By this article’s own standards, I can’t really fault it for jumping to half-assed conclusions, as long as a casual reader might not notice or care. I’m not being glib. Devaluing quality is a choice, and if it’s fashionable to say it’s fine that everything’s being enshittified (because then we can feel smart, rather than disappointed), I’d rather it wasn’t.
The flaw is in extrapolating from the fact that different situations require different levels of craftsmanship or attention to aesthetics, standards, etc—and something fancier or more meticulously or expertly made, like a meal from a Michelin star restaurant, might not even be more enjoyed by the particular person who experiences it—to make the point that the things only professionals and those versed in their field know to do, which a layperson might not even notice, don’t really matter.
The reality is, whether we enjoy the products and services and experiences that come our way or not is largely due to design decisions beyond what we can consciously attend to and appreciate. It’s all those little details.
There is a limit to how low-quality content can be, and it’s actively being explored with the help of AI.
One of the effects of capitalism in the US used to be that companies were trying to make higher-quality things for less, because of competition. The strategy now, by the big players, is to just sort of swallow everything up, and then as quality gets lower and prices get higher, consumers feel compelled to just roll with it, because the shift is happening everywhere all at once. In corporations’ ideal world, there is no social contract, no real market forces, the consumer has no leverage, the corporation puts in as little effort as possible, and the consumer pays as much as possible, and still buys the thing, because what else are they going to do.
You can put ice cream in front of someone and they’ll eat it, so let’s just all eat ice cream for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
The flaw is in extrapolating from the fact that different situations require different levels of craftsmanship or attention to aesthetics, standards, etc—and something fancier or more meticulously or expertly made, like a meal from a Michelin star restaurant, might not even be more enjoyed by the particular person who experiences it—to make the point that the things only professionals and those versed in their field know to do, which a layperson might not even notice, don’t really matter.
The reality is, whether we enjoy the products and services and experiences that come our way or not is largely due to design decisions beyond what we can consciously attend to and appreciate. It’s all those little details.
There is a limit to how low-quality content can be, and it’s actively being explored with the help of AI.
One of the effects of capitalism in the US used to be that companies were trying to make higher-quality things for less, because of competition. The strategy now, by the big players, is to just sort of swallow everything up, and then as quality gets lower and prices get higher, consumers feel compelled to just roll with it, because the shift is happening everywhere all at once. In corporations’ ideal world, there is no social contract, no real market forces, the consumer has no leverage, the corporation puts in as little effort as possible, and the consumer pays as much as possible, and still buys the thing, because what else are they going to do.
You can put ice cream in front of someone and they’ll eat it, so let’s just all eat ice cream for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.