Some of us
will remember the omnipresence of D-Ream's annoying ear worm of a song, ‘Things
Can Only Get Better’, used as the theme tune for Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide
election victory. That song was even given
a second political airing as the distant background refrain to Rishi Sunak’s rain-soaked
announcement of the 2024 election date, as one wag played it over a loud
speaker at the gates of Downing Street to remind him. However, we all know how the shine went off
the Blair premiership and cynics like myself have a habit of always assuming
that things will inevitably get worse, however well they start out. That is usually dismissed as negativity, or
worse, “things were better in my day” old fogey nostalgic moaning. But now it
seems that there may actually be a pattern to these things, and yes, over time
things will always get shittier! I’m not
talking about fine wines, individual creatives and small labels/publishers/galleries/venues, or trees here, but corporate systems and processes, especially technology driven systems.
That could
be the degeneration of Youtube, Facebook and Instagram (in fact most social media)
into an ad infested swamp inhabited by trolls spoiling for a fight, or endless AI
generated pop up ads for pornographic video games, footwear, or other stuff you
have no interest in. In the case of
Youtube, that is accompanied by an exhortation to pay them protection money to
watch videos “Ad Free” (like they were before Youtube started interrupting you
every five minutes with an ad, you mean?).
Facebook has become virtually unusable due to three out of every four
posts being paid-for ‘sponsored’ content. Lets call those what they are –
annoying and unwanted ads. Instagram is
the same. New algorithms de-prioritise
any of your posts sharing a link and cut you off from your friends posts (which
you might actually want to see) unless you ‘engage’ by constantly liking and
commenting on posts, using hours of your precious life scrolling and liking,
scrolling and liking, scrolling and liking….
The less said about Twitter/X the better. BlueSky will eventually go the same way, I’m
sure. LinkedIn is a spammers paradise. We can talk about TikTok and
others too, but I’d rather not.
Other
platforms like Ebay, with its recent changes to fees to maximise their profits,
and Spotify’s exploitation of artists are well down the road of
getting shittier. In fact, creatives as
a whole get a raw deal these days. Long
gone are the days of record and book deal advances you could live on. Record Store Day started out as a laudable
attempt to promote independent record shops, but ended up as a corporate bun
fight to squeeze more profit out of re-issues and special editions. 
“Ok, I get
the point, things get shitter over time” I hear you say, “ but that’s just your
view”. However, it’s not just cynical
me pointing these things out. There is
now a recognised term for it. ‘Enshittification’. Yes, that is a real
word. Wikipedia defines it as follows: “Enshittification, also known as
crapification and platform decay, is a pattern in which online products
and services decline in quality”. Another
definition is “the gradual degradation of an online platform or service's
functionality, as part of a cycle in which the platform or service first offers
benefits to users to attract them, then pursues more and more profits at the
expense of users”. Sound familiar? One online dictionary even awarded it ‘Word of
the Year’ status, so relevant to our daily experience is it. Previously free services start to charge to
subscribe, market leaders exploit their dominance (Spotify, I’m looking at you!),
and endless inane adverts and pop ups interrupt your every waking moment
online. So what to do about it?
Eventually, crappy platforms will disappear, right? Like Yahoo? They may do, but most likely they will re-brand, buy up their competitors, or just tell us to suck it up (Spotify, I’m still looking at you!). Revolutionary new companies and tech will get absorbed, new business models will get worn down and sucked into the mainstream. Look at phone companies. Once there were lots of them. British Telecom’s monopoly is over, we said. It’s a brave new world and lots of competitors out there to challenge the old guard, we thought. Now BT owns EE and dominates the market. Train companies adhere to the enshittification template too. Following privatisation, there seemed to be lots of shiny new trains and stations. Hurrah!, we foolishly thought. A few years down the line (ouch!) and they are all being re-nationalised, so shitty have they become. Music is controlled by the uncaring corporate giants who run the streaming platforms (Spotify, I haven’t taken my eye off you all along!) and major labels never really went away, just bided their time until they could step back in again and take back control.
The problem with the ongoing process of enshittification is that there is no escape as the systems on which we rely really begin to break down. We have become so dependent on them, with any independent alternatives either absorbed or driven out of business, that we are left with little choice but to complain and put up with it. That is a gloomy position to be in, but you can argue that it was always so, as any system will eventually break down and begin to smell bad. The world is naturally chaotic after all. Look up Chaos Theory for proof. A fatalistic ‘lets just fiddle away whilst Rome burns’ attitude will get you so far, but ultimately is accepting the worse. OR, you can mount at least a token resistance by buying direct from the artists, supporting products you actually own outright rather than just subscribe to, buying physical products like fanzines that are created by individuals, and supporting sites like Outsideleft that don’t take advertising or are an industry mouthpiece.
It may well be postponing the inevitable and is
a small gesture, but if we all do it, things may just feel a little less
enshittified.
