kipple

Popularized in Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968); originally the name of a SF fanzine, from the humorous interpretation of Kipling as a participle.^[1]

kipple (uncountable)

1. (colloquial) Useless items; junk; clutter; (originally) a force of entropy.

   Synonym: crapola

   Antonym: nonkipple

   • 2008 [1968], Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Ballantine Books, →ISBN, page 65:

     “Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday’s homeopape. When nobody’s around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you go to bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up the next morning there’s twice as much of it. It always gets more and more.”

   • 2026 January 10, Joanna Kavenna, “Mass surveillance, the metaverse, making America ‘great again’: the novelists who predicted our present”, in The Guardian‎^[1], →ISSN:

     Kipple is now all the algo-rubbish online, our bulging inboxes, the AI slop. Could [PK] Dick have predicted this? […] Either way, his advice still applies, both prescient and inspiring: maybe all we can do is find a balance between the pressures of kipple and nonkipple – the useless junk and the objects of value.

• kibble