when a disney adult learns about capitalism
December 10, 2023 6:32 AM Subscribe
when people say "enshittification", it's as if their core complaint about capitalism is the customer service, rather than the systematic exploitation of other people. people don't talk about union busting as "enshittification", or wage theft as "enshittification", let alone deeper systematic issues. [...]
enshittification is someone experiencing the systematic problems of capitalism for the first time, and not seeing the tip of the iceberg for what it represents. it's walking past a picket line to complain to the manager. it's being mad that the star wars show got cancelled and hoping awareness will fix it.
This off-the-cuff analysis isn't bad, although it's more of a rant about a pet peeve, as short as it is. Only one thing is off:
compare: buying a car might as well be a hostage negotiation. arguing over hospital bills a kafkaesque nightmare. ask your grandma about long distance calling plans. none of it gets called "enshittification" because no-one is old enough to remember when any of these things were good—or at least better than they are today.
No-one (sic)? The writer doesn't have many Boomers in their circle of friends, I guess. I'm 70ish and clearly remember when buying a car, paying a hospital bill, and choosing a long distance plan were very simple. True, it was often because there were often few or no choices (Ma Bell was the only game in town), but for better and for worse, life under capitalism was not so complicated back in mid-century Amerika.
posted by kozad at 6:49 AM on December 10, 2023 [38 favorites]
compare: buying a car might as well be a hostage negotiation. arguing over hospital bills a kafkaesque nightmare. ask your grandma about long distance calling plans. none of it gets called "enshittification" because no-one is old enough to remember when any of these things were good—or at least better than they are today.
No-one (sic)? The writer doesn't have many Boomers in their circle of friends, I guess. I'm 70ish and clearly remember when buying a car, paying a hospital bill, and choosing a long distance plan were very simple. True, it was often because there were often few or no choices (Ma Bell was the only game in town), but for better and for worse, life under capitalism was not so complicated back in mid-century Amerika.
posted by kozad at 6:49 AM on December 10, 2023 [38 favorites]
It’s okay for a word that means one bad thing to not mean all bad things.
And there’s already a term for union busting: “union busting.”
It’s perfectly reasonable to complain about the quality of a product getting worse as a problem on its own without also making sure to name-check every other problem hyper-capitalism creates.
posted by chasing at 6:59 AM on December 10, 2023 [81 favorites]
And there’s already a term for union busting: “union busting.”
It’s perfectly reasonable to complain about the quality of a product getting worse as a problem on its own without also making sure to name-check every other problem hyper-capitalism creates.
posted by chasing at 6:59 AM on December 10, 2023 [81 favorites]
"Disney adult"
"complain to the manager"
Enough with the coded misogyny, bro.
posted by MiraK at 7:03 AM on December 10, 2023 [58 favorites]
"complain to the manager"
Enough with the coded misogyny, bro.
posted by MiraK at 7:03 AM on December 10, 2023 [58 favorites]
(Wait, long-distance calling? That's one thing that's actually much better these days, at least for me. Did this person not have to limit their calls to loved ones growing up because long distance was so expensive?)
One of the arguments for capitalism is that it creates a better world for consumers, and we are all consumers so we all benefit. It makes sense to point out the ways that particular argument falls down, even when there are also other flaws.
posted by trig at 7:09 AM on December 10, 2023 [37 favorites]
One of the arguments for capitalism is that it creates a better world for consumers, and we are all consumers so we all benefit. It makes sense to point out the ways that particular argument falls down, even when there are also other flaws.
posted by trig at 7:09 AM on December 10, 2023 [37 favorites]
(The author's pronouns are they/them. Written right there next to the article.)
posted by fight or flight at 7:13 AM on December 10, 2023 [21 favorites]
posted by fight or flight at 7:13 AM on December 10, 2023 [21 favorites]
people don't talk about union busting as "enshittification", or wage theft as "enshittification", let alone deeper systematic issues.
I think people do talk about labor issues when they talk about enshittification with taxi and delivery apps—the company sets rates, the customer pays more, the driver gets less. Sometimes there's out-and-out wage theft involved.
Union busting often doesn't fit with "enshittification" because these businesses weren't union to begin with and enshittification implies things getting worse, or at least bad in new ways.
Labor issues aren't always part of the enshittification conversation because in many cases, like fast food, we assume they were always there. I feel like they usually do come up when we talk about healthcare including retail pharmacies, or air travel, or the media and education.
it's being mad that the star wars show got cancelled and hoping awareness will fix it.
It's true people do get mad in isolation at TV shows being cancelled. But especially after the recent Hollywood strikes and high profile podcast layoffs, it seems like the common narrative is that the entertainment industry refuses to take a chance on new voices and ideas, takes advantage of workers, and churns out boring product. I mean, hasn't this been the accepted narrative about the entertainment industry since Tin Pan Alley and The Day of the Locust?
posted by smelendez at 7:22 AM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
I think people do talk about labor issues when they talk about enshittification with taxi and delivery apps—the company sets rates, the customer pays more, the driver gets less. Sometimes there's out-and-out wage theft involved.
Union busting often doesn't fit with "enshittification" because these businesses weren't union to begin with and enshittification implies things getting worse, or at least bad in new ways.
Labor issues aren't always part of the enshittification conversation because in many cases, like fast food, we assume they were always there. I feel like they usually do come up when we talk about healthcare including retail pharmacies, or air travel, or the media and education.
it's being mad that the star wars show got cancelled and hoping awareness will fix it.
It's true people do get mad in isolation at TV shows being cancelled. But especially after the recent Hollywood strikes and high profile podcast layoffs, it seems like the common narrative is that the entertainment industry refuses to take a chance on new voices and ideas, takes advantage of workers, and churns out boring product. I mean, hasn't this been the accepted narrative about the entertainment industry since Tin Pan Alley and The Day of the Locust?
posted by smelendez at 7:22 AM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
Pendulum swing. I think some pushback is a good thing. This one probably swings too far in the opposite direction but that's how it usually works, and hopefully in the end we'll have a lovely balance (or nihilistic stillness, whatever)
Enshittification has been getting thrown around to the point of becoming meaningless. I'm not convinced that goes hand-in-hand with flattening our understanding of capitalism, but would like to see less of it for sure (okay, maybe it's a pet peeve)
posted by Baethan at 7:25 AM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
Enshittification has been getting thrown around to the point of becoming meaningless. I'm not convinced that goes hand-in-hand with flattening our understanding of capitalism, but would like to see less of it for sure (okay, maybe it's a pet peeve)
posted by Baethan at 7:25 AM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
Except enshittification isn't a critique of capitalism at all. I'm not even sure it's a critique of anything. It's a label for the strategic choice to degrade goods and services without reducing their price, when the investor subsidy that had permitted them to be offered at negative margin is taken away. The vast majority of capitalist activity abjures investor-subsidized-negative-margin sales and so never reaches this inflection point.
When something I use and like is blatantly enshittified, it actually tends to confirm in retrospect that I was getting a great bargain. My main complaint about it is that I wish more companies would raise prices instead of cutting quality, because I then have a choice to retain the good and service, rather than having no choice at all when quality is cut.
posted by MattD at 7:29 AM on December 10, 2023 [58 favorites]
When something I use and like is blatantly enshittified, it actually tends to confirm in retrospect that I was getting a great bargain. My main complaint about it is that I wish more companies would raise prices instead of cutting quality, because I then have a choice to retain the good and service, rather than having no choice at all when quality is cut.
posted by MattD at 7:29 AM on December 10, 2023 [58 favorites]
look, i hate the term "enshittification" as much as anyone. it feels like one of those made up swear words that came out of a doctorwho/supernatural fanfic, and for a while i was happy to continue dismissing it on those terms
Sometimes I think that some socialist/communist/etc critiques get dismissed as misogynist incorrectly, either on grounds of tone or on grounds of "but my expensive product is self-care". However, if the first "of course we all hate this" statement that comes to mind is "it sounds like a famously girl-coded fandom" then yes, that is a misogynist way to begin your essay. "We all hate this because it sounds like some dumb thing that teenage girls like" is A Bit Not Good as the superwholockians used to say back then. If you particularly dislike that period/genre of fanfic or that fandom, you can always write a separate essay.
And it's worth pointing out that even "innocent" misogyny distracts - what are we talking about here? We're talking about the misogyny, not the argument.
I think it's likely to be unproductive to denounce people as "Disney adults" when in general they are people trying to get by in a very tough time and are frustrated because they paid ten gazillion dollars for a product that was supposed to last a while and then it broke in three months and now they have to re-buy it. That's an actual real bad experience; I will never forget someone breaking down crying in front of me when a small, expensive, essential household appliance broke while I was visiting and they were ashamed and poor. "Why does everything always BREAK" they wailed, and it felt bad, man. I could have busted out the Marx, I guess, but mostly they wanted sympathy and some strategizing about money.
