Creating in an Age of AI Slop

 

Making videos is hard. Not this is slightly inconvenient hard, but more like why does this 60‑second clip feel like it took a year off my life hard. Coming up with ideas, finding the time, setting up, recording, editing, posting, it all adds up. And the older I get, the more it feels like my energy is on a tighter budget than my bank account.

These days I don’t go out much. When I do, it’s with my family, not chasing chaos for content. That makes filming even harder, because I’m not trying to turn my kids into a show just so the algorithm will feed me a few extra views. I am not trying to create stuff just so it will get me views. So I’ve been leaning into writing again. I’ve always loved it. And in a world drowning in AI‑generated noise, it feels like one of the last places I can slow down and actually say something real.

Creating When You’re Tired and Life Is Full

Let me be honest. I haven’t found a balance between life and creating. Not even close. I’m a parent, a husband, and a 40‑something whose idea of a wild night is staying awake past 11 without regretting it the next morning. The “grind every day, post three times, optimize everything” advice just doesn’t fit my reality.

It turns out I’m not alone. Surveys of social media professionals show that around three‑quarters feel overwhelmed by their responsibilities, and nearly 70% report mental exhaustion, with almost half saying they’re at or near burnout. That’s people who do this for a living, with tools and teams. For solo creators with jobs, kids, and aging bodies that creak for no reason, the pressure hits even harder.​

So when I say making videos is hard, it’s not just me being dramatic. It’s the reality of trying to create in a system that rewards constant output and doesn’t care if you’re a person or a content machine. That’s part of why I’m sitting here writing this instead of forcing myself to film something I don’t believe in.

AI Slop vs Actual Human Voices

Now we’ve entered the era of AI slop. Endless, generic, auto‑generated videos, shorts, and posts pumped out at scale. It’s like someone built a factory that mass‑produces content‑shaped objects. They look like real videos, but when you watch them, there’s nothing behind the eyes.

People are starting to notice. Analyses of social trends in 2026 talk about “authenticity beating automation” and audiences prioritizing content that feels like it actually came from a human being. Articles like Authenticity Is Winning on Social in 2026 seem to agree. People can tell when something’s generic and rushed, and they’re over it.

AI‑generated content itself isn’t the enemy. The real problem is when it gets used as a shortcut instead of a support tool to crank out dozens of recycled videos with no real perspective behind them. That’s what I mean by AI slop. Content built to feed the feed, not to say anything.

Using AI Without Losing Yourself

Here’s the tension I live in. I do use AI. But I’m not trying to outsource my soul to a language model. There’s a fine line between AI‑assisted and AI‑replaced, and that line is everything.

Even the people studying this stuff are saying the same thing. Pieces on AI and social media argue that the healthiest setup is AI in a supporting role (helping with research, outlines, and analysis) while humans still own the voice and the final decisions. When AI takes over the front of the content instead of the back, the voice gets flat, interchangeable, and forgettable.

That’s how I try to use it. I bring the story, the scars, the perspective. AI helps me structure, clarify, and sometimes pull in stats or sources I wouldn’t have found as fast. But if I ever catch myself copy‑pasting something I don’t actually feel, that’s the moment I know I’ve crossed from tool into slop.

The Kids Drowning in Content We Didn’t Have

There’s another layer to this that bothers me more than anything. AI slop aimed at kids. The mind‑numbing, hyper‑stimulating, auto‑generated stuff flooding YouTube, TikTok, and everywhere else. Infinite bright colors, fast cuts, weird voiceovers, and nothing of substance. Content farming disguised as entertainment.

Research on short‑form video and kids is starting to put numbers behind what we all feel in our gut. One study of more than 500 children found that higher use of short‑form video (those fast, swipeable clips) was significantly associated with more inattentive behaviors, especially in younger kids. Articles breaking down “brain rot” and doomscrolling warn that this endless, high‑arousal content may be reshaping how kids process information and handle boredom.

I’ve already started talking about this publicly. If you want to see me rant on camera instead of on the page, I did a video called “AI Slop Rewiring Kids Brains?” where I dig into how this kind of content might be messing with young attention spans and expectations of reality. Click the link to check it out or watch it above. That topic deserves its own full article, but it’s connected to this one, because the same tools that can help us create better can also be weaponized to keep kids endlessly hooked.

