{"id":23940,"date":"2026-09-14T00:58:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T00:58:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scannn.com\/confessions-of-an-unrepentant-slop-snob\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T00:58:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T00:58:18","slug":"confessions-of-an-unrepentant-slop-snob","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scannn.com\/lv\/confessions-of-an-unrepentant-slop-snob\/","title":{"rendered":"Confessions of an Unrepentant Slop Snob"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n
\n

This is a peek into the research behind our \u201cAI Norms and Values\u201d docs, which we developed over the summer and recently shared on our site. If you\u2019re looking for those, go here:<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    \n
  1. \n

    How Honeycomb does business, the principles we all abide by<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  2. \n

    Why Honeycomb engineering is embracing AI<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  3. \n

    AI norms and values (and ethical issues we have a stance on<\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Back to our story.<\/p>\n

    Earlier this year, I was spending a lot of time stewing over why everyone around me seemed so frazzled and on edge. <\/p>\n

    Half the company was spitting mad about all the slop they were getting. Instead of receiving five crisp bullet points, they were getting twenty-page docs full of padding and slop. They would ask a colleague a question, and the reply would begin with \u201cClaude says\u2026\u201d <\/span>These folks felt like their time and attention were being not just taken for granted, but actively abused.<\/span><\/p>\n

    The other half of the company felt equally injured. They were working faster and delivering better outcomes than ever, and wasn\u2019t this exactly what we had asked of them? They were more upset about the fact that some people hadn\u2019t updated their workflows in years. Of <\/span>course<\/span><\/em> you can\u2019t keep up if you aren\u2019t willing to adapt, they protested.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Everyone was mad. One side wanted to place limits on AI (\u201cI am so sick of reviewing docs the sender didn\u2019t even read!\u201d). The other side wanted us to force people to use AI (\u201cI am so sick of reviewing docs riddled with basic errors that a single pass would have caught!”)<\/p>\n

    I was, at different times, in both camps.<\/p>\n

    \n
    <\/p>\n
    <\/picture><\/div>\n

    <\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

    But the thing that bothered me most was how often I kept hearing the word \u201cdehumanizing\u201d. People said they no longer felt like they had a human connection with their coworkers anymore. This was new.<\/span><\/p>\n

    My first instinct was to say that tools are tools. The quality of the work is all that matters \u2014 <\/span>outcomes<\/em> are all that matter \u2014 not how the work was made. Do our customers care if we use AI or not? Probably not. They care a lot about the quality of the product and whether it meets their needs, not so much about how we made it.<\/span><\/p>\n

    So maybe we all just need to be ruthlessly outcome-oriented. Build the best thing we can, as fast as we can. AI is a powerful and versatile tool, so we should use it wherever we can to make our work better and do it faster.<\/p>\n

    Is it really that simple? I had nearly convinced myself that it was, when I noticed how contradictory my own behavior had become.<\/p>\n

    At the same time I was repeating \u201cit doesn\u2019t matter how it was made, it matters how good it is\u201d every day, I was developing a violent disgust reflex for AI-generated text on the side. <\/p>\n

    I\u2019m not sure exactly when it happened. As recently as December 2025, I still found some Claude-isms kind of catchy and clever \u2014 I noticed AI language, but it didn\u2019t trigger violent rage. By spring, I was snapping at the tendons of any poor soul who showed up in my inbox with an \u201cI\u2019d value your take on this\u201d or \u201cthe call most leaders still won\u2019t make\u201d. <\/p>\n

    It started with DMs and emails, but it didn\u2019t stop there. By summer, my reactive rage-response to AI-generated text had spread to include most forms of writing. If I\u2019m reading a newsletter and I start to sense AI-isms, I delete and unsubscribe. If I\u2019m reading a blog post, I close the tab; if I\u2019m on social media, I unfollow or unfriend. If it happens repeatedly, I will go out of my way to avoid that writer in the future. I mostly try to not engage, but if I had a button that would let me deliver a 10,000 volt shock to the author I would slam that button every time and I wouldn\u2019t care who saw.<\/p>\n

    \n
    <\/p>\n
    \"\"<\/picture><\/div>\n

    <\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

    More importantly, <\/span>I judge them<\/span><\/em>. Yes, I look down on them. If they don\u2019t care enough about their own point of view to do the work and refine it themselves, if they don\u2019t care enough about me to write me a note, then why the fuck should I give them a single morsel of my precious attention?<\/span><\/p>\n

    By the time I became fully aware of my aversion, it had already become fairly extreme. But this makes no sense, if all that matters is the outcome.<\/p>\n

    I don\u2019t know about you, but most of my insights seem to start this way: me, loudly insisting Thing A is true, while persistently behaving as though Thing B is true, and finally, through much toil and suffering and resentment, finding some way to reconcile the two.<\/span><\/p>\n