~~
Okay, I guess my real response here is that this essay misunderstands how people come to organizing. There's a small percentage of weirdos, among whom I count myself, who come to activism or organizing or unions, etc, largely through reading, maybe through music or media. But people in general come to organizing and activism socially, because they encounter people who engage with them and who have a plausible, actionable way of dealing with the world. Some people will never ever do this no matter what, for various reasons legitimate or not, and that's not important; you don't need 100% of people on side to have a movement. But for the most part, it's really not people getting frustrated when the washing machine breaks and blaming corporations that is holding back the revolution, it's myriad material constraints and changes in how people are able to interact, whether that's the absence of the old shop-floor situation, cops, the law, etc.
posted by Frowner at 7:29 AM on December 10, 2023 [63 favorites]
Sometimes I think that some socialist/communist/etc critiques get dismissed as misogynist incorrectly, either on grounds of tone or on grounds of "but my expensive product is self-care". However, if the first "of course we all hate this" statement that comes to mind is "it sounds like a famously girl-coded fandom" then yes, that is a misogynist way to begin your essay. "We all hate this because it sounds like some dumb thing that teenage girls like" is A Bit Not Good as the superwholockians used to say back then. If you particularly dislike that period/genre of fanfic or that fandom, you can always write a separate essay.
And it's worth pointing out that even "innocent" misogyny distracts - what are we talking about here? We're talking about the misogyny, not the argument.
I think it's likely to be unproductive to denounce people as "Disney adults" when in general they are people trying to get by in a very tough time and are frustrated because they paid ten gazillion dollars for a product that was supposed to last a while and then it broke in three months and now they have to re-buy it. That's an actual real bad experience; I will never forget someone breaking down crying in front of me when a small, expensive, essential household appliance broke while I was visiting and they were ashamed and poor. "Why does everything always BREAK" they wailed, and it felt bad, man. I could have busted out the Marx, I guess, but mostly they wanted sympathy and some strategizing about money.
~~
Okay, I guess my real response here is that this essay misunderstands how people come to organizing. There's a small percentage of weirdos, among whom I count myself, who come to activism or organizing or unions, etc, largely through reading, maybe through music or media. But people in general come to organizing and activism socially, because they encounter people who engage with them and who have a plausible, actionable way of dealing with the world. Some people will never ever do this no matter what, for various reasons legitimate or not, and that's not important; you don't need 100% of people on side to have a movement. But for the most part, it's really not people getting frustrated when the washing machine breaks and blaming corporations that is holding back the revolution, it's myriad material constraints and changes in how people are able to interact, whether that's the absence of the old shop-floor situation, cops, the law, etc.
posted by Frowner at 7:29 AM on December 10, 2023 [63 favorites]
I thought “ capitalism” would refer to understanding when to use capital letters.
posted by Ideefixe at 7:35 AM on December 10, 2023 [13 favorites]
posted by Ideefixe at 7:35 AM on December 10, 2023 [13 favorites]
What's a "Disney adult"?
posted by signal at 7:46 AM on December 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by signal at 7:46 AM on December 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
People who are adults who are really, really into Disney. Like they are fandom of the product but also the company.
posted by Artw at 7:47 AM on December 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by Artw at 7:47 AM on December 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
True, it was often because there were often few or no choices (Ma Bell was the only game in town), but for better and for worse, life under capitalism was not so complicated back in mid-century Amerika.
People forget that mid-century American capitalism had competition. Capitalism had to be on its best behavior (at least to the American citizenry, not so much elsewhere in the world) because it had to be better option than communism and the Reds. Now that the USSR is gone and communism all but destroyed the impetus to make capital behave is gone and the leash is off.
What's a "Disney adult"?
A person who believes in the just world theory.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 7:47 AM on December 10, 2023 [24 favorites]
People forget that mid-century American capitalism had competition. Capitalism had to be on its best behavior (at least to the American citizenry, not so much elsewhere in the world) because it had to be better option than communism and the Reds. Now that the USSR is gone and communism all but destroyed the impetus to make capital behave is gone and the leash is off.
What's a "Disney adult"?
A person who believes in the just world theory.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 7:47 AM on December 10, 2023 [24 favorites]
When something I use and like is blatantly enshittified, it actually tends to confirm in retrospect that I was getting a great bargain.
Yes, we should not complain about the capitalists killing us all, we should instead be thankful that they gave us an un-advertised discount for a few years. [chef's kiss]
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:48 AM on December 10, 2023 [21 favorites]
Yes, we should not complain about the capitalists killing us all, we should instead be thankful that they gave us an un-advertised discount for a few years. [chef's kiss]
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:48 AM on December 10, 2023 [21 favorites]
Have to say I don’t believe the way from some people noticing one thing that sucks about the predatory nature of capitalism to noticing all aspects that suck about the predatory nature of capitalism probably isn’t this. I don’t know what they’re trying to achieve TBH.
posted by Artw at 7:50 AM on December 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Artw at 7:50 AM on December 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
I saw a post with a sharp point that I can't link now, but it seems very relevant. It read: "The right builds bridges from the center. When someone tries to build bridges from the center to the left, we burn it down and say, 'Ha, we showed them!'"
To be fair, I do hear their point. Doctorow's kinda twee, and the bad customer service shouldn't be what people react to. But I thought of "enshittification" as encompassing everything in a company, including how it employs people, or doesn't, and affects its community.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:51 AM on December 10, 2023 [21 favorites]
To be fair, I do hear their point. Doctorow's kinda twee, and the bad customer service shouldn't be what people react to. But I thought of "enshittification" as encompassing everything in a company, including how it employs people, or doesn't, and affects its community.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:51 AM on December 10, 2023 [21 favorites]
This piece is a little up one's own lefty butt, in the way the left loves to do, like a character on a reality show talking about someone "being there for the right reasons". These darn Disney Adults aren't turning on capitalism from a pure and honorable place, vote them off the island.
posted by wellifyouinsist at 7:56 AM on December 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by wellifyouinsist at 7:56 AM on December 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
But I thought of "enshittification" as encompassing everything in a company, including how it employs people, or doesn't, and affects its community.
But with the exception of the non-customer facing aspects, it was usually already bad in those other ways. Sometimes it was worse, ex. the way companies behaved in the absence of environmental regulation and civil rights legislation
posted by Selena777 at 8:00 AM on December 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
But with the exception of the non-customer facing aspects, it was usually already bad in those other ways. Sometimes it was worse, ex. the way companies behaved in the absence of environmental regulation and civil rights legislation
posted by Selena777 at 8:00 AM on December 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
I will note that the person who coined the term "enshittification" is totally a Disney Adult, Cory Doctorow was constantly posting about shit like Haunted Mansion revisions when he was still part of BoingBoing, and his first successful book was set entirely in the future remnants of Disneyland after it was turned into a place people lived. I laughed when I came to that insult.
I disagree with this critique of the term "enshittification", but I also picked it up by reading the original blog post where Cory defined it.
posted by egypturnash at 8:13 AM on December 10, 2023 [20 favorites]
I disagree with this critique of the term "enshittification", but I also picked it up by reading the original blog post where Cory defined it.
posted by egypturnash at 8:13 AM on December 10, 2023 [20 favorites]
Doctorrow had a very specific pattern in mind when he popularized the term, and it has since caught on and taken on a new, more general, less useful meaning. And this author is (correctly, in my view) annoyed that the term's new popular usage isn't very useful. Yet he seems unaware of the way we got to here, unaware of the reason someone thought a new term was warranted.
posted by Western Infidels at 8:14 AM on December 10, 2023 [34 favorites]
posted by Western Infidels at 8:14 AM on December 10, 2023 [34 favorites]
I can't figure out why so many people seem to think that the left fighting itself is awful and counterproductive, and yet also think that fighting the people who are accused of infighting is totally fine and not at all an example of the left fighting itself, which, as we recall, is awful and counterproductive.
posted by SaltySalticid at 8:15 AM on December 10, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by SaltySalticid at 8:15 AM on December 10, 2023 [10 favorites]
The right builds bridges from the center.
They do?
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:21 AM on December 10, 2023 [32 favorites]
They do?
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:21 AM on December 10, 2023 [32 favorites]
Aw, gee, I can’t be upset about union-busting, wage theft, AND the eventual degradation of services that seems to inevitably result from the concentrated ownership of private equity investments? I have to choose?
Does that mean that a company that pays their unionized employees well while jerking around their customers to increase returns for their investors wins approval from this author?
