Elon Musk, the owner of the porn generating (sorry, had to put it in there) AI, Grok,
has previously described the development of content on social media platforms in
three stages: friends, influencers and, finally AI. As his prophecy has come true,
internet users have noticed that Instagram, for example, no longer shows them
pictures of their friends but rather celebrities or influencers telling them how to live
their lives or which products they should buy and, most recently, videos created by
AI with similar agendas. The term āenshitificationā has been circulating the tech
community lately to refer to the phenomenon of digital services, particularly social
media becoming, well, shitter. Adverts, influencers and AI creeping onto social media
explore pages and pretty much every other website, including google itself, have
changed the face of the internet. It is no longer a tool for research or connecting with
friends but is now a tool for large companies to push products and steal data.
As sad as this use of the internet is, I will move away from the digital world into the
physical for the rest of this article to discuss the enshitification secretly (and overtly)
happening offline. From economic inflation and war mongering politicians to ever
lowering sperm counts and ever rising rates of cancer, the world is feeling weirder
and weirder. At this point I would like to say, however, that I am incredibly grateful to
be living in this country at this time and would like to acknowledge that for much of
history and in many other countries there have been and are far bigger struggles that
the ones I am about to discuss. I would simply like to point out the bizarreness of the
world that we, as university students in the UK, as a demographic, live in.
First, letās discuss the use of plastic. Does everything need to be made of it? Plastic
straws are an excellent example of people coming together and realising that some
things made of plastic are unnecessary and then acting on that realisation. Does the
world really need the number of plastic pens produced each year which, according to
a BSSS journal is over 1,000 million worldwide? According to the same article, over
91% of the plastic waste produced by these pens is not recycled. The reason so
many are produced is not necessity but opportunistic corporate greed. Why sell
thousands of good pens each year when you can sell thousands of millions of bad
ones? Consumers are convinced that they do not need to care about the things that
they buy, so long as they are low cost.
Business models based on the convenience of disposability of products are creeping
into all areas of life, not just in the stationery world but also the fashion industry.
Companies like shein, temu and amazon encourage apathy and over consumption.
The main attraction points for shoppers are that the clothes are cheap, easy to buy
and options seem infinite. This allows for bad quality in clothing. People donāt mind if
the Ā£5 jeans they bought fall apart within a year or their Ā£3 jumper is made
unethically, these commodities are not worth much money so itās ok to treat them as
disposable. Companies donāt need to appeal to moral codes or high expectations of
quality because they draw in their consumers using convenience and excess
instead. This applies to childrenās toys, jewellery, bags, shoes, tools, furniture,
general accessories and almost any other mass produced everyday product.
Another, perhaps lesser discussed, area of the market which has been enshitified
through overconsumption is soil. āFor the Love of Soilā by N. Masters discusses the
dangers of over farming and field monocultures, farming methods which are often
used by farmers under pressure from supermarkets. Neglect of soil health lowers the
amount of nutrients in the soil, meaning that over farmed lands produce less
nutritious crops. The monopolisation of food sales by supermarkets had more
problems than this, however, selling foods with infertile seeds prevents shoppers
from growing their own food, it is almost impossible to avoid using plastic packaging,
unhealthy pre-made foods (this can also be ingredients for a meal, e.g. bread,
processed meats, etc) seem like the only option, it becomes ever harder for small
food shops to survive and inflation is unavoidable. This has led to lower sperm
counts, general ill mental and physical health and a rise in cancer. Again, corporate
greed appealing to the apathy of consumers creates shitter products and issues for
the environment and this is not only limited to supermarkets but also various fast
food and drink chains too.
Moving on to interpersonal enshitification, the rise in SOPās (standard operating
procedures) and bureaucracy has led to worse conditions for workers, students,
customers, medical patients, job seekers ā¦ the list goes on. Since organisations and
corporations have been able to grow to a much larger scale thanks to the internet
(which isnāt necessarily a bad thing!), there has been an increase in automation.
Workers in large organisations are increasingly treated as target numbers on charts
by central managements than as actual people, making it easier for people in senior
positions to end employments. Academic life at university for me has been full of
form and emails that mustnāt be missed and as I am trying to enter the job market, I
feel like I am filling out endless, long applications with the knowledge that they will
quickly be discarded by AI screening. Customer service is now often left to an AI
trained with SOPs, meaning that problems are not always solved in the most friendly
or effective manner. Medical patients often meet with doctors who donāt know them,
meaning that important parts of medical history may be excluded from consultations.
All of these issues are the result of dehumanising interactions between people, in our
attempt at efficiency, we have lost far too much empathy, compassion and
connection. This lowering of human connection causes us to be less kind, put people
in boxes and say ānoā more quickly.
An example which really drives this home is front of house workers on high streets
being told not to allow non-customers to use toilets in their establishments.
Companies are desperate to hold on to every bit of profit they make, even at the cost
to the general public and even their own consumers. Inflation is another driver of
enshitification, as companies donāt want to lower profits, they raise prices or make
products worse quality to save money. Perhaps this is the most obvious form of
enshitification; products becoming smaller yet more expensive.
I know this article has had some rather preachy undertones but, if university students
canāt be naĆÆve & ignorant in their idealism, then who can? Our attitudes need to
change, it should be cool to care and we must learn to reconnect with one another
on a societal scale as well as the rest of the natural world we live in.