    It is super annoying. But this is what got me looking a little closer at language and what was happening under the hood.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Writing is thinking on paper, as William Zinsser once said. Writing is language, encoded for posterity. But language, and writing, do many different jobs for us. <\/p>\n

    Language evolved as a way to connect \u2014 person to person, mind to mind, one mind to many. This is some of the oldest and strangest wiring we have as human beings, and the neurological infrastructure for linguistics gets used and reused, over and over.<\/p>\n

    In software, for example, we convert natural language into bits and bytes that computers can use to do math on. Lawyers convert language into legal text and taxonomies. The technical and professional worlds are awash in dialects where language has been abstracted from its roots as an emotional and relational tool and given functional, depersonalized meanings. <\/p>\n

    \n
    <\/p>\n
    \"\"<\/picture><\/div>\n

    <\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

    In many of these contexts, substituting AI-generated language can be wholly acceptable. No one blinks an eye if you use structured data generated by AI, or a formal proof generated by AI (as long as it\u2019s accurate). The situations where the use of AI tends to land jarringly, causing frustration, rage, even a sense of betrayal, are the ones where the value of the communication is less abstract, and more personal or relational.<\/p>\n

    Every job language does for us is either functional or relational, or some combination of the two, and knowing which one you\u2019re in the middle of tells you a lot about whether AI belongs there, and how it\u2019s likely to be received<\/p>\n

    There are a bunch of different frameworks out there for disclosing how much AI went into building something, and it took me a while to realize why none of them were hitting the mark for me. That\u2019s because it\u2019s less about <\/span>how much<\/em> AI is being used, and more about <\/span>in which contexts<\/em> people are using AI, and secondarily whether or not they disclosed and I consented to it being used there. <\/span><\/p>\n

    I apologize with all my heart for coming up with Yet Another Framework, but I published one in the recent \u201c<\/span>AI Norms and Values<\/a>\u201d post on the honeycomb blog, because I couldn\u2019t find anyone else talking about it in quite this way. (If you know of one, tell me!)<\/span><\/p>\n

    Here it is. Personal on the left, the value is that it comes from a specific person who thought or felt something; functional on the right, the value is about the idea being communicated, not the person who said it.<\/p>\n

    \n
    <\/p>\n
    \"Personal<\/picture><\/div>\n

    <\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

    Sometimes, yes, the quality of the work is all that matters. If you and I are collaborating on a document or a diff, all our collective comments and edits are in shared service of making the ideas better. It isn\u2019t about whose idea it was or which tools we used, we are just iterating and improving until it\u2019s as good as we can make it. The use of AI here is just another tool, one of many. In these situations, it\u2019s appropriate to be ruthlessly outcome-oriented.<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
    <\/p>\n
    \"\"<\/picture><\/div>\n

    <\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

    Other times, the value of a piece of writing derives from the fact that a particular person said it, thought it or felt it, or its value is grounded in your relationship. Why do you care more about what your skip level says about your performance than you would care about reading the same advice in a book? Likely because this is someone you know and respect, someone with influence over your career prospects, someone who knows what you\u2019re capable of and has a vested interest in helping you succeed. In these circumstances, people expect to hear your voice; if they don\u2019t, they may invent all kinds of terrifying reasons why.<\/span><\/p>\n

    There are plenty of messy situations in the middle where objective and subjective overlap, but people are usually crystal clear on <\/span>what it is<\/em> <\/span>they want<\/em> out of any given interaction.<\/span><\/p>\n

    When I started talking to my coworkers, trying to figure out why they were so angry and frustrated all the time, one thing I heard over and over was, \u201cI asked for my colleague\u2019s opinion, and they sent me back a Claude snippet. I wanted to know what THEY THOUGHT.\u201d When someone wants your opinion, AI generated text registers as a violation.<\/p>\n

    Another common source of friction was performance reviews. \u201cMy performance review was obviously written by ChatGPT. Did my manager even read it, or just push a button and spit it out? What are they even there for, if they aren\u2019t even writing my reviews?\u201d We encourage our managers to use AI to develop systems that help them become better managers, but this is a clear risk of using AI to aid in the writing or editing of reviews: if your voice is lost in the process, it may destroy trust between you.<\/p>\n

    I have a longer explanation of the four points \u2014 personal opinion, professional opinion, artifacts, code \u2014 <\/span>at the Honeycomb blog<\/a>, and I discuss more of these examples in depth, so I\u2019m not going to recap it all here.<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
    <\/p>\n
    \"\"<\/picture><\/div>\n

    <\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

    The more any interaction is personal or relational, the more the use of AI in that context tends to cheapen it and degrade trust, unless AI has been specifically invited into that relational context. If you\u2019re expecting a human-to-human interaction, or if you\u2019re specifically requesting a personal response, and what you get back seems like it was pasted from a chatbot, it can be intensely alienating and angering. Even \u2014 yes \u2014 dehumanizing.<\/p>\n

