Think of it as Yoga for the brain, we are going to stretch a bit.
Shittification: The Business Model of a Broken
AI Economy
The best way to avoid shittification is simple: stop buying the shit. -- YNOT!
I came across a word the other day that perfectly sums up the last decade.
Shittification.
Or, more properly, enshittification, a term popularized by writer Cory Doctorow. It describes what happens when a company starts out giving people something useful, convenient, affordable, or even beautiful — and then, once the public is trapped, slowly turns the product into garbage in order to squeeze out more money.
First, the company serves the users.
Then it serves the advertisers.
Then it serves the shareholders.
Then the whole thing becomes a useless pile of poop.
And once you see it, you cannot unsee it.
Facebook started as a way to connect with friends and family. You could see your cousin’s photos, your friend’s new baby, somebody’s vacation, somebody’s birthday, somebody’s life.
Now your feed is mostly scams, ads, political bait, fake pages, AI slop, suggested posts, and garbage from people you never followed.
Uber started as a better, cheaper, cleaner alternative to taxis. Then it helped destroy the taxi industry, trained people to depend on it, raised prices, and still manages to pay drivers less than they should be making.
Amazon used to feel like magic. Good prices. Fast shipping. Real reviews. Easy returns.
Now half the site feels like a flea market run by algorithms. Fake brands. Fake reviews. Sponsored junk. Search results that do not show you the best product, but the product that paid to be seen.
eBay is another perfect example.
It started as an open marketplace where regular people could sell used items, collectibles, tools, car parts, electronics, and oddball treasures directly to other people. It felt like a giant yard sale connected to the whole world.
Now eBay controls almost every part of its ecosystem. It controls the listing rules, the search visibility, the payment system, the fees, the dispute process, the seller ratings, the promoted listings, and who gets seen.
Sellers pay fees to list, fees when they sell, fees on shipping, and then often feel pressured to pay even more just to have their items appear in search.
At the same time, scams and junk listings have become part of the experience. Fake products, fake descriptions, drop-shipped garbage, parts listed as compatible when they are not, buyers abusing return policies, and sellers gaming the system all live inside a marketplace where eBay still takes its cut either way.
That is the ugly genius of the platform model. eBay does not need to own the product. It owns the marketplace, the payment rail, the rules, the visibility, and the argument afterward.
The buyer is trapped because that is where the inventory is.
The seller is trapped because that is where the buyers are.
And eBay sits in the middle collecting tolls from both sides.
This is not an accident.
This is the business model.
We are living in an economy where every product, every service, every app, every platform, and every basic part of life is slowly being made worse — while costing more.
Your phone gets slower. Your printer refuses ink.
Your car needs a subscription. Your software is rented forever.
Your streaming service adds ads. Your search engine gets worse.
Your appliance cannot be repaired. Your garage door opener wants an app.
Your app wants your data. Your data gets sold.
And somehow, after all that, the company still tells Wall Street it needs more growth next quarter. That is the real problem.
The modern corporation is no longer just trying to make a good product and sell it at a fair price. That is old-fashioned business.
Today the goal is to inflate the value of the company itself. IPOs. Private equity. Stock options. Shareholder returns. Market dominance. Recurring revenue. Data capture. Subscription lock-in.
The product is not always the purpose anymore.
The product is the bait.
This is why so many companies are obsessed with subscriptions. They do not want to sell you something once. They want a meter running in your house forever.
You used to buy software. Now you rent it.
You used to buy a movie. Now it disappears from a platform.
You used to own a device. Now the company controls it through firmware, updates, apps, and cloud services.
You used to repair things. Now they make repair so expensive, so restricted, or so annoying that you just buy a new one.
That is not innovation. That is extraction.
And the pressure behind it is simple: public companies are expected to grow forever.
Not survive. Not be useful.
Not make a steady profit. Grow. Forever.
If a company makes $10 billion this year, Wall Street wants $12 billion next year. Then $15 billion. Then $20 billion. If the company simply makes the same excellent profit year after year, that is treated like failure.
But how do you grow forever in a finite world?
There are only so many people. Only so many phones to sell.
Only so many streaming accounts to open.
Only so many hamburgers, shoes, printers, subscriptions, and toothbrushes a human being can buy.
So once real growth slows down, companies start looking for fake growth.
They raise prices. They lower quality. They cut customer service.
They make products harder to repair. They push ads into everything.
They charge monthly fees for things that used to be included.
They buy competitors. They bury smaller sellers.
They manipulate search results. They make cancellation difficult.
They design the system so leaving is painful.
That is shittification.
Look at smartphones. At one point, every new phone felt like a leap forward. Better screens. Better cameras. Faster internet. Real improvements.
