I'd be surprised if any of these people experiencing ‘moral panic’ over AI videos would be able to tell me what the actual problem they're experiencing is. This is not to say that there may not be any problems with an AI slop feed; rather it is to point out how much this ‘moral panic’ is just a meme at this point and not really rooted in one's understanding of the real problem with it.

Most such moral panics are aesthetic reactions dressed up as ethical concerns, and it may very well be the case that most of these people do not really have any problem with the act of short-form consumption itself, considering how they doomscroll Twitter and think it's somehow better, or touch grass in all the most basic movie-brained ways.

The essence of the problem (if there is one) ought to be identical, for short-form AI videos aren't fundamentally different from short-form human videos or tweets, no?

So, what is the problem?

"What is the problem?" is the most powerful question you can ask whenever you're finding yourself sucked into such moral panic over something you should totally be able to fix quite easily, considering apps aren't holding you hostage and you can put your phone down.

So... why don't you?

So, before you go all pitchfork-and-torches on social media, maybe take a beat and actually look at what the real damage is here, if there's any damage at all, or if this whole thing is just some story you're telling yourself, like this fuzzy notion of your "potential", this sort of half-baked idea rattling around in your head that somehow, magically, everything would click into place if you could just quit scrolling. Most likely, you probably have this movie-brained fantasy where deleting the app makes you suddenly become the protagonist of an indie film, reading novels in coffee shops, molesting grass, and having deep conversations. But you never actually did this before social media either. You just watched tv. Or gossiped endlessly about the lives of other people while sitting in nature. Or read magazines or newspapers. Or escaped into some cool hobby.

At the heart of it all is the same avoidance/escape mechanism in a different container. If you're someone panicking about vibes, ask yourself:

"What specifically is the harm, and how is it different from what I'm already doing?"

You might realize that you "just know" it feels more dystopian, because, basically, it's too mask-off about being a dopamine slot machine. But you're not enquiring into the dopamine-seeking mechanism itself, you're only passing aesthetic judgments over which attention-capture mechanism feels cooler. None of it is about the actual problem you're facing. It'll all vibes about Vibes.

The personal distress you're feeling is probably not about AI. It's about how uncool browsing reels is and how cool touching grass is. But such movie-brained thinking is only an escape from confronting what you actually want to be doing with your time. Because even if you put your phone down, what exactly would you do with that reclaimed time anyway? The guitar gathering dust in your closet and the half-finished online courses in your browser history suggest that your phone isn't the barrier between you and "self-actualization", it's the convenient scapegoat for why you're not already doing those things. You'll delete the apps, maybe last a week before you're back scrolling, because those hobbies you promised to pursue were never going to happen anyway. The performative phone-in-a-drawer ritual is just another way to avoid admitting that given your actual alternatives, and your actual state of mind, you genuinely prefer the scroll. 

So, your panic about AI slop is perhaps you being confronted with the reality of your own choices and not liking what it reveals about you and how uncool you are. But it's easier to externalize that discomfort. Easier to blame the new scary thing than to admit the problem might be the thing you're already doing, or more precisely, what your choices reveal about what you actually want. Much easier to draw an arbitrary line and say "This new thing is where it gets dystopian" while continuing to do the exact same behavior one app over.

"I'm spending too much time scrolling reels."

Okay, and what's the problem?

"It's not letting me focus on my work. It's hijacking my attention."

Okay, so why don't you stop?

"Because it's too addictive!"

Then find work that's even more addictive?

What's the problem, brother? Stop pretending you're a victim of the algorithm or that the new AI slop feed is somehow much worse for your mental health than the existing slop you're already consuming. You're doing exactly what you want to be doing. You're only asking for premium oats because you don't want to admit you're choosing to stay in the stable. You want some premium oats, but until you understand the aesthetic movie-brainedness of it all, regardless of what you do, you're only being fattened for the slaughter.