Algorithmic Burnout and Why I’m Writing More

At some point I had to admit, the way I was trying to create wasn’t sustainable. I’d beat myself up for not posting enough, not filming enough, not capitalizing on the moment, as if life is just raw material for content. But the more I read, the more I realized this isn’t just a me problem.

Writers have started calling it algorithmic burnout. That feeling of being trapped in an endless, noisy feed where you’re expected to post constantly just to stay visible. Analyses of social media in 2026 talk about users and creators walking away from traditional feeds and looking for slower, more meaningful spaces because they’re exhausted by AI‑generated noise and engagement‑at‑all‑costs design.

So I’m giving myself permission to lean into what feels sustainable, writing. I can sit with my thoughts. I can take the time to craft something real. I can still show up honestly without turning my life or my kids into an endless highlight reel. And if the algorithm doesn’t like that, well…the algorithm isn’t the one who has to live with my burnout.

Old, Honest, and Still Here

I joke about being old, but getting older has given me something that matters more than views, perspective. I know what it feels like to waste years chasing instant hits. For almost two decades my life revolved around chasing drugs, parties, and chaos. I’m not interested in spending the second half of my life chasing a digital version of the same thing.

In a weird way, this whole AI slop era is forcing me to be clearer about why I create at all. I’m not here to flood your feed. I’m here to share what I’ve lived through, the mistakes I’ve made, the things I’m still trying to figure out. If AI can help me say that more clearly, cool. If it tries to turn me into a content mill, it can get out of the way.

The internet doesn’t need another perfect, polished, soulless clip. It needs more people telling the truth about how hard it is to be human right now. Tired, busy, anxious, hopeful, and still trying. That’s what I’m aiming for, whether it’s in a video, a post, or a piece of writing like this.

Thanks for reading everyone! Visit my site to learn more about me and explore what I’m building at Learn With Hatty. Remember, stay curious and keep learning.

Original article on BULB

I Didn't Think I'd Make It to 41 (But Here We Are)

 

There’s this weird moment that sneaks up on you in your late 30s, early 40s, where you look around and think, “How the hell am I still here?” You replay the nights you don’t entirely remember, the people you hurt, the chances you wasted, and somehow your heart is still beating and the sun still comes up like it didn’t see any of it.

That’s kind of where I’m at right now. I’m turning 41 this year, my body feels like it’s cashing checks my younger self wrote on credit, and I’m suddenly aware of how brutally short life really is. When you’re young, you think time is unlimited. Then one day you wake up, your knees hurt for no reason, you’ve got kids asking for snacks every 4 minutes, and you realize, this is it. This is the miracle you were too busy partying through to notice.

Rebel Without a Clue

When I was younger, I was a rebel without a cause. I wasn’t deep, I wasn’t mysterious, I was just lost and loud. I started partying around 16, and at first it felt harmless. It was friends, music, late nights, laughing until the sun came up. It felt like “living life,” the way everyone says you should when you’re young.

The problem is, some of us don’t have an off switch. Slowly, the fun nights turned into I need to get messed up nights. The party stopped being a weekend thing and started being a personality trait. I wasn’t a person who partied. I was a party person. There’s a difference, and it’ll eat you alive if you don’t notice it early.

If you’re reading this and any of this sounds too familiar, it might be worth talking to someone who’s not inside your own head. You don’t have to wait until you hit rock bottom to get help. Talk to your friends, family, or anyone who is willing to listen. It is all fun and games until you wake up in your 40s and realize how much time and energy you have wasted on all of the wrong things.

When the Party Becomes the Prison

At some point, having a good time turned into “I don’t know how to function without this.” I got addicted to the lifestyle, the drugs, the chaos, the feeling that something was always happening. On the outside, it looked like I was living wild and free. On the inside, I was chained to the next high, the next drink, the next night I wouldn’t remember.

And yeah, it goes fast. One day you’re 17 sneaking out, and then you blink and it’s 24 years later. The problem with abusing your body is that your body keeps the receipts. Now I’m here, wondering why my body screams at me sometimes and why my brain feels like it’s always on overdrive.

