Where do you draw the line between a good device and a "sludge" device?
It's easy to decude what you mean by the term (lowest common denominator components, cheap build quality, pretty much no considerations for repair/maintenance, etc), but I would still like to hear a proper definition.
Sludge is a judgment of intent. It's a word I use to describe things that I believe were made with no intention of being a quality product of any kind, and which were most likely made by people who didn't even design them; they bought preexisting molds, put them into a machine and turned the switch on. Plastic pellets go in, Objects come out, and what they are is not important as long as they fill space.
I think the person who spins up a factory to make keychain flashlights using the old style 20-milliamp white LEDs from the early 2000s is fully aware that this is completely obsolete technology and that nobody would buy it if they knew better; COB LEDs are plainly superior, there is no reason for the old ones to be sold for illumination purposes. The only reason these are made is because the parts are being sold as scrap so the flashlights can be made for nothing, and they hope someone who doesn't know better will buy them.
I call it sludge because it's all part of a single, unified torrent of nothing-products, items that shouldn't exist at all, which nobody wants to be made, but which are being produced in frightening quantities, and all of it is destined to go to the landfill almost as soon as it's bought. You get the keychain flashlight, turn it on, frown at how dim it is, and throw it away. It was a dollar; it's not worth returning. Same for the uselessly slow "USB 3" flash drive that isn't, and the sunglasses that hurt your head and make everything blurry.
It's a kind of counterfeiting, but without involving any specific brand. They're counterfeiting... the concept of a product. The thing you wanted was "an item intended to be a solution to a problem" and what you got is something that looks like that, but is in fact not meant to solve anything at all.