They don’t seem to see the world as I do, but that’s okay! They’re mad about some of the right things, and maybe they will get there eventually on enshittification.
posted by pwinn at 8:24 AM on December 10, 2023 [7 favorites]
Does that mean that a company that pays their unionized employees well while jerking around their customers to increase returns for their investors wins approval from this author?
They don’t seem to see the world as I do, but that’s okay! They’re mad about some of the right things, and maybe they will get there eventually on enshittification.
posted by pwinn at 8:24 AM on December 10, 2023 [7 favorites]
Cory Doctorow was constantly posting about shit like Haunted Mansion revisions when he was still part of BoingBoing, and his first successful book was set entirely in the future remnants of Disneyland after it was turned into a place people lived.
A bit of a Defunctland precursor in that respect.
Though if someones using “Disney adult” disparagingly it implies a bit of an unquestioned parasocial relationship neither Cory nor Kevin Perjurer really exhibit.
posted by Artw at 8:24 AM on December 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
A bit of a Defunctland precursor in that respect.
Though if someones using “Disney adult” disparagingly it implies a bit of an unquestioned parasocial relationship neither Cory nor Kevin Perjurer really exhibit.
posted by Artw at 8:24 AM on December 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
The more I think about this, the more I think that the lesson for me is about writing rather than politics - unless you are writing for a very well-defined set of people who already share your premises ("this fandom is so extremely cringe that anything which reminds you of it is ipso facto bad", "we all know what a Disney adult is and agree that they are The Worst") starting off with a lot of "this is bad because it's associated with these other bad things" just invites argument about the Other Bad Things rather than the premise.
Also, it reminds me that since my own day writing fanzines, I have never seen fear of being cringe do anyone any good. Either you are so very cool that if you want to be cringe then it's bold and refreshing or else you will simply never be unchallengeably cool, so you might as well stop worrying about it.
posted by Frowner at 8:25 AM on December 10, 2023 [24 favorites]
Also, it reminds me that since my own day writing fanzines, I have never seen fear of being cringe do anyone any good. Either you are so very cool that if you want to be cringe then it's bold and refreshing or else you will simply never be unchallengeably cool, so you might as well stop worrying about it.
posted by Frowner at 8:25 AM on December 10, 2023 [24 favorites]
What's a "Disney adult"?
A Disney adult is someone who uses the Disney ecosystem as a way to check out of the real world for a while. And it is quite an ecosystem that Disney has built, not just a way for parents to be entertained while the kids are effectively babysat.
I was on a very high end safari in Botswana a few years back and the manager of the "camp" -- really a small resort -- explained to me that they had sent him halfway around the world to the Disney Institute to learn how to do hospitality right. The camp had nothing related to Disney other than a truly exceptional customer experience.
This is what my Disney adult friends indulge in when they want a break from the world.
And yes, the Disney brand is represented with desserts featuring Mickey Mouse shaped Sacher Tortes, but for them it is charming.
I dunno why the term would be associated with misogyny.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:30 AM on December 10, 2023 [9 favorites]
A Disney adult is someone who uses the Disney ecosystem as a way to check out of the real world for a while. And it is quite an ecosystem that Disney has built, not just a way for parents to be entertained while the kids are effectively babysat.
I was on a very high end safari in Botswana a few years back and the manager of the "camp" -- really a small resort -- explained to me that they had sent him halfway around the world to the Disney Institute to learn how to do hospitality right. The camp had nothing related to Disney other than a truly exceptional customer experience.
This is what my Disney adult friends indulge in when they want a break from the world.
And yes, the Disney brand is represented with desserts featuring Mickey Mouse shaped Sacher Tortes, but for them it is charming.
I dunno why the term would be associated with misogyny.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:30 AM on December 10, 2023 [9 favorites]
I came here to say pretty much what egypturnash and Western Infidels said. Cory Doctorow doesn't need to defend his anti-capitalist credentials—he's written whole books critical of the foundations of capitalism.
But yes, the term was quickly picked up after he coined it and got used in much more vague ways. I noticed something similar with "gaslighting"—a word that's lurked in English since the movie came out but became much more popular in the past few years, and is often used to mean simply "lying."
posted by adamrice at 8:32 AM on December 10, 2023 [16 favorites]
But yes, the term was quickly picked up after he coined it and got used in much more vague ways. I noticed something similar with "gaslighting"—a word that's lurked in English since the movie came out but became much more popular in the past few years, and is often used to mean simply "lying."
posted by adamrice at 8:32 AM on December 10, 2023 [16 favorites]
Is "Disney adult" even coded female? If it is, does that make it off limits for criticism?
This whole thread is our weekly reminder that not only are we all glad the revolution hasn't come, we're also glad it never will.
posted by 2N2222 at 8:34 AM on December 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
This whole thread is our weekly reminder that not only are we all glad the revolution hasn't come, we're also glad it never will.
posted by 2N2222 at 8:34 AM on December 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
I’m pretty sure consumer advocacy has had plenty of common ground with labor advocacy since The Jungle taught us that having a worker fall in your vat isn’t good for either laborer or consumer.
posted by condour75 at 8:35 AM on December 10, 2023 [16 favorites]
posted by condour75 at 8:35 AM on December 10, 2023 [16 favorites]
"that's my problem: enshittification is not what companies become, it's what companies set out to be. enshittification is talked about as if it's an affliction affecting capitalism, rather than the desired outcome."
Isn't enshittification commonly understood to be very much a core symptom of contemporary capitalism? Isn't it widely understood that this phenomenon is structural and caused by monopolistic concentration of power, information asymmetry between large companies and individual consumers, and so on?
Feels like the author is doing a classic "make up a guy to be mad at" here.
posted by ssg at 8:36 AM on December 10, 2023 [13 favorites]
Isn't enshittification commonly understood to be very much a core symptom of contemporary capitalism? Isn't it widely understood that this phenomenon is structural and caused by monopolistic concentration of power, information asymmetry between large companies and individual consumers, and so on?
Feels like the author is doing a classic "make up a guy to be mad at" here.
posted by ssg at 8:36 AM on December 10, 2023 [13 favorites]
ARGH! The term is less than a year old and already its meaning has been corrupted. As several folks have said, Cory Doctorow coined this in January 2023:
posted by Nelson at 8:36 AM on December 10, 2023 [59 favorites]
HERE IS HOW platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.It's a term specifically informed by a practice of modern venture capital backed tech companies. The essay itself is about TikTok.
I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two-sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them. ...
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. From mobile app stores to Steam, from Facebook to Twitter, this is the enshittification lifecycle.
posted by Nelson at 8:36 AM on December 10, 2023 [59 favorites]
Honestly not sure the drift in the meaning of gaslighting is real. People keep telling me it is, despite the evidence of how I see it being used.
posted by Artw at 8:44 AM on December 10, 2023 [45 favorites]
posted by Artw at 8:44 AM on December 10, 2023 [45 favorites]
"I saw a person use it that way a couple times, so the meaning must be drifting!"
posted by I-Write-Essays at 8:46 AM on December 10, 2023
posted by I-Write-Essays at 8:46 AM on December 10, 2023
I guess they say Rorschach tests are bullshit, but jeeze this post sure functions like one. Maybe diffraction grating is a better term.
posted by All Out of Lulz at 8:48 AM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by All Out of Lulz at 8:48 AM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
Language is not a fixed entity, it changes, and it can change rapidly now that we can yell at each other from anywhere. Words change, don’t get fixated on them. You just need to make sure people know what you are talking about, don’t assume they are understanding everything you say in the way you meant.
posted by njohnson23 at 8:52 AM on December 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by njohnson23 at 8:52 AM on December 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
Metafilter: Rorschach test.
posted by njohnson23 at 8:53 AM on December 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by njohnson23 at 8:53 AM on December 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
"The right builds bridges from the center. When someone tries to build bridges from the center to the left, we burn it down and say, 'Ha, we showed them!'"
This statement managed to be false in a mere four words. The rest fares no better, since it fundamentally misattributes which side is full of societal arsonists.
posted by mystyk at 8:54 AM on December 10, 2023 [22 favorites]
This statement managed to be false in a mere four words. The rest fares no better, since it fundamentally misattributes which side is full of societal arsonists.
posted by mystyk at 8:54 AM on December 10, 2023 [22 favorites]
> Language is not a fixed entity, it changes, and it can change rapidly now that we can yell at each other from anywhere.
I take issue with people who say I'm not allowed to use a certain word because someone changed its meaning and so we're no longer allowed to say it because it's become a symbol of the right or a dogwhistle or whatever. I refuse to let the right take my words away from me. Start taking their words away from them, instead!
posted by I-Write-Essays at 8:56 AM on December 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
I take issue with people who say I'm not allowed to use a certain word because someone changed its meaning and so we're no longer allowed to say it because it's become a symbol of the right or a dogwhistle or whatever. I refuse to let the right take my words away from me. Start taking their words away from them, instead!
posted by I-Write-Essays at 8:56 AM on December 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
Is "Disney adult" even coded female? If it is, does that make it off limits for criticism?
