On 6 January, at the New York Times Square Hotel, the 134-year-old American Dialect Society voted that ‘Enshittification’ should be named as the ‘Digital Word of the Year’ for 2023. The decision came after a vote, presided over by Ben Zimmer, chair of the ADS New Words Committee and language columnist for the Wall Stre

Enshittification became popular in 2023 after it was used in a blog post by author of The Internet Con, Cory Doctorow, who used it to describe how digital platforms can become worse and worse:

“Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification.”

“Enshittification,” Cory Doctorow’s coinage describing the process by which internet media platforms become increasingly unusable and un-quittable, has been named 2023’s “Digital Word of the Year.” Here, we break down what the term means and Doctorow’s solution to the internet’s relentless enshittification.

  • lolcatnip@reddthat.comEnglish
    5·
    9 months ago

    Language evolves.

    That’s a thought-terminating cliche that people often use to dismiss legitimate criticism.

    In this particular instance I think you’ve made a good case that broadening the definition is a good thing, but I really hate the implication no use of language is ever wrong, but rather just “evolution”, which is implied to be least be a neutral process if not actively beneficial.

    I’ve seen people defend literal typos as “language evolution” and get massively upvoted while anyone who dares to disagree is mocked. A typo isn’t language evolution at all unless it becomes popular. Otherwise, to continue the biology metaphor, it’s just a language mutation, and like biological mutations, typos are harmful to communication far more often than they’re helpful.

    Another example a bad use of language is how words and phrases are co-opted for political purposes. “Woke” is an obvious recent example. “Welfare” is an older much much more egregious example, where just the mere spelling of the word makes the original meaning clear, and that meaning is unequivocally positive, yet most people think “welfare” means government assistance to poor people. Or take “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps”, which went from an example of something that’s literally impossible to something people are unironically told they should be doing. This sort of thing is language evolution, but it’s not neutral. It’s done with an political agenda. It impoverishes our language our language and stifles honest communication.