social media team didn’t necessarily need to create meme content. They could source it from adoring fans online. Now they’re using AI to simply recycle old memes and ideas from the God Emperor (GEOTUS) era. Looking over the images currently making news, Trump as Pope, Trump in Star Wars – if I didn’t know they were “new” content, I’d assume they were throwback memes reused from 2016. The aesthetic is exactly the same.
Trump isn’t really saying anything new with these propaganda memes, but the AI of it all seems reason enough for the press to cover it. There’s a lot of discourse around the use of AI to create memes, propaganda, and “art” (arguably God Emperor memes are both propaganda and an art form, even if they’re repulsive). I believe it’s theoretically possible to use AI to create art, and that remixing culture can be part of making art, but what we’re seeing now isn’t that, which is why the term “AI Slop” fits so well with everything the Trump Regime is disseminating online these days.
But really, “AI Slop” is a good way to describe the Trump regime entirely. Whether we’re talking about DOGE’s haphazard use of AI, AI-generated tariffs, or even the conspiracy-addled brains of everyone currently working in the Trump regime. Slop sums up the Trump Regime’s entire aesthetic quite well. If Trump or his cabinet has any grand vision of what America can be once they’ve destroyed it from within and stripped it for parts, I haven’t seen any evidence of it. Their brains are slop, and if these people are allowed to continue unabated, slop will be an accurate term for America as well.
ICYMI
From Incels to Mercenaries: When Online Hate Becomes Real-World Violence (Tech Policy Press)
This is a difficult but essential read. “Gendered violence predates the internet. There is a long history of men taking the lives of women who reject them. But the ways these kinds of retributive acts are encouraged online both celebrate and proliferate real-life violence.”
AI Therapy? How Teens Are Using Chatbots for Mental Health and Eating Disorder Recovery (Teen Vogue)
I am fascinated by how many people seem to use ChatGPT and similar AI programs for coaching and therapy. The pitfalls are obvious but I can also see why so many people feeling stigma and shame around mental health might be drawn to an AI option.
Tulsi Gabbard Reused the Same Weak Password on Multiple Accounts for Years (Wired)
Everything about this makes me want to scream into the void. I’ve just accepted that any nation can glean any secrets they want from America now. And that will remain the case as long as these people are in charge.
Kari Lake Says OAN's Far-right Coverage Will Fuel Voice of America (NPR)
OAN is already a full-on right-wing propaganda outlet, so I suppose the next step was for it to become official state media.
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Coda
Fun Announcement: Lisa Graves is launching a newsletter with Courier: “sharing key news updates about SCOTUS and the legal system – and explaining exactly what you need to know about them.” I’ve long been a fan of Lisa’s research and work, and I’m excited to have her as a colleague. I strongly recommend subscribing to Grave Injustice.
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