A few days ago, LinkedIn added a spiffy new feature to mark something as “AI slop.” And before you are like, “Hey! This newsletter is about emails, not business networking sites,” let’s recognize that email has had this problem for a while.
Of course, an email does not need to be written by AI to feel like slop. It can be vague, overproduced, suspiciously enthusiastic, stuffed with empty personalization that tries too hard, or built around a discount that somehow ends at midnight five nights in a row. Heck, it could be made by my son, who refuses to clean his room, and I would fully expect his emails to reflect the same general approach.
The inbox created its own button for dealing with this years ago. It just called it “Mark as spam,” then made sure your reputation was tied to how often people clicked it.
The problem is that spam is not always about where an email came from. Sometimes it is simply how the email feels. Useful emails feel useful. Interesting emails feel interesting. Sloppy emails feel like someone needed to send something by Thursday after discovering ChatGPT.
That is one reason we spend so much time collecting really good emails. Looking at better work helps us recognize the difference between a message that earns attention and one that merely arrives asking for it.
