Human Slurry
Scrolling on my phone, I clicked into and read an article about Yaupon, which is apparently North America’s only native caffeinated plant. Since we’re speed-running the apocalypse over here in the US, the thought is that high tariffs on coffee and tea might revitalize an otherwise ultra-niche “Made in America” product. Huh, interesting.
I scroll down to the end and then see this:
I’ve seen summarized reviews on Amazon, but never comments. Honestly, I just laughed.
It’s long been known that the comments on news articles are trash: filled with bots or humans indistinguishable from bots. But there is something deeply… I don’t know a strong enough word for it. Cynical? Nihilistic? Absurd? Maybe just fucking comedic about inviting your (presumably) human readers to comment on a story and then just blending them all up in a great human slurry summary so no one has to actually read any of them. At what point do you not just cut out the middle(hu)man?
If want a summary of the future, that’s it. Wirehead, but made out of people.
Posted on July 16, 2025, in Commentary, Philosophy and tagged AI, Comments, Human Slurry, Wirehead. Bookmark the permalink. 4 Comments.
In An Age 
You said: “we’re speed-running the apocalypse over here in the US”. Don’t worry EU will get there way faster with endlessly stupid and corrupted leftist politicians. I in fact envy your ‘apocalypse’, and you will soon see why.
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I haven’t been tracking anything over there, but I somehow doubt it’s worse than the coordinated effort to destroy the scientific community, slam the accelerator on AI while simultaneously pulling back on clean(er) energy to fuel it, and nonsensical/contradictory trade policies that can be nothing other than intentional grift and looting.
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As an illustration of how differently people can interpret the same experience, I read the post down to the image, read the caption under the image, couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to be taking from it, clicked on the image to enlarge to see if I could see what I was missing, re-read the caption, finally decided I just didn’t get it and carried on to the second part of the post.
That explained what point was being made but I still didn’t really “get” it. I find those comment summaries on Amazon pretty helpful. I read them first, then I go to the comments themselves and read the specifics. It’s just like an introduction in a book – it tells you what to expect and primes your expectations. It doesn’t replace anything, just adds some context. I’d be happy to see something similar at the head of comment threads in general, although they’d need to be long enough to merit summarizing of course. No point in a precis that takeas as long to read as the two or three comments it covers.
(What I really thought your post was going to tell me, by the way, based on the title, was that this new caffeine source was being fertilized with human excrement…)
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For reviews, you are typically just interested in whether the product’s claims are accurate or not. If it says “easy to clean” but there are a dozen 1-star reviews saying that cleaning it is a nightmare, you end up with actionable information for your purchase.
A book introduction is marketing and/or a hook.
Meanwhile, a comment section is (or should be) about engagement. A back and forth. You know, human interaction in some form. Granted, comment sections on news stories have long been a cesspit of disinformation (parroted or novel) so perhaps nothing of value was lost.
But this really was the first time I’ve seen an AI-summary of a comment section, and I did indeed laugh. Because at some level, I get it: we want to know what other people think, what the consensus is, and a quick summary saves us from having to sieve through the shit. Makes us feel good without having to put in the work to… actually read anything people wrote. Because, yeah, the first question I had was “why didn’t the article say what it tasted like?”
The problem is that, at some point, the people doing the commenting are going to realize no one but AI is reading them. Maybe they will continue to shout at clouds, like us bloggers to a declining audience; the act of communicating enough to make us happy. Or, more likely, AI will just start making things up and/or accept payment for whatever summary is desired.
It was at that point I realized that I was feeling good (“I had the same thought as everyone else!”) based on an AI-generated summary that I would never bother to actually verify the veracity of. That All Comments button could have been a broken link and I wouldn’t know. Don’t care to know. I consumed and moved on to the next thing, wirehead humming.
…but yeah, I could have let the post cook a bit more, in retrospect.
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