1y ago

"enshittification" is a stupid "word" made by and perpetuated by lazy people

31 comments

Cory Doctorow Lazy
Hahahaha that's rich
- I'd like to see him do a shift at the warehouse and not get fired
  
  So let me get this right, you'd like to see a guy who has a background in software and has done more advocation for better intellectual property rights, better regulation of corporations and general user roghts than eother of us will likely ever accomplish in our lifetimes.
  And you like to put this guy into a warehouse and see him not get fired?
  ...Wat.
  
  I agree with you. If a person cannot spend 8 hours a day lifting boxes in a warehouse then they are of no value to society. Simple as that.

This needs explanation. Enshittification is a very cromulent word.
- ^this guy gets it

Idk, the word count is quite high in his post where he coined the term.
- And another post where he goes into what enshittification means exactly.
  It's a good word that encapsulates the exploitative goal of platform economies.
  This is enshittification: surpluses are first directed to users; then, once they're locked in, surpluses go to suppliers; then once they're locked in, the surplus is handed to shareholders and the platform becomes a useless pile of shit.
  In fact, enshittification is the reason for the Reddit migration to Lemmy. I wouldn't be here otherwise, probably.
  
  I found it to be brilliant and very succinct. I love that blog. :)

It's an unpopular opinion community, not an unpopular statement with no context community.

Definitely an unpopular opinion.
However, the fact that you're using it to just insult people, it's lame as hell
- Bingo. Downvotes aren't because they don't like the term.
  Downvotes are because they feel they need to insult people to feel better about themselves

And "stupid" is an ableist word used by lazy people who also don't care about throwing disabled people under the bus. ¯(ツ)/¯

Likely a popular opinion: @whosiearth@lemmy.ca is mostly a troll who seems, in his history, to adopt contrarian views just to get a response, thus disguising from himself the emptiness that rings hollowly where he once had a life.

Got a better word for the same phenomenon?
- deterioration
  decay
  demise
  corrosion
  adulteration
  
  None of those capture the same meaning. Doing something "shitty" has the meaning that it's not just bad or inferior. It's deliberately malicious. and "shit" being the root word in "enshittification" imparts an essence of the same meaning.
  Most of these suggestions make it sound like the products/services/apps/whatever in question are kindof inevitably breaking down over time in a way that makes them less useful rather than being leveraged in hostile ways to fuck over their own customers. "Adulteration" at least has a feeling of deliberate sabotage to it, but it still doesn't capture the customer hostility.
  Plus, those words aren't unique enough on their own. I'd probably want to prefix them with something else like "platform" or something. "Platform deterioration" for instance.
  If I were to come up with an alternative to "enshittification" that captured what I thought was important, maybe something like "creeping capitalistic customer-directed hostile service changes," but that's a mouthful and excludes some things I might consider "enshittification". What about "profit-driven corporate dick moves that make products and services permanently less useful to consumers?"
  I dunno. "Enshittification" seems pretty perfect, I think. Everybody knows what it means. Everybody knows it when they see it. Companies do it constantly. And we've needed the term for a long time. It's good that we have it now, I think.

I can't tell if it's down voted for not being an unpopular idea or not.
- I would guess that it’s being downvoted because it’s just a statement - not a well explained idea. The post itself seems lazy, not the word that’s being criticized with no reason given.

If you downvoted this post, you shouldn't be allowed on the internet due to being unable to follow the simplest of instructions
- Nah, look around the sub, there’s good posts. This is garbage. I don’t really care if this is someone’s unpopular opinion. In my opinion it wasn’t worth a post, so it gets a downvote. This is all subjective, I’m not going to just blindly upvote things just because it might technically fit the literal title of the sub without really being engaging or adding anything insightful. And don’t try to gatekeep the whole internet.
  
  Unpopular opinion - people who use the word "gatekeeping" are wankers
- Rules:
  No racism or bigotry.
  Be civil: disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally insult others.
  No spam posting.
  Shitposts and memes are allowed until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
  No trolling.
  Instance-wide rules always apply. mastodon.world/about
  No rules about voting on this community. This isn't reddit.
  
  I think we saw example of made up rules, or, one could say, of enshittification.
- Truly an unpopular opinion lol
- This isn't an unpopular opinion, it's objectively incorrect

31 comments