I assumed it was a veiled reference to Corey Doctorow's Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom
posted by pwnguin at 9:00 AM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
I assumed it was a veiled reference to Corey Doctorow's Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom
posted by pwnguin at 9:00 AM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
Words change, don’t get fixated on them. You just need to make sure people know what you are talking about
That's true as far as it goes, but it sucks when a useful word comes around with a specific meaning that hadn't been articulated before, and ends up being confused and diluted to the point of making it actively harder to communicate, and everyone ends up arguing about the word instead.
posted by BungaDunga at 9:01 AM on December 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
That's true as far as it goes, but it sucks when a useful word comes around with a specific meaning that hadn't been articulated before, and ends up being confused and diluted to the point of making it actively harder to communicate, and everyone ends up arguing about the word instead.
posted by BungaDunga at 9:01 AM on December 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
the post is unambiguous and obviously true. consumerism isn't a solid basis for anticapitalist ideology. people here are just chafing against the incidental slights against certain cultural signifiers that they happen to hold dear. i quite like cory doctorow. down and out in the magic kingdom influenced me a lot as a teenager. but he doesn't typically write in an anticapitalist mode, despite what he claims.
posted by jy4m at 9:02 AM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by jy4m at 9:02 AM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
> That's true as far as it goes, but it sucks when a useful word comes around with a specific meaning ...
We should resist the temptation to say that just because some people have used a word "incorrectly" or in bad faith that its meaning has changed. Words don't have meanings, we use them to mean things. And we have the power to refuse to accept the alternative usages as legitimate. We can continue to use words the way they were intended to be used when they came into being, all of not yet one year ago.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 9:13 AM on December 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
We should resist the temptation to say that just because some people have used a word "incorrectly" or in bad faith that its meaning has changed. Words don't have meanings, we use them to mean things. And we have the power to refuse to accept the alternative usages as legitimate. We can continue to use words the way they were intended to be used when they came into being, all of not yet one year ago.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 9:13 AM on December 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
Now I think about it, seeing the word ending up expanding in use to describe other bad consequences of corporate power and capitalism to the point that it kinda means Bad Capitalist Stuff kind of supports the thesis. People actually are interested in ways to describe how capitalism is screwing them, whether it's the standard enshittified two-sided market or otherwise. So the word is being expanded to point at other shittty consequences of venture capitalism and capitalism generally.
posted by BungaDunga at 9:15 AM on December 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by BungaDunga at 9:15 AM on December 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
"Alienation" isn't good enough anymore, I guess. The TV show killed it.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 9:18 AM on December 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by I-Write-Essays at 9:18 AM on December 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
Late stage capitalism might be the more applicable and also misunderstood one.
posted by Artw at 9:20 AM on December 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Artw at 9:20 AM on December 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
Something that doesn’t really have a term (that I know) that should: all the vast empires of deranged shit made possible by zero interest rates that immediately contracted to nothing or turned poisonous the moment the free money dried up.
posted by Artw at 9:23 AM on December 10, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by Artw at 9:23 AM on December 10, 2023 [12 favorites]
i quite like cory doctorow [...] but he doesn't typically write in an anticapitalist mode, despite what he claims.
Ah. That helped, thanks.
The post wasn't explicit about whether it's a critique of Doctorow's essay, or if it's saying "people" have watered it down somehow.
I think mostly I didn't understand Doctorow in the first place :-). The problem is described in terms of capitalism, but the prescriptions are for modernising consumer rights. And he later adds restoring anti-trust.
Then there's a different issue where people dilute the original:
posted by sourcejedi at 9:43 AM on December 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
Ah. That helped, thanks.
The post wasn't explicit about whether it's a critique of Doctorow's essay, or if it's saying "people" have watered it down somehow.
I think mostly I didn't understand Doctorow in the first place :-). The problem is described in terms of capitalism, but the prescriptions are for modernising consumer rights. And he later adds restoring anti-trust.
Then there's a different issue where people dilute the original:
Seven Rules For Internet CEOs To Avoid Enshittification - Mike MasnickIf individual startups can set principles, great... but that's a weird distraction from the problem of Google eating the world and incrementally phasing out "Don't be evil".
posted by sourcejedi at 9:43 AM on December 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
If individual startups can set principles, great... but that's a weird distraction from the problem of Google eating the world and incrementally phasing out "Don't be evil".
I dunno, it comes at it from a different angle but seems to quite succinctly identify the key drivers: investors wanting to cash out with short term returns
Some skepticism about how much do people running start ups just want to serve that need in the first place vs start a long term real world business is a valid question, but an ultra cynical take where anyone trying to do anything is automatically a scam and bad leaves a pretty bleak landscape.
And of course the investors are the people with the capital of capitalism so observing their behavior can be quite useful.
posted by Artw at 10:03 AM on December 10, 2023
I dunno, it comes at it from a different angle but seems to quite succinctly identify the key drivers: investors wanting to cash out with short term returns
Some skepticism about how much do people running start ups just want to serve that need in the first place vs start a long term real world business is a valid question, but an ultra cynical take where anyone trying to do anything is automatically a scam and bad leaves a pretty bleak landscape.
And of course the investors are the people with the capital of capitalism so observing their behavior can be quite useful.
posted by Artw at 10:03 AM on December 10, 2023
We should resist the temptation to say that just because some people have used a word "incorrectly" or in bad faith that its meaning has changed.
If you use a word to hurt people enough they will be hurt by it no matter how innocently it is used.
It is polite, but not mandatory, to avoid words that have been continually used to bludgeon people.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:22 AM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
If you use a word to hurt people enough they will be hurt by it no matter how innocently it is used.
It is polite, but not mandatory, to avoid words that have been continually used to bludgeon people.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:22 AM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
This enshittification of “enshittification” cannot stand, man.
posted by cupcakeninja at 10:23 AM on December 10, 2023 [19 favorites]
posted by cupcakeninja at 10:23 AM on December 10, 2023 [19 favorites]
(The author's pronouns are they/them. Written right there next to the article.)
You're right, I should have paid attention. I'll ask the mods to change the pronouns in my comment.
posted by trig at 10:29 AM on December 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
You're right, I should have paid attention. I'll ask the mods to change the pronouns in my comment.
posted by trig at 10:29 AM on December 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
[...] cory doctorow [...] doesn't typically write in an anticapitalist mode, despite what he claims.
You evidently don't read Pluralistic.net?
Cory Doctorow's had a contentious relationship with the Metafilter userbase since the early days at Boing Boing, when I think it was mostly buzz envy. Even now, there are some users who think of him as that often-linked white guy. But I really think at this late date (nearly 2024!) he's earned his anticapitalist boney-fidos.
posted by JHarris at 10:38 AM on December 10, 2023 [15 favorites]
You evidently don't read Pluralistic.net?
Cory Doctorow's had a contentious relationship with the Metafilter userbase since the early days at Boing Boing, when I think it was mostly buzz envy. Even now, there are some users who think of him as that often-linked white guy. But I really think at this late date (nearly 2024!) he's earned his anticapitalist boney-fidos.
posted by JHarris at 10:38 AM on December 10, 2023 [15 favorites]
This is just an extended gripe. I get his point, but it's all semantics.
You can make arguments about very specific, recent development of Capitalism, creeping price gouging and reduction of services, etc. You can also make larger arguments about the overall impact of Capitalism on the human race. Both of these things can be done at the same time, at different times, aligned with each other, or separated to illustrate a point. All of these things are OK.
I think it's OK to criticize and point out issues within Capitalism (enshittification) without being forced to make every single argument an overarching indictment of Capitalism as a whole to every person on Earth.
FWIW, I dislike the term enshittification, but only from an aesthetic angle. It's useful to have a term for this concept, but I just don't like the smarmy taste of the word itself. Just an opinion.
posted by SoberHighland at 10:51 AM on December 10, 2023 [10 favorites]
You can make arguments about very specific, recent development of Capitalism, creeping price gouging and reduction of services, etc. You can also make larger arguments about the overall impact of Capitalism on the human race. Both of these things can be done at the same time, at different times, aligned with each other, or separated to illustrate a point. All of these things are OK.
I think it's OK to criticize and point out issues within Capitalism (enshittification) without being forced to make every single argument an overarching indictment of Capitalism as a whole to every person on Earth.
