Enshittify this

“Enshittification” is an apt word of the year. Maybe it should be the word of the decade. I would like to thank the Guardian for bringing it to my attention, and writer Cory Doctorow for coining it.

If you’ve interacted with Amazon lately — and who hasn’t? — you know what this word means. Ditto for any interaction with Facebook or Google or Instagram or X, or really with any chain store or major bank or hospital.

It’s a natural consequence of the American credo that that growth will be infinite, that profit must increase no matter what. In a flagging market, that means flogging demand by devoting more resources to advertising and customer manipulation (also known as lying). It means reducing what you spend on the actual product or service you’re selling (also known as making it shittier). Hence this phase of late-stage capitalism where everything is increasingly expensive and increasingly worthless.

I keep thinking of the last time I bought socks via Amazon. These were somehow bamboo-based, and eco-friendly and long-lasting and buoyed by a bunch of glowing reviews. These socks cost a little more, but they would change my life, just as they had changed the lives of so many others. I got five pairs and they all developed holes after the first six weeks or so. Maybe I should have gotten the extended warranty.

We have the technology to provide mankind with decent socks. Costco somehow manages it. We have the resources to do public education and decent health care and social media that prioritizes dialog over death threats. But, as co-president Leon Musk might say: where’s the fun in that? More importantly, where’s the profit? Maybe we should go to Mars instead.

Anyway, this is how we live now, in this disquieting time, this “enshittocene” (thanks again, Mr. Doctorow). I think we’ll be here for the foreseeable future. The only way out is to quit buying the shit they’re selling. And nobody’s willing to do that.

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