Depression, Anxiety, and Still Waking Up

These days, I live with some heavy mental health issues. I guess it could also be PTSD in a way but who knows. I am not a doctor. Some mornings it feels like gravity doubled overnight. I wake up and my first thought isn’t “What a beautiful day,” it’s more like “Can I actually do this again?” And yet, I do. Not gracefully, not perfectly, but I do. Not all mornings are doom and gloom. Think of it more like a roller coaster. Some days I am up and some days I am way down. 

I have to remind myself constantly that I am still here. That has to count for something right? After everything I put my body and mind through, the fact that I’m breathing, typing this, existing at all, there’s meaning in that. Even if I don’t always see it clearly. And if you’re reading this and you’re still here too, after everything you’ve survived, that counts for something for you as well.

Life is short and precious. It seems like everything is taking forever when you are young. Just remember that when you get older things start moving way to fast. Months seem like weeks, weeks seem like days, and days fly by.

The Miracle in the Mundane

Here’s the wild part. For most of my life, I treated people like objects in the background of my main character movie. I saw good times as the goal and other humans as props. As I’ve gotten older, that’s the part that stings the most. The people I pushed away, the ones I hurt, the ones who deserved better than the broken version of me I kept handing them.

Now I see people differently. I see them as living, breathing, beautiful energy. I see my kids’ faces when they laugh, my partner’s eyes when they’re tired but still show up, and I think, “This is the miracle. This is what I was too numb to see before.” Life isn’t just the big moments, it’s the stupid little ones like breakfast chaos, inside jokes, a random song in the car that end up meaning everything.

Dad, Husband, Still Learning

I’m a dad now. I’m a husband. And I’m very much not done yet. I may have burned a lot of years at the altar of “the party,” but I refuse to let that be the whole story. If my purpose now is raising my kids so they don’t make the same mistakes I did, then that’s a purpose I can live with. Actually, that’s a purpose worth fighting for.

My past life, every bad choice, every blackout, and every regret built the man I am today. I don’t glorify it, but I don’t completely hate it either, because without all that mess, I might never have understood how precious this “normal” life is. I might not have learned how important it is to cherish every day, every moment, every imperfect breath.

The Life of HattyHats (To Be Continued)

Someday, I want to tell the full story of HattyHats. All of it. The ugly, the hilarious, the painful, the stuff I’m not proud of, and the moments that still keep me alive when my brain tells me not to bother. I don’t know if anyone will read it. I don’t know if anyone will care. But I know there’s at least one person out there right now who thinks the party will never stop and nothing can touch them.

If I can help even one person realize their life is worth more than the next high, the next drink, the next reckless night, then all of this, every scar, every regret, every word I’m typing right now will be worth it. Life is shorter than we think, but longer than it feels when we’re in the dark. 

I know it is hard to admit when you have a problem. you might not even have a problem yet but you can feel that urge to get messed up more and more as time goes on. Take a second and look at yourself. You are amazing and the future needs you. I am constantly wondering what my life would have been like if I took another path. I have to remind myself that the things I went through have molded me into who I am today. It is not about changing who you were but more about changing who you are becoming. 

Thanks for reading everyone! I know this is a little different then my normal articles. Just wanted to share some personal thoughts. Now back to our normal broadcasting. My next article is going to be about AI agents and the new Ad network being built. Pretty sure it is one none of us signed up for either....stay tuned and thanks for being here 💪

Visit my site to learn more about me and explore what I’m building at Learn With Hatty. Remember, stay curious and keep learning.

Original article on BULB

Meta’s Smart Glasses Privacy Nightmare

 

When Meta pitched its Ray‑Ban smart glasses, the promise was pretty simple. Live in the moment, capture hands‑free video, and get AI assistance just by saying “Hey Meta.” What they didn’t put in the glossy ads was that some of those very personal moments would be watched, paused, and annotated by low‑paid workers in Kenya who say they’re seeing people naked, using the bathroom, having sex, and flashing bank cards to the camera, details that came out in interviews with 32 annotators conducted by Swedish newspapers and summarized by PrivacyGuides.