FWIW, I dislike the term enshittification, but only from an aesthetic angle. It's useful to have a term for this concept, but I just don't like the smarmy taste of the word itself. Just an opinion.
posted by SoberHighland at 10:51 AM on December 10, 2023 [10 favorites]
The resurgent labor movement is giving it a run for its money these days--which makes me perfectly happy!!!--but consumer advocacy has been almost the only check with any effectiveness at all (which is to say, nowhere near enough) on U.S. capitalism for the past decade at least. Because customer service has expanded to embrace all the areas he's complaining about! When you get a student loan bill that makes no sense and you can't even get anyone on the phone to explain, that's a matter of customer service! When the car dealership sneaks undisclosed fees into your contract, that's a matter of customer service! When your electricity gets turned off even though you're an impoverished senior and the city is supposed to be paying for it, that's a matter of customer service! It's a strange model in some ways, but the mechanisms underpinning these personal catastrophes do, in fact, overlap, and so it is a valid angle of attack, regardless of how you feel about citizens being recategorized as consumers (I've never loved it).
But people in general come to organizing and activism socially, because they encounter people who engage with them and who have a plausible, actionable way of dealing with the world.
Putting aside recruiting activists, even--this is the textbook method of getting someone in your workplace to join the union. "Hey, what do you care about in the workplace? What do you think is important? Guess what, we have some ideas for that!"
posted by praemunire at 11:03 AM on December 10, 2023 [6 favorites]
But people in general come to organizing and activism socially, because they encounter people who engage with them and who have a plausible, actionable way of dealing with the world.
Putting aside recruiting activists, even--this is the textbook method of getting someone in your workplace to join the union. "Hey, what do you care about in the workplace? What do you think is important? Guess what, we have some ideas for that!"
posted by praemunire at 11:03 AM on December 10, 2023 [6 favorites]
2nd reminder, their pronouns are still they/them/their
posted by mbrubeck at 11:44 AM on December 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by mbrubeck at 11:44 AM on December 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
Mod note: Reminder to use They/Them pronouns when referencing the author, please take extra care to do this.
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 12:06 PM on December 10, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 12:06 PM on December 10, 2023 [8 favorites]
I still don't understand what being an adult and liking Disney has to do with use of the term 'enshittification' or lack of 100% pristine leftist thoughts.
posted by signal at 12:09 PM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by signal at 12:09 PM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
So "cohost" the platform that this essay is on, is "a new social media platform built from the ground up by a small team of developers and designers who like sharing things on the internet."
I refuse to get worked up by takes from places like this, or Medium. Anyone can post there, anyone can have a half-formed opinion piece. No one had to edit it, no one had to approve it, it wasn't paid for. It might as well be like blogs in the nineties, which were free and like opinions. Everyone could have one.
posted by 41swans at 12:42 PM on December 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
I refuse to get worked up by takes from places like this, or Medium. Anyone can post there, anyone can have a half-formed opinion piece. No one had to edit it, no one had to approve it, it wasn't paid for. It might as well be like blogs in the nineties, which were free and like opinions. Everyone could have one.
posted by 41swans at 12:42 PM on December 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
I think Marx would have enjoyed the term for what it was, an observation.
Enshittification is when capitalism apparently keeps turning everything it touches to poop. King Midas died for this.
posted by polymodus at 12:44 PM on December 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
Enshittification is when capitalism apparently keeps turning everything it touches to poop. King Midas died for this.
posted by polymodus at 12:44 PM on December 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
signal: "I still don't understand what being an adult and liking Disney has to do with use of the term 'enshittification' or lack of 100% pristine leftist thoughts."
The author is saying that we all understand implicitly that adult Disney fans are prima facie pro-capitalist and Not Serious People. We of course all dismiss Disney-Adult Cory Doctorow and the term enshittification, as they are juvenile and beneath us. But we also have a noble reason to justify our distain... it's that enshittification is just consumer Karens complaining about customer service, oblivious to the systemic issues underlying it; that the system itself is shit.
That's despite Doctorow explicitly defining it in terms of the underlying systemic issues. It sounds primarily like gatekeeping. They were anti-capitalist before it was cool.
posted by team lowkey at 1:12 PM on December 10, 2023 [9 favorites]
The author is saying that we all understand implicitly that adult Disney fans are prima facie pro-capitalist and Not Serious People. We of course all dismiss Disney-Adult Cory Doctorow and the term enshittification, as they are juvenile and beneath us. But we also have a noble reason to justify our distain... it's that enshittification is just consumer Karens complaining about customer service, oblivious to the systemic issues underlying it; that the system itself is shit.
That's despite Doctorow explicitly defining it in terms of the underlying systemic issues. It sounds primarily like gatekeeping. They were anti-capitalist before it was cool.
posted by team lowkey at 1:12 PM on December 10, 2023 [9 favorites]
Doctorrow had a very specific pattern in mind when he popularized the term, and it has since caught on and taken on a new, more general, less useful meaning. And this author is (correctly, in my view) annoyed that the term's new popular usage isn't very useful. Yet they seem unaware of the way we got to here, unaware of the reason someone thought a new term was warranted.I want to agree but it’s complicated by that original explanation being oversimplified to the point of being wrong. Here’s where my eyebrows went up the first time I read Doctorow’s original post:
Think of Amazon: for many years, it operated at a loss, using its access to the capital markets to subsidize everything you bought. It sold goods below cost and shipped them below cost.This is famously untrue: Amazon was profitable in books a bit under two years of launching, and that trend held for almost all of their new divisions. Their profits were low because they chose to spend most of their margin expanding but they made money reliably every quarter except for a couple of times around the last economic bubble popped. This was written about widely as a strategy: high margins would have attracted more competition.
So I think this stands as part of the question for why a new term has merit. Amazon’s behavior seems like classic rent seeking once they grew to the point that expansion had to mean claiming a larger slice of the pie for themselves because there weren’t new markets left to expand into.
This is I think a general critique of Doctorow: I agree with many of his targets but he tends to write about longstanding issues as if they’re novel ideas rather than his take. I don’t want to be too harsh in that since it’s a good cause but it’s quite noticeable and one of the reasons I stopped following him a decade ago when I realized I could get deeper, more original discussions elsewhere.
posted by adamsc at 1:18 PM on December 10, 2023
Is "Disney adult" even coded female? If it is, does that make it off limits for criticism?
I assumed it was a veiled reference to Corey Doctorow's Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom
I always thought it meant an obnoxious theater kid or a certain type of prude. Funny how we interpret things.
posted by kingdead at 1:51 PM on December 10, 2023
I assumed it was a veiled reference to Corey Doctorow's Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom
I always thought it meant an obnoxious theater kid or a certain type of prude. Funny how we interpret things.
posted by kingdead at 1:51 PM on December 10, 2023
Metafilter:
Anyone can post there, anyone can have a half-formed opinion piece. No one had to edit it, no one had to approve it, it wasn't paid for. It might as well be like blogs in the nineties, which were free and like opinions. Everyone could have one.
posted by tiny frying pan at 1:55 PM on December 10, 2023 [17 favorites]
Anyone can post there, anyone can have a half-formed opinion piece. No one had to edit it, no one had to approve it, it wasn't paid for. It might as well be like blogs in the nineties, which were free and like opinions. Everyone could have one.
posted by tiny frying pan at 1:55 PM on December 10, 2023 [17 favorites]
What most of the other people here have said, but there's another problem at work, here, which is classic 21st century Ardent Leftist Assholery.
when people say "enshittification", it's as if their core complaint about capitalism is the customer service, rather than the systematic exploitation of other people. people don't talk about union busting as "enshittification", or wage theft as "enshittification", let alone deeper systematic issues.
Here's how Ardent Leftist Assholery works, and why it's counterproductive as hell. Someone who really doesn't know much about what's going on—let us call them a "persuadable voter"—stumbles upon one facet of the giant machinery intended to make us all slaves to the oligarchy. "Enshittification? LOL what's that?... oh, hang the fuck on, this is my exact experience with [Facebook, Netflix, you name it]" Suddenly, they're interested, regardless of whether they're wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt. They tell their friends: "hey, look at how the system sucks, here." This is a good thing.
Now, at this point, someone could come along and say, "Hey, that is super awesome that you've sorted out why Tik Tok sucks for the user, but there's so much more to all of this!" and then provide them with links about union busting, wage theft, etc., with the ultimate goal of "Welcome to Team Structural Change! Vote Democratic for now, and help us change more minds!"
But that rarely happens: instead, you get Ardent Leftist Assholes like this douchecanoe, who say, effectively: "You're stupid and clueless because you weren't already 100% on our train: fuck off and go watch The Goofy Movie again!" And our persuadable voter feels hurt and/or insulted, and stops engaging with the problem, let alone potential practical solutions. But this asshole gets to feel smug as fuck.
