Cory Doctorow is the king of cringe and always has been, which makes it super hard to take his thinking seriously despite the many times he's been right.
But maybe it requires people who are that shrill and eyeroll-inducing to change things?
Cory is kind of the Jello Biafra[1] of technology. If you go back and listen to some of Jello's older spoken word albums... damn. The guy is right, a lot. Also extreme and definitely not for mainstream audiences -- which is unfortunate because those audiences really need to hear his message.
But it's delivered in a way that is wholly unpalatable to anybody who's not already close to his thinking.
[1] Former lead singer of the Dead Kennedys, continues to dabble in music with various bands / backing bands and has a YouTube series called "What Would Jello Do?" Also did a lot of spoken word shows but may have cut back on that in the COVID era.
In case this is unclear: This is not an insult in any way. I have a lot of respect for Cory and Jello. They are, however, only for certain audiences and rely a lot on shock value and stylings that go over well with those audiences and work against them with others.
Oh I think the role of the 'jester' is super-important; humor (and music!) is an incredible carrier medium for cultural commentary. And I hate tone policing.
I just think Cory Doctorow should grow the hell up. I've been reading his stuff for like, what, almost two decades now(!).
Edgelords were fun up through the mid-2000s and then the rest of us grew up, realized shock value was for teenage boys, and learned to prefer well-constructed and thoughtful arguments over angst and vitriol.
He doesn't seem to go for shock value (to me.) That said, the term 'enshittification' is not shocking to me because of the swearword; I think we're all used to calling things BS, for example. I don't use terms like that at work, or at home, but that's personal taste in communication; it's not shocking and sometimes they are the most accurate and succinct terms.
I'm not going to re-litigate every single one of Doctorow's many good and awful arguments.
What I can say is that I can't say "enshittification" on a quarterly earnings call – y'know, to audiences with the power and authority to affect actual change.
I mean, if someone has been right multiple times maybe you should take them seriously despite them not being cool enough for you in some sort of nebulous way...
Well that's why your name here is helpfulmandrill and not John Doe, age 23 working at MegaCorp graduated from Acedemia University. There's a certain separation from "reality" that the internet affords itself, to some degree.
Literally just not gratuitiously using a swear word in the central concept you're trying to spread. That's the biggest first step, which alone would accomplish a lot.
It's not even the swear word, I'm very fond of calling bullshit on things to make my point bluntly.
it's the combination of a swear word with the pomposity of en____ification. I get that Doctorow is trying to make a point about tech marketing as posturing about intellectuality of effort and nobility of purpose, while actually producing shit for easy money.
But what works as a clever inside joke among friends limits it for a wider audience, and makes anyone saying it sound like a snarky nerd trying too hard to be clever. This is a good way to get (metaphorically) stuffed in a locker, ie to have your valid concerns ignored and mocked.
Gonna step aside from the root convo for a second here...
>... swear word...
I know that what I'm about to say doesn't necessarily apply to every vulgar word (eg, racial slang) given historical context, but specific to the word "shit", what's the difference between "shit" and "crap" or "poop"? Personally, I've struggled to understand why certain "swear words" are still considered as such, when the use of them is no different than their non-swear counterparts (eg, heck for hell, screw you for fuck you, dang/darn for damn, etc.). I'd be curious to see what other people think about this.
They all have different connotations by convention, as does all vocabulary.
"Shit" is a swear word; the other two aren't. That's all there is to it, it's convention. The same as "red" means red and doesn't mean blue.
But all three would be inappropriate as economics terminology. Using a smelly bodily function as an economics metaphor is simply gratuitous and unprofessional.
"Red" means red, and not blue, by definition. "Shit" means "an exclamation of disgust, anger, or annoyance" by definition, but there's nothing that defines it as a swear word. Culturally, we view it as one, despite the fact that the way it is used, and it's meaning, is exactly the same as "crap", or "shoot". Why should we continue to put that word on some kind of "oh my gosh please don't say it" pedestal rather than just treating it as the same thing?
>But all three would be inappropriate as economics terminology. Using a smelly bodily function as an economics metaphor is simply gratuitous and unprofessional.
Merriam-Webster literally has a "vulgar" tag next to each definition. But conventional usage precedes dictionary usage, and it's shared convention that "shit" is a swear word, regardless of how a dictionary classifies things.
And it is absolutely not used the same way as "shoot". It carries a great deal of additional meaning. The entire purpose of swear words is to not be appropriate for polite conversation. Otherwise we wouldn't have them.
> Why?
Because it's unpleasant to come across gratuitously offensive things like smelly bodily functions. If I'm reading an article about economics and business policy, I don't want to be interrupted by something unpleasant that is totally unconnected to the subject at hand. I don't want a close-up photo of a pimple being popped either, as a gratuitous visual analogy for how resources are extracted from an economy. Does that satisfy you?
All of this is based on the unsupported assumption that purity of vocabulary is some sort of virtue to strive for and that other speakers are responsible for protecting the listener from their subjective, personal hangups by adopting some subset of listeners preferred standard for language.
It's on that point that we, and I'd imagine the GP as well, strongly disagree.
Nonsense. You don't order pineapple on your pizza in Italy, you don't leave your dog's shit in your neighbor's yard, and you don't curse when you're trying to convince the investors, boards, and executives – the people with the real power to stop enshittification.
It's just about understanding cultural context in order to legitimatize your point. I feel like Doctorow would have learned that by now.
>Why should we continue to put that word on some kind of "oh my gosh please don't say it" pedestal rather than just treating it as the same thing?
no particular reason, and honestly it being a swear is the least intrusive part of this. As mentioned before, "enpoopification" or "encrapification" don't solve the problem. "poop" is not a swear but is something to avoid talking about in 95% of professional settings.
>Why?
because poop is gross and in general to be avoided talking about where possible? I don't even think this is a cultural thing. Is there any country where you can leave the bathroom and say "Damn I just took a huge shit" in formal company?
that goes for any bodily waste as well. Sweat, mucus, urine. Feces just happens to be the most messy, unhygienic, and smelly of them all.
George Carlin has a lot to say on that topic... well, had.
In this case, it wouldn't really be better if it were "encrapification" or "enpoopification." IMO the problem with the term, aside from "shit" being a word you can't say on television, is that it's juvenile.
It is indeed a common tactic to focus on the terminology rather than the message, which is why it's so frustrating when someone you largely agree with chooses terminology that makes it so easy to do.
This is one of those "you can be right, or you can be successful" situations. Everybody can rally behind "enshittification" and make it super-easy for the actual message to be dismissed, or we could find a term that doesn't sound like it was coined by an edgelord.
The folks who are won over / have adopted "enshittification" aren't the audience that needs winning over. So what language and messaging is going to work for that next group that might actually turn the tide?
The premise that using this tryhard meme word will actually change things is silly. All it will do is make these conversations frustratingly annoying until the meme falls out of favor.
It's a meme created by a fringe nerd blogger, primarily taken up by nerds on the internet, that no one else cares about.
It's not a scientific term, legal term or term of art, nor is it needed to describe some novel process. It's just a buzzword people like to use because it contains the word "shit."
But maybe it requires people who are that shrill and eyeroll-inducing to change things?