The Exhaustion of User Experience: The Business of Slop, and Other Infrastructural Bugs

Drawing on a prevalent ‘windshield or bug’ metaphor in UX, this talk contends that, like most technological inventions, AI slop is not an anomaly. AI carries its own potential crash. The resulting user exhaustion of enshittified content is not a “bad bug” but rather an expression of platforms optimised for scale within inequitable economies.

About the speaker:

Tony is a leading critical voice in digital communications. His influential books include Virality, The Assemblage Brain, A Sleepwalker’s Guide to Social Media, and co-edited volumes, The Spam Book and Affect and Social Media. A new book, Birth, School, Work, Death will be published in spring 2027. He works at the University of Essex Business School.