The Right, by contrast, shitty as they are, are real good at not doing this. Like it or not, they DO build bridges. You come along with [some complaint about what pass for progressive policies in this country] and they're like "sweet, vote Team Red, and we don't give a shit what else you do, but if you want to learn more, here's Joe Rogan!", and it DOES draw people further in instead of pushing them away.
Disclaimer: the right is evil, and not all Ardent Leftists are assholes who make structural change less likely to happen.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 1:59 PM on December 10, 2023 [39 favorites]
when people say "enshittification", it's as if their core complaint about capitalism is the customer service, rather than the systematic exploitation of other people. people don't talk about union busting as "enshittification", or wage theft as "enshittification", let alone deeper systematic issues.
Here's how Ardent Leftist Assholery works, and why it's counterproductive as hell. Someone who really doesn't know much about what's going on—let us call them a "persuadable voter"—stumbles upon one facet of the giant machinery intended to make us all slaves to the oligarchy. "Enshittification? LOL what's that?... oh, hang the fuck on, this is my exact experience with [Facebook, Netflix, you name it]" Suddenly, they're interested, regardless of whether they're wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt. They tell their friends: "hey, look at how the system sucks, here." This is a good thing.
Now, at this point, someone could come along and say, "Hey, that is super awesome that you've sorted out why Tik Tok sucks for the user, but there's so much more to all of this!" and then provide them with links about union busting, wage theft, etc., with the ultimate goal of "Welcome to Team Structural Change! Vote Democratic for now, and help us change more minds!"
But that rarely happens: instead, you get Ardent Leftist Assholes like this douchecanoe, who say, effectively: "You're stupid and clueless because you weren't already 100% on our train: fuck off and go watch The Goofy Movie again!" And our persuadable voter feels hurt and/or insulted, and stops engaging with the problem, let alone potential practical solutions. But this asshole gets to feel smug as fuck.
The Right, by contrast, shitty as they are, are real good at not doing this. Like it or not, they DO build bridges. You come along with [some complaint about what pass for progressive policies in this country] and they're like "sweet, vote Team Red, and we don't give a shit what else you do, but if you want to learn more, here's Joe Rogan!", and it DOES draw people further in instead of pushing them away.
Disclaimer: the right is evil, and not all Ardent Leftists are assholes who make structural change less likely to happen.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 1:59 PM on December 10, 2023 [39 favorites]
"it feels like one of those made up swear words that came out of a doctorwho/supernatural fanfic, and for a while i was happy to continue dismissing it on those terms"
Sometimes I think that some socialist/communist/etc critiques get dismissed as misogynist incorrectly, either on grounds of tone or on grounds of "but my expensive product is self-care". However, if the first "of course we all hate this" statement that comes to mind is "it sounds like a famously girl-coded fandom"
Doctor Who? Famously girl-coded? Must be somewhere other than the UK, I guess, because it is absolutely something associated with a particular kind of film or sci-fi nerd here, and that is very much not girl-coded...
posted by Dysk at 2:03 PM on December 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
Sometimes I think that some socialist/communist/etc critiques get dismissed as misogynist incorrectly, either on grounds of tone or on grounds of "but my expensive product is self-care". However, if the first "of course we all hate this" statement that comes to mind is "it sounds like a famously girl-coded fandom"
Doctor Who? Famously girl-coded? Must be somewhere other than the UK, I guess, because it is absolutely something associated with a particular kind of film or sci-fi nerd here, and that is very much not girl-coded...
posted by Dysk at 2:03 PM on December 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
Doctor Who? Famously girl-coded?
I don't blame you for not recognizing the term "Superwholock," used later, but I'd be surprised to learn there was a single heterosexual man in that particular crossover fandom.
posted by praemunire at 2:06 PM on December 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
I don't blame you for not recognizing the term "Superwholock," used later, but I'd be surprised to learn there was a single heterosexual man in that particular crossover fandom.
posted by praemunire at 2:06 PM on December 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
"Superwholock" isn't in the article though, nor is any other indication that they mean a particular crossover fandom? Like, I fully read that as Doctor Who or Supernatural fanfiction.
posted by Dysk at 2:21 PM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 2:21 PM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
Just an hour ago before reading this article I saw an F-150 with a bumper sticker that said, "Does not play well with liberals."
My first thought was, "Neither do liberals, bud. You ain't special."
posted by AlSweigart at 2:28 PM on December 10, 2023 [19 favorites]
My first thought was, "Neither do liberals, bud. You ain't special."
posted by AlSweigart at 2:28 PM on December 10, 2023 [19 favorites]
doctorwho/supernatural
Note the slash. If you still don't get it, google slash fiction.
posted by signal at 2:29 PM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
Note the slash. If you still don't get it, google slash fiction.
posted by signal at 2:29 PM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
've locked this because enough people are misbehaving in the comments, and frankly i do not have time for this mastodon bullshit
This is the most intriguing line of the post! The entire post is what I would characterize as “mastodon bullshit”, and now I want to know what the author think they were writing.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:39 PM on December 10, 2023 [6 favorites]
This is the most intriguing line of the post! The entire post is what I would characterize as “mastodon bullshit”, and now I want to know what the author think they were writing.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:39 PM on December 10, 2023 [6 favorites]
*they
posted by mbrubeck at 2:52 PM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by mbrubeck at 2:52 PM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
Tef is a bit of a typically opinionated programmer in their tendency to phrase arguments in a confrontational way and then get flustered when people respond in kind.
posted by Pyry at 2:53 PM on December 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Pyry at 2:53 PM on December 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
Add "mastodon bullshit" to the terms I'm not really familiar with (what did they mean?)
posted by trig at 3:05 PM on December 10, 2023
posted by trig at 3:05 PM on December 10, 2023
They mean “bullshit from users of the Mastodon social networking platform” (which in some circles has a particular reputation for being argumentative).
posted by mbrubeck at 3:09 PM on December 10, 2023
posted by mbrubeck at 3:09 PM on December 10, 2023
While we're talking about enshittification, I found out today that Mobile Outlook actually sends free users its own spam. I don't know if the desktop version that's coming to replace Windows Mail does it too, but I've heard one possible indication that it will.
posted by JHarris at 3:27 PM on December 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by JHarris at 3:27 PM on December 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
I read it and I guess I get some of the points and don't entirely disagree, but the signaling in the first couple of sentences said so loudly "THIS IS NOT FOR YOU" that it colored my reading of the post.
One of my operating theories about the internet is that a lot of communication on the web/social media, despite being open for everyone to read, is aimed at small communities that a random reader isn't part of. And without the signals that tell us who a particular post is for, people (particularly American/Western white folks, moreso as you add avenues of privilege/subtract angles of marginalization) assume everything is for/aimed at them, or are offended when it's not.
In this case I clearly understood this was an internal communication among leftist circles I don't belong to and probably would not be welcome in. I definitely know how to squelch my "fuck you" response, but I had to do a lot of eyeroll-prevention to read the thing and pick out what I thought was worthwhile.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 5:19 PM on December 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
One of my operating theories about the internet is that a lot of communication on the web/social media, despite being open for everyone to read, is aimed at small communities that a random reader isn't part of. And without the signals that tell us who a particular post is for, people (particularly American/Western white folks, moreso as you add avenues of privilege/subtract angles of marginalization) assume everything is for/aimed at them, or are offended when it's not.
In this case I clearly understood this was an internal communication among leftist circles I don't belong to and probably would not be welcome in. I definitely know how to squelch my "fuck you" response, but I had to do a lot of eyeroll-prevention to read the thing and pick out what I thought was worthwhile.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 5:19 PM on December 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
waitwaitwaitwait
y'all are assuming stuff is meant for you
posted by Baethan at 5:33 PM on December 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
y'all are assuming stuff is meant for you
posted by Baethan at 5:33 PM on December 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
doctorwho/supernatural
Yes, sorry, I automatically translated it in my head to the vernacular, so to speak.
posted by praemunire at 6:54 PM on December 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
Yes, sorry, I automatically translated it in my head to the vernacular, so to speak.
posted by praemunire at 6:54 PM on December 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
ARGH! The term is less than a year old and already its meaning has been corrupted.
This is why you shouldn’t invent catchy terms. If he had called it the Corporate-Consumer-Customer-Death-Spiral we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:16 PM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
This is why you shouldn’t invent catchy terms. If he had called it the Corporate-Consumer-Customer-Death-Spiral we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:16 PM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
The Right, by contrast, shitty as they are, are real good at not doing this. Like it or not, they DO build bridges. You come along with [some complaint about what pass for progressive policies in this country] and they're like "sweet, vote Team Red, and we don't give a shit what else you do, but if you want to learn more, here's Joe Rogan!", and it DOES draw people further in instead of pushing them away.
The right has some of the sweatiest, meanest freaks in the business (I don't count Joe Rogan among those) but they're backed by cash. The left by definition is not, which is a much bigger problem than either side's friendliness.
