ok ok i saw a post someone made criticizing people who use the term "enshitification" and it keeps rolling around in my head. idk, they arent really wrong in their basic critique of what it is, but i also think they are just criticizing the existance of a liberal petit bourgois? yes, the essay on enshitification and general pointing out of enshitification on the web is a discourse squarely aimed at people who primarily think about themselves as consumers rather than workers. it is for liberals who think capitalism has problems but still believe that fundemental lie of merit through competition. If you can show them that not only is capitalism exploitative, but it is also actively making your life worse in this very visible way as a consumer, that it does this intentionally because its more profitable to make things worse than make things better, IMHO that has the potential to firehose away the fig leaf of "competition" and "quality of life" that capital uses to justify its horrors to the average person. A LOT of people believe that socialism would negatively effect their quality of life, not because they are rich but because their life is defined by interactions with products and brands. Disney would not be allowed to exist under socialism, yknow? But media production would also be better and serve society and artists alike. Point to Disney exploiting its animators and voice actors and you will get a lot of regret but also a sense of, well, but look what they've made? Look how much joy its brought me? If you want people to be willing to not just tweak the system but destroy and rebuild, you should be aiming not only at their abstract sense of right and wrong and the suffering of strangers, but show them how capitalism is designed to make the thing they love worse! Because no matter what thing it is it almost certainly does! The system is fucked up and they personally are being immiserated by it, even if it is as consumers and not as workers. Capitalism literally spent the last hundred years training the middle class to identify as consumers rather than as workers so they wont feel solidarity for the more highly exploited underclass of workers. Meet people where they are at, bro. If one person's gateway to leftism is realizing the power imbalance between them and their boss is unfair, and another's is realizing the power imbalance between them and their ISP is unfair, I don't see the problem there. There is no theoretical solution to enshitification that does not destroy capitalism as a system, and conversely, destroying capitalism for the good of the workers will also lead to better "products", better stuff, less stuff, sustainable durable clothes and art made without profit motive or popularity, and online spaces that are not actively trying to addict you to them. It just seems like the crux of the person's argument was, how dare you people over there care about that thing?? You should care about this thing instead!!, despite the fact that caring about either thing leads to the same set of conclusions and solutions! Solidarity is important, but revolution fundementally benefits everyone regardless of what sub-class of worker your are or how much income you make as an employee. It is a movement acting in the self-interest of the people in it. Its not bad to reach out to people by finding the specific ways they would personally benefit from a just society. People spend a lot of time online, why shouldnt we care if our online spaces, where we live and love and sociaize, are controlled by corporations that will inevitalbly make those spaces unlivable to turn a dime???
ok also! Also! Part of enshitification is our data being commodified, our literal selves and our attention being sold. Browsing the web doesnt make you a worker OBVIOUSLY but you are having value extracted from you in a way much more similar to the worker-boss power dynamic than the consumer-corporation dynamic. You are the product!
In conclusion, there are plenty of individualist, consumerist off-ramps for liberals questioning capitalism, and those are a problem. Capitalism commodifying resistance to capitalism. but i really dont think enshitification is that? there is no consumerist solution to enshitification, no off-ramp where you can care about a nicer web but not care about the people making the web (or your own workplace, for that matter). Its a systemic critique that IMO has a lot of potential to reach workers, potential allies, who do not currently see themselves as such. Thats a feature, not a bug.
