Green’s Dictionary of Slang

worse than average problems or behaviour.

1966		H.S. Thompson Hell’s Angels (1967) 184: The thing that really pisses me off is the newspapers [...] Even when we pull off some really bad shit, they still get it wrong.
1976		A. Salkey Come Home, Malcolm Heartland 194: I know we’ve freaked you with a lot o’ bad, bad shit.
1978		S. King Stand (1990) 1164: Why are we talking about bad shit like that?
1983		S. King Christine 490: They caught me dead-bang. Bad shit.
2000		G. Pelecanos Shame the Devil 76: You watch yourself if you’re going to be hanging around Kennedy [...] I’ve seen some really bad shit go down on that strip.
2010		A. Steinberg Running the Books 55: Negative developments were bad shit; positive were good shit.
2021		T. Pluck Boy from County Hell 96: He’d seen a lot of bad shit, even dragged in a serial horse fucker.
2023		A. Nette Orphan Road 115: ‘[T]here were a lot of guys walking around after Vietnam, said they’d done all sorts of bad shit’.