See below for a call for papers to the upcoming ASAP (Association for the Arts of the Present), which takes place in Madison, WI on October 15-17, 2026. We invite contributions on the narrative dimensions of any contemporary "brainrot" or "slop" media- with particular interest in genre, grand narrative, minimal narrative, short form, segmentivity, seriality, plot, character, etc. Any questions can be sent to the panel organizers at diana.filar@gmail.com and yonina.a.hoffman@gmail.com.  Abstracts should be 250 words and are due by 4/13 in the ASAP Portal: https://asap17.exordo.com/submissions/panels/59/new-contribution. Depending on your social media algorithms, on Instagram stories or Facebook reels you may have come upon a narrative ad featuring a white, blandly attractive cisgender teenage girl in a prep school uniform. Maybe she is getting books out of her locker, or daydreaming at her desk. Maybe she is rushing to her part time job. Inevitably, she is poor. The three female bullies who descend upon her are rich, and they comically and unrealistically push her, throw her books, dump a soda on her. Enter the hero: school jock, bad boy, rich billionaire. Or all three. Despite diverse titles like “Fake Dating My Rich Nemesis,” “A Deal with the Hockey Captain,” and “Mated to the Salvage Alpha,” the episodic vertical “episodes” of short-form videos on apps like ReelShort and Dramabox all follow similarly generic plotlines, whether they have to do with Alpha werewolves, age-gap relationships, or secret billionaire babies. Following the popularity of Chinese duanjus, translated as short drama or vertical drama, these narratives are film length, but they are cut up into mini episodes of 60-90 seconds each. To see them all, viewers on apps like ReelShort and Dramabox must pay a surprising amount, or else view repetitive ads for mobile games like “Matchington Mansion”—inviting the viewer to help a large eyed, shivering woman whose husband has abandoned her and her baby.

While reductive in their minimalism, these interrupted, brief narrative structures—as well as the stories in their advertisements—reveal the prominence of master narratives in short form video, particularly as related to traditionally female-coded romance and domestic fictions. They show how very shortxts can construct narrative interest through evoking basic narrative archetypes, and by combining basic elements in ways evoking Propp’s analysis of the fairy tale. These narratives boil down the romance genre to its most naked parts but extend it over many small pieces, activating compulsive viewer dynamics.

This panel seeks to explore the narratological and genre dynamics of these new digital forms, which collectively fall under the umbrellas of “brainrot” and “dramaslop.” Although not necessarily generated by AI (the founder of ReelShort denies using AI), these forms cannot help but recall the eerie emptiness and repetitiousness of AI content. As such, we are interested in papers that explore the confluence of genre, narrative, AI, brainrot, romance, and more. What do viewers/players get from these narratives and how do they relate to “getting it together”?

We invite papers from multidisciplinary artists and scholars. Please submit a 250-word abstract by 4/13. Potential topics may include:

• The creation of and/or reinforcement of generic conventions in dramaslop/brainrot
• Short-form video, interactive gameplay, or brainrot’s connection to the romance plot, melodrama, or fairy tale
• How elements of narrative like event, character, suspense, seriality, or segmentivity (can) work(s) in brainrot
• AI narratives’ connection to lowest common denominator entertainment and “lowbrow” culture
• The political nature of “slopaganda” and its use of genre / grand narrative
• Grand narratives within minimalism, slop, or AI narrative