That and having seen what happens to people who have been told to put their aspirations in the hands of the Democratic party, I'm not surprised they're all bitter and backbiting. It's not like they can sit back and glory in their accomplishments.
posted by kingdead at 7:43 PM on December 10, 2023
The right has some of the sweatiest, meanest freaks in the business (I don't count Joe Rogan among those) but they're backed by cash. The left by definition is not, which is a much bigger problem than either side's friendliness.
That and having seen what happens to people who have been told to put their aspirations in the hands of the Democratic party, I'm not surprised they're all bitter and backbiting. It's not like they can sit back and glory in their accomplishments.
posted by kingdead at 7:43 PM on December 10, 2023
The author claims everybody is using the word wrong but gives zero examples of anyone actually using it. Who are the people using it "wrong"? Academics, politicians, kids in the schoolyard, whoever's left on twitter? Is there an obvious context here that I'm missing?
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 8:49 PM on December 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 8:49 PM on December 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
Here’s a site where it has been used "incorrectly" since at least April 2.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:23 PM on December 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:23 PM on December 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
> consumerism isn't a solid basis for anticapitalist ideology... doctorow.... doesn't typically write in an anticapitalist mode, despite what he claims.
I haven't seen anyone mention Doctorow's newest novel The Lost Cause which shows's he's tuned in to the idea of "Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism" techno-utopianism with DSA and "blue helmets" doing climate mitigation work while all plugged in to something like our internet to coordinate & share knowledge.
Snap-together houses (with plumbing and power already in the wall modules) to infill low density and solve the housing crisis (made worse by climate-driven displacement) are a nice idea, but who's going to build those, or the smart "screens" with their14, 10, 7, 5, 3 nanometer chips, but capitalists?
He wants his decentralized, "look for the helpers," radical self-sufficiency, but aided by systems irredeemably dependent on global supply chains and mass accumulation of capital ($12 billion to build a fab these days).
I do want the internet and modern medicine and wish degrowth could happen so we get to keep it without killing the earth, but the pro-growth crowd aren't going to stop voluntarily. Companies enshittifying themselves to death (that's Doctorow's end stage) are just replaced with new companies, funded by investors who never seem to learn.
posted by ASCII Costanza head at 9:41 PM on December 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
I haven't seen anyone mention Doctorow's newest novel The Lost Cause which shows's he's tuned in to the idea of "Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism" techno-utopianism with DSA and "blue helmets" doing climate mitigation work while all plugged in to something like our internet to coordinate & share knowledge.
Snap-together houses (with plumbing and power already in the wall modules) to infill low density and solve the housing crisis (made worse by climate-driven displacement) are a nice idea, but who's going to build those, or the smart "screens" with their
He wants his decentralized, "look for the helpers," radical self-sufficiency, but aided by systems irredeemably dependent on global supply chains and mass accumulation of capital ($12 billion to build a fab these days).
I do want the internet and modern medicine and wish degrowth could happen so we get to keep it without killing the earth, but the pro-growth crowd aren't going to stop voluntarily. Companies enshittifying themselves to death (that's Doctorow's end stage) are just replaced with new companies, funded by investors who never seem to learn.
posted by ASCII Costanza head at 9:41 PM on December 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
> funded by investors who never seem to learn
correction: funded by investment brokers who never seem to learn, using money from investors who don't get much of a choice if they want to beat inflation and retire someday.
posted by ASCII Costanza head at 9:43 PM on December 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
correction: funded by investment brokers who never seem to learn, using money from investors who don't get much of a choice if they want to beat inflation and retire someday.
posted by ASCII Costanza head at 9:43 PM on December 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
Well, sometimes it’s private equity, then everything is turbo-fucked.
posted by Artw at 9:52 PM on December 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Artw at 9:52 PM on December 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
but who's going to build those, or the smart "screens" with their 14, 10, 7, 5, 3 nanometer chips, but capitalists?
The answer to this question is usually governments. Sure, it takes political will that doesn't currently exist, but that doesn't mean it'll never exist.
posted by JHarris at 1:05 AM on December 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
The answer to this question is usually governments. Sure, it takes political will that doesn't currently exist, but that doesn't mean it'll never exist.
posted by JHarris at 1:05 AM on December 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
Yeah, capitalists don’t do anything useful that couldn’t be done by collective institutions with the same capital, at this point.
posted by vim876 at 5:37 AM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by vim876 at 5:37 AM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
This sort of piling on (“Look! Someone is wrong on the internet!”) is just the sort of thing that I left MetaFilter to avoid. And I pop back to see if anything has changed… nope.
posted by DaveP at 6:14 AM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by DaveP at 6:14 AM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
This sort of piling on (“Look! Someone is wrong on the internet!”) is just the sort of thing that I left MetaFilter to avoid. And I pop back to see if anything has changed… nope.
And the other 28 posts on the front page? Or were you only drawn to comment on this thread because it was wrong on the internet?
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:20 AM on December 11, 2023 [8 favorites]
And the other 28 posts on the front page? Or were you only drawn to comment on this thread because it was wrong on the internet?
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:20 AM on December 11, 2023 [8 favorites]
I was going to make a joke that the front page having exactly 29 posts on it is the biggest wrong-on-the-internet problem here, but no, there's 50, that's a perfectly cromulent number.
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 6:39 AM on December 11, 2023
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 6:39 AM on December 11, 2023
Ironically BoingBoing itself is a pretty good example of enshittification.
posted by aspersioncast at 9:29 AM on December 11, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by aspersioncast at 9:29 AM on December 11, 2023 [8 favorites]
Boing Boing is not a utility or platform?
posted by Artw at 9:53 AM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Artw at 9:53 AM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
i do not have time for this mastodon bullshit
Kind of funny to find a steaming pile of poop from a mastodon, and call it "bullshit."
posted by straight at 10:33 AM on December 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
Kind of funny to find a steaming pile of poop from a mastodon, and call it "bullshit."
posted by straight at 10:33 AM on December 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
sounds like poptarts
posted by I-Write-Essays at 11:06 AM on December 11, 2023
posted by I-Write-Essays at 11:06 AM on December 11, 2023
This sort of piling on (“Look! Someone is wrong on the internet!”) is just the sort of thing that I left MetaFilter to avoid. And I pop back to see if anything has changed… nope.
Do you not find this everywhere else on the internet?
posted by JHarris at 11:32 AM on December 11, 2023
Do you not find this everywhere else on the internet?
posted by JHarris at 11:32 AM on December 11, 2023
people don't talk about union busting as "enshittification", or wage theft as "enshittification"
???
posted by N8yskates at 12:26 PM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
???
posted by N8yskates at 12:26 PM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
Honestly not sure the drift in the meaning of gaslighting is real. People keep telling me it is, despite the evidence of how I see it being used.
I have seen many examples of people using it to mean, essentially, someone expressing an opinion, or an account of reality, that differs from theirs.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 4:14 PM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
I have seen many examples of people using it to mean, essentially, someone expressing an opinion, or an account of reality, that differs from theirs.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 4:14 PM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
No you haven’t.
posted by Artw at 4:14 PM on December 11, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by Artw at 4:14 PM on December 11, 2023 [10 favorites]
Artw, I'm surprised at you. You've always agreed that this was happening before. Why are you being so disagreeable now?
posted by AlSweigart at 7:47 AM on December 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by AlSweigart at 7:47 AM on December 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
FWIW, I dislike the term enshittification, but only from an aesthetic angle. It's useful to have a term for this concept, but I just don't like the smarmy taste of the word itself.
On Wikipedia I found an alternative term: "Platform decay".
Doctorow uses it in an article on EFF.org. For that audience, he eschews the scatological original.
I like it better because it's more specific about computing, as opposed to the other ways the world gets worse. And I'm someone who doesn't like saying shit.
posted by sourcejedi at 8:22 AM on December 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
On Wikipedia I found an alternative term: "Platform decay".
Doctorow uses it in an article on EFF.org. For that audience, he eschews the scatological original.
I like it better because it's more specific about computing, as opposed to the other ways the world gets worse. And I'm someone who doesn't like saying shit.
posted by sourcejedi at 8:22 AM on December 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
MattD: Except enshittification isn't a critique of capitalism at all. I'm not even sure it's a critique of anything. It's a label for the strategic choice to degrade goods and services without reducing their price, when the investor subsidy that had permitted them to be offered at negative margin is taken away. The vast majority of capitalist activity abjures investor-subsidized-negative-margin sales and so never reaches this inflection point.
