Viral hit Your AI Slop Bores Me is more than a joke

Four years after the ChatGPT revolution began, it's fair to say the humans are getting a little restless. AI's infinite slop machine cannot go on unchallenged; it's time for creatives to fight back. That much is clear from anyone who's joined the cult known as Your AI Slop Bores Me, where users conspire to steal AI's job.

The viral hit of the week, YASBM — let's just call it that — is a website where humans go to pretend to be AI to other humans. Users LARP (that's live-action role-play to you non-nerds) by writing or drawing anything that other humans request, within a strict time limit. You earn tokens by LARPing successfully; you spend tokens asking questions yourself.

The result? Amateurish and charming, which is very much the whole YASBM aesthetic (the site was designed to mimic the lo-fi coding of the 1990s web) — and very much the opposite of AI slop.

For example, I spent a token asking "AI" for a picture of "a vampire drinking a cup of blood" — an image conjured up earlier in the day by a friend going through chemo who found herself oddly jealous of other patients getting transfusions. The resulting scribble from a stranger brightened my friend's day more than any polished-but-soulless image I could have asked for on ChatGPT. (What's more, it was better for the environment.)

YASBM reminded me of the 0.5 selfie, Gen Z's deliberately silly, surprisingly meaningful revolt against the too-perfect selfie world of Millennials. I was also reminded that humans creating freely for humans can hold a lot more interest to humans than machine content. Funny, that.

And it seems like a lot of other humans agree — because YASBM doesn't seem to be one of those viral hits that fades after a week. There are early signs that YASBM has what it takes to become something bigger.

'People enjoy being the AI'

"We’re now seeing a more loyal user base with people returning daily," YASBM creator Mihir Maroju tells Mashable. That is, roughly a million unique visitors (not to mention more than 25,000 hardcore fans on the YASBM Discord server) coming back for more "helpful" answers and charming sketches. "People still enjoy being the AI over the human, though."

Navigating a week's worth of viral exposure — from Reddit, to a Twitter/X trending topic, to TikTok — hasn't been easy. Earlier this week, YASBM practically melted down its hosting company's server farm, leaving the site barely useable. But in the spirit of YASBM, Maroju found human help.

In just a few days, "the project has grown into a small volunteer team," he enthuses — with four humans on website and support, and five more managing the Discord server. "We’ve also tightened moderation systems and queues to make sure spammers don’t ruin the fun for everyone else," Maroju adds. Appropriately enough, that means users must click to confirm they're human.

What's next? When I asked Maroju if there was a YASBM app in the works, here was his reply: "We have some very cool stuff cooking! Stay tuned."

There's something else humans do best: create mystery around what's next. Your move, ChatGPT.