I recently went on a trip with my sister and it’s never been so clear that we’re living in the era of enshitification. Enshitification is a term coined by Cory Doctorow in his book: “Enshitification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It.” This aptly-named term describes the inevitable decline of online platforms, where services first lure users, then exploit them to favor business customers and finally degrade both to maximize shareholder profits.
I don’t know if you’ve traveled lately, but travel services have gotten REAL SHITTY. It’s a long story, but the simplification is that we stayed in an AirBnB that lost water for several days. It’s been near impossible to get a refund from a 70-something BILLION dollar company for losing an essential service while we were on vacation. Not to mention that it made a trip that should have been relaxing into a stressful experience.
I also flew a budget airline (Frontier and maybe that was on me), but they wanted to charge me $20 to get help from an agent and I had to download an app to use their services. (The app didn’t work in the airport, btw.) Excuse me, what?
I am so tired of having to download an app to use a service, having to jump through hoops to get help and then being charged some bogus fee to receive some of the worst customer service of my life. It makes me what to never leave the house again.
Other than never using AirBnB again and telling you all not to use it, I’m at a loss as to what to do about the enshitification of everything. It seems inevitable, disturbing and dystopian. (Even “luxury” brands are falling apart as easily as fast fashion.) I will be reading Cory Doctorow’s book, but I have a feeling that the answer is systemic, hard to resolve and the best thing we can do is opt-out.
Instead of focusing on the negative, I wanted to share a few companies that have never let me down. I hope that you too will share your service-minded companies in the comments, so we can support them. Also feel free to shout out the baddies, so we can commiserate and know who to avoid.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.