Those findings quickly jumped from niche privacy circles to mainstream headlines, with the BBC reporting that intimate AI glasses videos triggered a response from the UK data watchdog after it learned that human reviewers were seeing people in highly sensitive situations. (BBC News) Now regulators are asking why people’s most private moments are being shipped halfway around the world to improve Meta’s AI.​

What Meta’s Smart Glasses Actually Do

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Ray‑Ban Meta smart glasses look like regular sunglasses, but they hide cameras, microphones, and an AI assistant that kicks in when you press a capture button or say “Hey Meta,” sending short clips to your phone and Meta’s servers so the AI can identify objects and answer questions, a workflow documented in network‑traffic analysis by PrivacyGuides. On paper, it sounds fairly controlled: Meta markets the glasses as only recording when explicitly triggered and highlights a small white LED that turns on when they’re filming, alongside taglines like “You’re in control of your data and content” in the device’s privacy settings. (PrivacyGuides’ UI screenshots and analysis)​

But when privacy researchers and journalists actually watched the app’s network traffic, they saw a different story. Every time users invoked Meta AI through the glasses, the companion app sent video and audio to Meta’s servers, with no way to use the AI purely locally, and with data transfers that did not depend on the “share data to improve products” toggle in the settings. That technical behavior is laid out step‑by‑step in PrivacyGuides’ packet‑capture write‑up.​

How “Private” Moments End Up in a Kenyan Annotation Queue

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The heart of the scandal is that some of these AI interactions aren’t just ingested by machines, they’re watched by human annotators working for Sama in Nairobi. According to a Swedish investigation recapped by the Free Press Journal in a piece bluntly titled “Meta Ray‑Ban AI Smart Glasses Users Are Being Watched Having Sex, Undressing, Even Pooping,” workers describe a steady flow of clips showing people on the toilet, changing clothes, and having sex in their bedrooms. (Free Press Journal summary of the Swedish reporting)​

One annotator quoted in that investigation says, “In some videos you can see someone going to the toilet, or getting undressed. I don’t think they know, because if they knew they wouldn’t be recording,” a line that PrivacyGuides also highlights as capturing the basic consent problem. Others told reporters they routinely see bank cards held up close to the camera, personal documents, porn watched via the glasses, and conversations about mental health or crime, details echoed in tech‑policy write‑ups like The Register’s coverage of the UK probe.

Meta’s line has been that faces are blurred before clips are sent for review, but annotators told Swedish reporters that the blurring often fails in low light or awkward angles, leaving people clearly identifiable. Something PrivacyGuides notes after comparing workers’ accounts with Meta’s anonymization claims in its longform breakdown. The result, as one worker put it, is that “we see everything,” a phrase that later gave a PrivacyGuides community thread its title.

What Meta Says vs. What Users Actually Hear

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Officially, Meta’s defense is that this is standard practice for training AI and that it’s disclosed in the legal fine print. In the UK, for example, the company’s supplemental AI terms state that “in certain instances, Meta will evaluate your interactions with AIs… and this evaluation may be automated or manual (human),” a line the company pointed to when the BBC asked about the Swedish investigation. (BBC quoting Meta’s AI terms) It also insists the glasses have clear recording indicators and that users are told not to film in private places and to notify people when the capture light is on. Points Meta emphasized in statements reported by both the BBC and The Register.

The problem is that this “we told you in the ToS” defense doesn’t look much like meaningful consent when you compare it to how the product is marketed and sold. PrivacyGuides notes that the in‑app copy literally tells users “You’re in control of your data and content” right above a toggle for “Share data and interactions with Meta to help us improve our products,” yet network tests showed that some recordings were still sent for human annotation even when that toggle was disabled. (PrivacyGuides technical analysis and screenshots) Swedish reporters also found that store staff frequently reassured customers that data stayed on the phone or that only anonymous telemetry was sent. Claims that do not line up with the actual behavior described by the annotators and captured in PrivacyGuides’ traffic logs.​

From a regulator’s perspective, this starts to look less like informed consent and more like dark‑pattern‑driven “consent theater”. Friendly slogans and switches up front, legally dense disclosures in AI terms, and then a lot of “we reserve the right” in the background. That’s why the UK Information Commissioner’s Office told the BBC it found the reports “concerning” and has written to Meta demanding an explanation of how the glasses comply with UK data‑protection law. (BBC report on the ICO’s response)​

The Human Cost on the Annotation Side

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There’s also the human cost for the people on the other side of the screen. Sama, the contractor running Meta’s annotation operation in Nairobi, has been criticized before for its content‑moderation and AI‑training work, and workers told Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs‑Posten that the smart‑glasses project adds a new type of psychological strain. Instead of watching graphic violence, they spend their shifts watching strangers’ most intimate domestic moments. Those accounts are relayed in detail in the Swedish‑based reporting summarized by the Free Press Journal and in German‑language tech analysis at The Decoder.

