How Low Can It Go?

In 2023, technology activist and science fiction author Cory Doctorow described how internet platforms that start out serving their users eventually decay through a series of self-interested and misguided choices, negatively affecting the quality of experience for everyone who uses the platform. He called this process (with apologies for the vulgarity of the neologism) “enshittification,” and the word stuck because it captured well the way many people felt about the deterioration of their online interactions over time.

Something similar has been happening in our political culture.