The Culturist Turns 16
New York, 1926. "Tiller girls." Arriving from England, 16 chorus girls in the troupe originated by British musical-theater impresario and precision-dancing pioneer John Tiller. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain. Image via Shorpy.
Another year, another blogoversary! The Culturist is now sweet sixteen.
I was in London on the actual date of the anniversary (December 5), and had a very bad cold, so I was not able to post this on the day.
Not much has changed since my reflections from last year on the state of the internet, if anything, it’s gotten worse. The search function on Google feels inadequate, more and more people and organisations are using AI, ChatGPT, etc. There’s an increased lack of curiosity, fact checking, quality, not to mention an increased level of stupidity. This includes a lot of work I see in the culture sector. Most people I see working in this sector in the UAE seem to be on auto mode to scratch things off their to-do list instead of attention to detail, accuracy and originality. More efforts go into making a useless and forgettable 15 seconds video for Instagram compared to longer term information for their websites (if they even bother updating their websites).
Yesterday, Merriam-Webster announced the 2025 Word of the Year is “slop”,
Merriam-Webster’s human editors have chosen slop as the 2025 Word of the Year. We define slop as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.” All that stuff dumped on our screens, captured in just four letters: the English language came through again.
The flood of slop in 2025 included absurd videos, off-kilter advertising images, cheesy propaganda, fake news that looks pretty real, junky AI-written books, “workslop” reports that waste coworkers’ time… and lots of talking cats. People found it annoying, and people ate it up.
Needless to say, I feel even more stubborn to maintain this blog.
In the past year there have been a few attempts to buy this blog’s domain name from me; an increased number of requests to publish posts (some that are paid for) about products that mostly are not aligned with this blog; and a few reached out asking if I’m collaborating with other writers because one UAE based person launched on Substack with a similar name - the lack of imagination in this town isn’t surprising. My answer to all have been a strong NO.
To anyone new here, theculturist.com is a website run by one person - me. An independent and non-commercial online space that isn’t about ‘content’ or getting clicks, but a record of my interests and work I do.
As I’ve stated before, when it comes to cultural history in the UAE, it is usually based on short term memory. This blog plays a small role as a reference to the past 16 years and as long as I keep writing here. Whilst my presence on social media has decreased, you will find me more active here.
Thanks to everyone for reading. I’ve started to look at a few places to host a Sweet 16 Blogparty early next year, so watch this space.