Regardless of your political persuasion, everyone must acknowledge the economy is growing. Now, the speculation from that point can go in one of two directions – either it’s growing in a good way or it’s growing in a bad way, but there is no question that the economy is growing. In fact, under Trump, the GDP is growing faster than at any time under Biden. This is a big omen because it proves Trump supporters correct. In his first year back, Trump has delivered on his economic promises inspite of the cultural impacts their having on everyday life. The finesse lies in how he’s successfully evaded all the negative spin he could’ve received this year. In 2025, there wasn’t a recession or stagflation, which were the biggest worries coming into the year. Because for an economy to reach stagflation, 3 things must occur: high inflation, high unemployment and stagnant economic growth. And although inflation remains high and unemployment is trending upward (already 8%+ for black people), the rate of economic growth has still outpaced both of those metrics comparatively this fiscal year. So if things aren’t categorically ‘stagnant’ yet, what’s causing all the doom and gloom? Look no further than the 2025 Word of the Year: Slop. It refers to the "digital content of low quality that’s produced en-masse by means of artificial intelligence." It’s a new slang word that crystallizes how low-quality, AI-generated content has invaded our cyberspaces and terminally infected our online experiences. Marketed as a tour de force by corporate lobbyists like Sam Altman, AI was sold to the public as an endgame for human evolution and achievement. It was advertised as the primer machine learning model to cut costs, improve efficiency and streamline progress in our society at large. But in its wake, all its done is create a new machine class that may or may not be hostile to humanity. In Liu Cixin’s 2008 sci-fi thriller ‘The Dark Forest,’ he explores this possibility in a theory known as ‘The Dark Forest Hypothesis.’ The theory asserts that alien entities exist in abundance across the universe but remain silent and hidden out of fear that revealing themselves would lead to their destruction by another hostile entity that’s more technologically advanced. In the theory’s analogy, our universe is the dark forest, and, just like creatures in a dark forest, we have to stay hidden so we dont draw attention on ourselves from hostile entities. Because if we invite hostile entities in, they will invade, infect and destroy us for the mere sake of their own survival. Now if you take that analogy and substitute the internet in as the dark forest, then “slop” can be seen as the modern-day Frankenstein hostility we’ve self-induced and exposed into our world. And what’s most terrifying about this Frankenstein bot slop is that it has already begun augmenting a conscious form into our public lives. This form has taken the shape of “best practice efficiency” algorithms that mold and spore through our infrastructures like The Blob in size and scope. And this Blob has invaded our public and private sector infrastructures like nothing we’ve ever seen before. There is no escaping the Blob’s slop now, we must accept its suffocation disguised as enrapture. It’s brought about an entropy we must either quietly fight, quietly quit or quietly accept. Either way, its captured us in perpetuity. According to Newsweek, 14% of this year's economic growth has been tied to slop infused investments and infrastructures. Because even at a low-quality state, the slop has still captured many quantitative data centered industries & employees. So as we move into 2026, the percent of slop-infused market-share will likely increase. Pundits are trying to frame this phenomenon as an “A.I bubble” that’s soon to burst due to affordability issues that’ve arisen for 90% of American households who now have fallen to the “lower arm” of our K-Shaped economy. But if the economy has been able to grow off the backs of just the top 10% of earners, then who's to say this isn’t a sustainable model moving forward? Who's to say this K-shaped economy can't continue to grow in this lopsided fashion in scope and scale? What if inflation & unemployment remain high in 2026 but economic growth continues to outpace them thanks to the slop's neutralizing effect? As a bubble expands it becomes a blob, and there’s more than enough slop to continue stretching the widening divide. Maybe this is all just the beginning of the sLopflation era.