So MattD can't see a criticism? For you, it might be the 'system working as intended' but there's another way to run the system, where the people who don't have enough might have enough. We do it by blunting the race to greater profit so we can share, from those who are able, to those who have need. The already-well-off who are choosing to optimise their corporation's output so it's efficient and has increased profits, their greed makes life worse for the people who have to make do with the worse products and services. If the system wasn't obsessed with growth, repaying capital investment and/or paying huge salaries to the already-well-off, there would be no driver to 'fix something not already broken'.
ASCII Constanza head: I do want the internet and modern medicine and wish degrowth could happen so we get to keep it without killing the earth, but the pro-growth crowd aren't going to stop voluntarily. Companies enshittifying themselves to death (that's Doctorow's end stage) are just replaced with new companies, funded by investors who never seem to learn.
The investors externalize the failure of the company onto other people: causes of failure, keeping working while the business folds, finding new things to do when you're fired or made redundant -- all not a problem the investor faces. This is the same place that investors put the consequences of chemical poisoning and human-caused climate breakdown: other people's problems. I don't know about degrowth, but I do think that dealing with consequences of your actions would slow up the harms that are caused and then externalised by [the companies funded by] these investors.
posted by k3ninho at 11:09 AM on December 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
So MattD can't see a criticism? For you, it might be the 'system working as intended' but there's another way to run the system, where the people who don't have enough might have enough. We do it by blunting the race to greater profit so we can share, from those who are able, to those who have need. The already-well-off who are choosing to optimise their corporation's output so it's efficient and has increased profits, their greed makes life worse for the people who have to make do with the worse products and services. If the system wasn't obsessed with growth, repaying capital investment and/or paying huge salaries to the already-well-off, there would be no driver to 'fix something not already broken'.
ASCII Constanza head: I do want the internet and modern medicine and wish degrowth could happen so we get to keep it without killing the earth, but the pro-growth crowd aren't going to stop voluntarily. Companies enshittifying themselves to death (that's Doctorow's end stage) are just replaced with new companies, funded by investors who never seem to learn.
The investors externalize the failure of the company onto other people: causes of failure, keeping working while the business folds, finding new things to do when you're fired or made redundant -- all not a problem the investor faces. This is the same place that investors put the consequences of chemical poisoning and human-caused climate breakdown: other people's problems. I don't know about degrowth, but I do think that dealing with consequences of your actions would slow up the harms that are caused and then externalised by [the companies funded by] these investors.
posted by k3ninho at 11:09 AM on December 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
It's a label for the strategic choice to degrade goods and services without reducing their price, when the investor subsidy that had permitted them to be offered at negative margin is taken away. The vast majority of capitalist activity abjures investor-subsidized-negative-margin sales and so never reaches this inflection point.
I'm not sure I agree with this characterization: it's more like the features that someone who used the product in the past are no longer prized by new users, so they are degraded until they are dropped. For example, I'm sure there are people who really like shifting gears manually in their car and in most new cars that's gone away because automatics are better. So to them automatics are 'enshitified' cars. Same with electric cars. They are worse for people who prioritize the advantages of gas powered cars.
I can sympathize with this, even if I don't agree. I'm sorry modern products are worse in ways you prioritize. That kinda sucks.
I'm old enough to remember long distance calling plans, and hospital bills, and buying a car. All these things used to be harder and worse. When was even the last time you needed to consider your cell phone's long distance plan? Also you need to separate the simplicity of paying for something vs the expense of paying for it. Cars aren't harder to buy now - they are far easier and far better. They are also more expensive. Sure that's partially due to capitalism, but it's also due to government intervention making them required. Do you give a crap that owning a horse has gotten worse and more expensive? That's also capitalism and regulations.
So that's where I think this article falls apart. It's assuming everything about every product just gets worse 'bcuz capitalism'. It doesn't explain the way anything actually works. Even if one agrees that 'companies set out to 'enshittify', there are things that stand in the way of monopolization, like other companies who want the same thing. And government regulations (they certainly aren't all bad). GM is 115 years old. I guess monopolization takes a while.
Some products change features pretty quickly angering past buyers- other ones the innovation stopped a long time ago. That's also capitalism.
Finally, if you are looking to critique capitalism, then you have to start at awareness of other systems, and people opening their eyes and thinking man this kind of sucks - let me speak to a manager is a decent (IMO) first step. Not everyone is going to jump in-line with whatever dramatic changes you the radical might want. Because again, from above, they might disagree with you what the actual problems are.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:27 PM on December 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm not sure I agree with this characterization: it's more like the features that someone who used the product in the past are no longer prized by new users, so they are degraded until they are dropped. For example, I'm sure there are people who really like shifting gears manually in their car and in most new cars that's gone away because automatics are better. So to them automatics are 'enshitified' cars. Same with electric cars. They are worse for people who prioritize the advantages of gas powered cars.
I can sympathize with this, even if I don't agree. I'm sorry modern products are worse in ways you prioritize. That kinda sucks.
I'm old enough to remember long distance calling plans, and hospital bills, and buying a car. All these things used to be harder and worse. When was even the last time you needed to consider your cell phone's long distance plan? Also you need to separate the simplicity of paying for something vs the expense of paying for it. Cars aren't harder to buy now - they are far easier and far better. They are also more expensive. Sure that's partially due to capitalism, but it's also due to government intervention making them required. Do you give a crap that owning a horse has gotten worse and more expensive? That's also capitalism and regulations.
So that's where I think this article falls apart. It's assuming everything about every product just gets worse 'bcuz capitalism'. It doesn't explain the way anything actually works. Even if one agrees that 'companies set out to 'enshittify', there are things that stand in the way of monopolization, like other companies who want the same thing. And government regulations (they certainly aren't all bad). GM is 115 years old. I guess monopolization takes a while.
Some products change features pretty quickly angering past buyers- other ones the innovation stopped a long time ago. That's also capitalism.
Finally, if you are looking to critique capitalism, then you have to start at awareness of other systems, and people opening their eyes and thinking man this kind of sucks - let me speak to a manager is a decent (IMO) first step. Not everyone is going to jump in-line with whatever dramatic changes you the radical might want. Because again, from above, they might disagree with you what the actual problems are.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:27 PM on December 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
Also you need to separate the simplicity of paying for something vs the expense of paying for it. Cars aren't harder to buy now - they are far easier and far better.
Maybe we all would have preferred that paying for things remain hard, but the services themselves got easier? Maybe innovation went the wrong way? Maybe, but I am also old enough to remember "Japan has micropayments with their cellphones, you in the US still use checks? what is this, the age of Charlemagne?" Everyone demanded innovation in paying for things with little consideration towards the cost side of the equation.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:39 PM on December 12, 2023
Maybe we all would have preferred that paying for things remain hard, but the services themselves got easier? Maybe innovation went the wrong way? Maybe, but I am also old enough to remember "Japan has micropayments with their cellphones, you in the US still use checks? what is this, the age of Charlemagne?" Everyone demanded innovation in paying for things with little consideration towards the cost side of the equation.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:39 PM on December 12, 2023
I'm not sure I agree with this characterization: it's more like the features that someone who used the product in the past are no longer prized by new users, so they are degraded until they are dropped. For example, I'm sure there are people who really like shifting gears manually in their car and in most new cars that's gone away because automatics are better. So to them automatics are 'enshitified' cars. Same with electric cars. They are worse for people who prioritize the advantages of gas powered cars.
The typical enshitified car example would not be gears but the car having a seat warmer but you have to pay a subscription fee or watch adverts in order to use it.
posted by Artw at 3:02 PM on December 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
The typical enshitified car example would not be gears but the car having a seat warmer but you have to pay a subscription fee or watch adverts in order to use it.
posted by Artw at 3:02 PM on December 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Boing Boing is not a utility or platform?
I’d argue that the 2004-ish group blog era of boing boing was at least one if not both of those things.
posted by aspersioncast at 5:51 PM on December 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
I’d argue that the 2004-ish group blog era of boing boing was at least one if not both of those things.
posted by aspersioncast at 5:51 PM on December 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
it's more like the features that someone who used the product in the past are no longer prized by new users, so they are degraded until they are dropped.
New users prize Google searches being about 80% less useful in finding the information they're looking for?
posted by praemunire at 6:01 PM on December 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
New users prize Google searches being about 80% less useful in finding the information they're looking for?
posted by praemunire at 6:01 PM on December 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
Hard to believe as it may be (and I can't understand it myself either) I'm sure there are people out there who do actually benefit from eg personalised search results.
posted by Dysk at 11:10 PM on December 12, 2023
posted by Dysk at 11:10 PM on December 12, 2023
Polish Hackers Repaired Trains the Manufacturer Artificially Bricked. Now The Train Company Is Threatening Them
posted by Artw at 3:25 AM on December 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Artw at 3:25 AM on December 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
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posted by Klipspringer at 6:47 AM on December 10, 2023 [139 favorites]