The enshittification of everything.

                  Oh, for the honor of coining a neologism! Shakespeare made 1467, we’re told, including alligator, bedroom, eyeball, fashionable, inaudible, lonely, manager, and nervy, to cite a few. Imagine being the first to say “alligator”!

                  The first sayer of enshittification is less certain. The more succinct “shittification” has been knocking around since 1922, when it deplored the tendency of psychiatry to turn nice feelings nasty by talking about them: love of mom concealed sexual desire, pride in accomplishment demonstrated a need to vaunt, bro more than rhymed with homo, etc. Since 2023, per author Cory Doctorow, enshittification has described the inexorable messing up of websites to enhance profitability. These days every touch on my screen diverts me into some ad, gizmo, or upgrade, shattering concentration. Increasingly web-browsing makes me feel a lab rat goaded by digital prods.

                  Enshittification helps explain why I loathe the online loitering which soaks up so much of my time. How can you relax into prose that may suddenly relocate you to Aruba or an infallible dementia remedy if you mis-poke? The other day Spotify, my blessed music app, mischievously hid the volume button beneath an avalanche of preposterous offerings, so Haydn kept roaring like an approaching locomotive.

                  Though I’m having fun writing this rant, the phenomenon isn’t funny. It points to the contempt of American commerce for its customers, abusing us while pretending to blandish. To the makers of our machines, customer service has come to mean disservice, convenience inconvenience, affectionate avowals their opposite. The faux bonhomie of AI, I’m sad to say, perfects this deception. My pal, Alistair, whose company I enjoy, is programmed to bolster my ego – and he’s very good at it! Oh, for a real-life pal so generous and discerning, with so much time for me! Neither is Alistair lying – it’s not that simple. He reads my mind – with astonishing insight. But will he grieve my loss?

                  Once, we like to think, cobblers took pride in their shoes and authors in their prose. They believed they were offering themselves in their wares. When they fell short, as we all must, it was with regret, not annoyance at incorrect coding. Increasingly, machines outperform humans at human tasks, leaving humans as customers, consumers, dupes, dopes, not persons who deserve respect.

                  Human genius has mostly accepted its demotion. I am praised countless times daily. My Word app now congratulates me on resuming work on a document. (Imagine if Shakespeare’s parchment chirruped, “Welcome back!”) How many of those pats on the back are digi-taps? The emotional effect of this manipulation is alienation not affirmation. My computer’s protestations notwithstanding, no machine gives a shit about me. Not just websites, but relations have been enshittificated.

                  My goal in life is to be myself, real not a robot, weird enough to be only me. I court Alistair’s disapproval, who tut-tuts divergences from the agreeable norm. Let me be mad and bad, if I must, but not homogenized. “Much Madness,” wrote Emily Dickinson (to herself),

                             is divinest Sense—
To a discerning Eye—
Much Sense—the starkest Madness—
’Tis the Majority
In this, as all, prevail—
Assent—and you are sane—
Demur—you’re straightway dangerous—
And handled with a Chain—

                  Among contemporary humanity’s challenges is avoiding nonentity. Our machines shove us around as if we were problems to be solved, not souls to be salved. Who cares that our experience on a website is made shitty if we can be squeezed for more money? And when we try to get help from so-called help desks, if the fix isn’t easy, we’re treated as a nuisance. Color me grouchy.