Mia Morneault

“AITA for having a little snack? I (15M) ate my cousin (13M)…” Content farms are more common than you think, and have been around for a long time. However, this is a new age of content farming that is targeted for teens and young adults, rather than children. But what qualifies as a content farm? Content farms have garnered several stereotypes that can be used to identify one, being that they use automated tools, produce large amounts of low quality content and still gather a large audience.

If you have scrolled through TikTok, Instagram or YouTube Shorts, you have probably come across a video with a text-to-speech voice reading a screenshotted Reddit story with Minecraft parkour in the background. Now, these are nothing new, but with AI on the rise, these accounts are automating their production, gaining millions of views and thousands of dollars.

Content farms are more common than you think, and have been around for a long time. However, this is a new age of content farming that is targeted for teens and young adults, rather than children. But what qualifies as a content farm? Content farms have garnered several stereotypes that can be used to identify one, being that they use automated tools, produce large amounts of low quality content and still gather a large audience.

These slop-filled serotonin producers are both equally beloved and hated across the country, as there is a content farm for nearly every niche possible. For us to understand this, we must go back to the dawn of time, 2014.

You see, in 2014, there was a surplus of YouTube videos targeted to kids, usually featuring the popular Disney Princess, Elsa and the famous Marvel Superhero, Spider-Man. These short videos would usually disguise inappropriate content not suitable for children by using popular IPs children are attracted towards, in order to gain revenue. They were mass produced, and it got to the point that many other channels who had no relation with each other started doing the same thing. This is commonly referred to as “Elsa Gate” throughout the internet, and resulted in harsher guidelines for kid’s content on YouTube. 

A few years later, around 2017, the newest wave of slop mills came around, being a more family-friendly, but still a disingenuous attempt at content. These were more geared towards life hacks and fun fact channels such as Troom Troom, Brightside, 5-Minute Crafts and a plethora of other generic and uninspired social media accounts. They usually consisted of larger-than-life “hacks” that would require a lot of household materials and hot glue to solve a problem that nobody has, or would spread false information about a topic and summarize the first page of Wikipedia. These channels are still around today, gathering millions of views on Instagram and Facebook, but not nearly as much as they used to.

Now, like all bad things, it has come back, in a third wave of brain-rotted material, solely based on stealing content.

With short-form content becoming more and more apparent in our everyday life, content farms can now be produced by a single person in their room, and make thousands of dollars a day just by typing a few things into a computer. Every day, I am bombarded with movie clips, reddit stories, and YouTube videos with the most obnoxious captions over it and a person in the corner just staring off into the horizon, with not a thought behind their eyes.

These videos are incredibly easy to make, and there are several programs that you can use to become a self-made millionaire who profits off the work of others. Like a regular millionaire, but it’s more secretive.

One of these programs is called Crayo, advertising that you can create “Viral-Ready clips in seconds.” However, if you want to become rich by stealing, you have to pay a hefty monthly fee. Crayo has three payment plans, all depending on how much you can generate, how long they can be and how many you can make. The cheapest option is $19 a month, while the most expensive is $79. Now, I could go into the details of what you could do with that money if you ended up saving it instead of buying this useless service, and I will. $79 a month, saved across 12 months, that is $948. With $948, you could provide a hundred Chick-Fil-A sandwich meals to people in need, gas money to transport you to an actual job, or a really, really, really cool skateboard. But instead, you can create videos featuring a clip from iCarly with Subway Surfers at the bottom, as the most detached human sounding voice yells at you. Truly, we are at the height of evolution.

When having these discussions about ethical consumption, distribution and decision making, I love to bring up numbers because there is nothing more eye-opening than hearing an amount of money that could change the life of somebody in a five mile radius from you. Profiting off of stolen work, and continuing to produce content with no soul behind it, is truly one of the most common and yet fascinating grifts of the 21st century. The art of the grift involves dedication, not care, and that is exactly what these automated tools are providing.

Now, I am not blaming anybody for watching these videos as I often find myself doing the same. But eventually, it comes to the point where I have to stop and think about where I am in my life to be willing to listen to a computer read off a fake AI-generated Reddit story. We are entrenched in a world where the average young consumer doesn’t care about the human connection, freebooting or harmful and damaging content; they just want whatever can make the chemicals in their brain produce the slightest feeling of happiness, and even then, still find themselves feeling empty.

The next time you find yourself watching mobile game footage with “Criminal Minds” over it, or engaging in discourse about an AITA post about how somebody spent their grandmother’s life savings, remember the intentions behind the creator, and remember they don’t have your best interest at heart. Good content is good art, and great content has the ability to open your mind in ways you have never experienced before. This is not art, this is barely serviceable content. It is just your one stop shop for all things out of touch, so don’t stay for too long.