    I think this is why I went from finding AI generated text inoffensive to rage-inducing in such short order. I don\u2019t get mad when people use AI to outbound to me (or maybe I should say, I don\u2019t get <\/span>madder<\/em>), but when someone writes to introduce themselves or ask for some of my time to review their startup or whatever, I get furious. You\u2019re reaching out to me, human to human, using <\/span>slop<\/em>? You can\u2019t even be bothered to write your own \u201chello\u201d? <\/span>Fuck you.<\/em><\/p>\n

    Or if someone engages with one of my posts and asks questions, but they\u2019re using AI-generated slop, then I get mad because they\u2019re wasting my time. I\u2019ve engaged with enough slop arguments to know there\u2019s no <\/span>there<\/em> there. I don\u2019t know which parts are coming from them and which parts are just meaningless slop.<\/span><\/p>\n

    If I\u2019m giving someone I don\u2019t know some of my scarce and valuable time, I at least want to know I\u2019m giving time to <\/span>them <\/em>and <\/span>their problems<\/em>, not chasing some meaningless robot effluvia, as I have done far too many times before.<\/span><\/p>\n

    People always say, \u201coh, but those were MY ideas, I was only getting AI to help me format them\u201d. In my experience, people vastly overestimate how much comes from them and underestimate how much comes from the AI. And anyway, all I have to go on is the signal I have.<\/p>\n

    \n
    <\/p>\n
    \"\"<\/picture><\/div>\n

    <\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

    This is also why I don\u2019t want to spend time reading any blog posts or newsletters or social media posts written by AI. I don\u2019t care what the AI vomits forth. I have an AI of my own, I can read any time that I want. If I\u2019m reading someone else, I want to know that it\u2019s their thoughts. AI slop isn\u2019t a perfect proxy, but it\u2019s a decent weeder. Besides, aesthetically, it\u2019s just so, so, <\/span>so bad<\/em>. I value good writing more than ever these days.<\/span><\/p>\n

    AI is not magic. AI is just a tool, and we should use it anywhere and everywhere we can to do better work, faster, and deliver better outcomes for our users.<\/p>\n

    But companies, too, are more than one thing.<\/p>\n

    Every company exists to deliver great outcomes for their users and returns for their stakeholders. But every company is also a collective of people who have come together to achieve a lofty goal, something larger than they could have individually achieved. Ideally, these goals are in harmony. <\/p>\n

    Relationships matter. A respectful environment matters too. And whereas lines of code are indifferent to their origin, and can be validated by harnesses and tests, people are intensely attuned to the language people use with them. Relationship maintenance cannot be automated.<\/p>\n

    Yes, AI is just software. But it is special in one way: the slick, sycophantic, uncanny valleyness of the way it communicates. Human-like, but not human, which is somehow vastly more alienating than messages that are plainly automated. This is why communication that sounds like AI is so degrading to trust. We all know how easy it is to have the machine spit out some bullshit on our behalf, and we don\u2019t want it done to us.<\/p>\n

    This means that humans who want to use it for interpersonal interactions will need to work hard to compensate for the loss of trust it engenders. It can be done \u2014 it\u2019s not impossible. But it will not work to simply deny this effect and shove AI-generated happy birthdays and performance reviews down everyone\u2019s throats. Not in 2026.<\/p>\n

    \n
    <\/p>\n
    \"\"<\/picture><\/div>\n

    <\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

    I\u2019m not claiming that this personal\/subjective vs functional\/objective scale represents some universal truth, or that all companies should adopt guidelines like this one. But I also don\u2019t think I\u2019m alone in feeling this way.<\/span> And I think most companies would benefit from writing down their expectations for how people should communicate with each other right now. <\/span><\/p>\n

    This is why we invested so much energy into writing down our AI norms and values. (If you haven\u2019t been following the series, it\u2019s all up now: <\/span>How We Do Business<\/a>, <\/span>AI for Honeycomb Engineering<\/a>, and <\/span>AI Norms and Values<\/a>.)<\/span><\/p>\n

    A lot of things about communication that used to be clear (like \u201cthis was written by a person\u201d), no longer are. And a lot of hurt feelings, anger, and frustration are roiling about in the breach. Old norms no longer apply, and new norms are not yet broadly developed or agreed upon. <\/p>\n

    At times like these, having an agreed-upon convention or standard, <\/span>any<\/em> convention or standard, can really help.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This is a peek into the research behind our \u201cAI Norms and Values\u201d docs, which we developed over the summer and recently shared on our site. If you\u2019re looking for those, go here: How Honeycomb does business, the principles we all abide by Why Honeycomb engineering is embracing AI AI norms and values (and ethical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":23941,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scannn.com\/lv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scannn.com\/lv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scannn.com\/lv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scannn.com\/lv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scannn.com\/lv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scannn.com\/lv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scannn.com\/lv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scannn.com\/lv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scannn.com\/lv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scannn.com\/lv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}