We have always had slop.

There have always been people trying to push low-effort, low-value things as high-value things by copying the superficial aspects of high-value things. People literally do "judge a book by its cover", and can be tricked into buying it even when the contents are worthless.

People in a bookshop don't want to have to read entire chapters of each book they're thinking of buying in order to be sure they're all legitimate books of value. They want the bookseller to have done that for them, and know every book in the shop had at least some effort put into it.

The internet is not a bookshop. An enshittified platform like Amazon is not a bookshop. If a slopmaker can pay a platform to tout absolute slop, you now can't trust the platform. It's all so tiresome.

It's now just easier to perform that dishonesty and waste even more people's time than ever before.