One of the most telling quotes in that coverage comes from a worker who says, “You think that if they knew about the extent of the data collection, no one would dare to use the glasses,” which PrivacyGuides pulls out as a key line in its news post on the scandal. Annotators describe heavily monitored offices where they can’t bring their own phones or cameras, but where they’re required to watch and label clips that leave them feeling uncomfortable and guilty, knowing the people in the videos probably had no idea they were being observed in this way.

What you get is a two‑layer exploitation model. End users who are nudged into a data‑collection scheme they don’t really understand, and low‑paid workers who technically consented in a contract but have very little real power to say no to assignments or push back on what they’re being asked to watch.

Why Regulators Are Suddenly Paying Attention

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This story crossed from “privacy niche” to “regulatory headache” because it sits at the intersection of three red‑flag areas. Intimate bodily data, cross‑border data transfers, and aggressive AI training practices. The BBC’s piece quotes the UK Information Commissioner’s Office saying that “any processing of personal data must be lawful, fair and transparent,” and confirming that it has contacted Meta about whether the way it uses smart‑glasses data meets those standards. (BBC coverage of the ICO’s statement) Tech outlets like The Register frame this as a potential test case for how strictly Europe’s privacy regulators will enforce transparency and data‑minimization rules when it comes to AI wearables.

PrivacyGuides goes further and argues that what’s at stake is whether regulators will treat “intimate footage from your bedroom or bathroom” as just another form of app telemetry or as a special category that requires much more explicit consent and stronger guardrails, pointing readers to the lack of a true opt‑out and the mismatch between marketing and reality in its in‑depth write‑up. The Decoder, looking at the European side, notes that sending this kind of data to annotators in Kenya raises not just consent questions but also issues about international transfers and the adequacy of safeguards under EU‑style privacy regimes. (The Decoder’s analysis)

If regulators decide this crosses the line, you could see demands for stronger default protections on smart glasses and other wearables. Explicit, separate opt‑ins for human review, stricter limits on exporting intimate footage to third countries, or even bans on certain types of AI training data. If they don’t, companies will read it as a green light to keep pushing the boundary of what “improve our AI” lets them do.

The Bigger Picture

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As bad as this is on its own, the Ray‑Ban Meta scandal is really a preview of where AI wearables are headed. The combination of always‑on sensors, natural‑language interfaces, and cloud‑based AI means there’s a strong technical incentive to vacuum up as much real‑world footage as possible, then send it to people and models to make the system smarter. Privacy‑focused communities like the PrivacyGuides forum have been pointing out that once smart glasses become normal, everyone around you is effectively inside someone else’s data‑collection pipeline whether they like it or not.​

The Meta case also exposes the limits of old‑school “notice and consent” when the device is a pair of glasses instead of an app screen. You can’t realistically walk into a bathroom, a doctor’s office, or a friend’s house and give a meaningful privacy notice to every person who might walk into frame, yet the Swedish investigation described by Free Press Journal makes clear that those are exactly the settings being recorded. If we keep pretending that a checkbox in a companion app covers everyone in the camera’s field of view, we’re basically accepting ubiquitous, unconsented surveillance as the new normal.

So the real question isn’t just Did Meta mess up? (yes, obviously) but “What kind of world are we building if we let this become standard practice?” Are we comfortable with an ecosystem where improving AI routinely means factory‑scale human review of our most private moments, and where the only notice is a blinking LED and a buried clause in the AI terms of service?

Do you own a pair of Meta Glasses? Be honest, do you take them off during private moments? Drop your thoughts in the comments below. Thanks for reading and remember, always do your own research (DYOR).

Original article on BULB
Visit my site to learn more about me and explore what I’m building at Learn With Hatty.