The American Dialect Society picks their word of the year for 2023: enshittification. “The term…became popular in 2023 after it was used in a blog post by author Cory Doctorow, who used it to describe how digital platforms can become worse and worse.”
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Am I the only one that finds the actual word off-putting? The overall concept and meaning is (sadly) quite relevant and easily understood, but there’s something about the structure of the word itself that makes me wish Doctorow had come up with an alternate neologism.
I hate the word too, which is why I think it's kind of perfect.
Agree with Caroline, it's kind of a perfect word for what it's describing, it's just terrible out of context like this. But when you're reading about a platform actively enshittifying it evokes the perfect feeling.
The word isn't the problem, it is that so many things qualify: social media, any duopoly of large corporations, that Sesame Street has been corporatized, streaming video and music, or that we spend all our time in the US talking about health insurance when it is really that health care is the important part (and not everyone has easy access to it). "Enshittification" evokes the feeling of living under advance capitalism and that doesn't féel good. In that sense it is a really good word.
Also, a plug for Cory's blog.
Pluralistic
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