Now most phones are already good enough. So what happens?
Tiny upgrades. More cameras. Slightly better screens. New colors. Small design changes. Meanwhile batteries become harder to replace, repairs become more expensive, and software updates sometimes make older devices feel worse.
The goal is no longer simply to serve the customer.
The goal is to force the replacement cycle.
Printers may be the most obvious example. A printer can be sitting in your house, fully capable of printing, but if it detects the “wrong” ink cartridge, it refuses to work. Not because it cannot print. Because the company wants control.
Streaming is another one.
Netflix helped kill cable by offering a better deal: no ads, low price, good selection. Then prices went up. Password sharing got restricted. Ads came back. Content got scattered across ten different platforms. Now people are paying cable prices again, only with more apps and more frustration.
This is what always happens. First they make it convenient.
Then they make it necessary. Then they make it worse.
Then they make it expensive.
The same thing happened to retail. Toys “R” Us, Sears, Kmart, Radio Shack, Payless, JoAnn, and so many others were not just killed by “the market.” Many were hollowed out, debt-loaded, mismanaged, or squeezed by financial games until the business itself became secondary to extracting value from it.
Private equity is often shittification with a suit and a spreadsheet.
Buy the company. Load it with debt. Cut staff.
Sell assets. Raise prices.
Lower quality. Take fees. Leave the corpse.
Then blame the customer.
And the public is told this is capitalism.
No. This is not normal capitalism.
A real business makes something useful, sells it, supports it, and earns loyalty.
This is something darker.
This is monopoly behavior, financial engineering, and corporate rot dressed up as innovation.
And the worst part is that ordinary people are trapped inside the same machine.
Our retirement accounts depend on the stock market going up. Our pensions, 401(k)s, IRAs, mutual funds, and index funds are tied to corporate growth. So the system quietly forces regular people to cheer for the same companies that are making their lives worse.
Your retirement needs the stock to rise.
The stock rises because the company cuts workers, raises prices, crushes competitors, and extracts more from customers.
You are the investor. You are the customer. You are the worker.
You are the victim. That is the trap.
And this is why the “just boycott them” answer often does not work.
Boycott who?
Amazon? Where do you go instead?
Google? What search engine actually gives you the whole internet?
Apple or Android? There are only two real smartphone ecosystems.
Cable or streaming? Both are getting worse.
eBay? Good luck finding the same strange parts, used tools, collectibles, server gear, old electronics, car parts, and one-off items anywhere else with that same buyer and seller base.
Pharmacy chains? Banks? Airlines? Insurance companies? Internet providers?
In sector after sector, real competition has been replaced by oligopoly. A handful of giant companies control the market, copy each other’s worst behavior, and leave the customer with no good option.
That is not a free market. That is a hostage market. The endgame is obvious.
If a toothpaste company owns every brand, it can sell you terrible toothpaste at a ridiculous price. You still need toothpaste.
If two companies control your phone choices, they can both make repair difficult.
If one marketplace controls the buyers, the sellers, the payments, the visibility, and the dispute system, then it does not matter who is right. The platform wins either way.
If a few platforms control public speech, they can ruin your feed and you will still log in because everyone you know is there.
If every company goes subscription, then ownership disappears.
And if every company needs infinite growth, then everything around us must be constantly degraded, monetized, tracked, restricted, and resold back to us.
That is why everything feels worse. It is not your imagination.
The products are worse. The services are worse.
The prices are higher. The ads are everywhere.
The quality is lower. The customer service is gone.
The humans have been replaced by chatbots.
And every company has the same excuse: growth.
But infinite growth in a finite world is a fantasy. There is limited land, limited water, limited oil, limited metal, limited attention, limited money, and limited patience.
Sooner or later, every company that depends on endless extraction runs out of road.
Then it either collapses, gets bought, gets bailed out, or becomes so powerful that the public has no choice but to keep feeding it.
That is why regulation matters. That is why antitrust matters.
That is why repair rights matter That is why monopolies need to be broken up.
That is why corporate executives need consequences.
Companies should be big enough to succeed, but not too big to fail. And when they break the law, they should be small enough to jail.
Right now, corporate America has learned that it can do almost anything. Poison the product. Abuse the customer. Crush the competitor. Buy the politician. Hide behind arbitration clauses. Blame inflation. Blame supply chains. Blame labor. Blame anything except greed.
But the answer is not just political. It is personal too. Spend money intentionally.
Buy from smaller companies when you can. Buy things that are repairable.
Buy quality over hype. Avoid subscriptions when possible.
Support local businesses. Grow food if you can.
Plant fruit trees. Fix what you own.
Teach your kids the difference between value and convenience.
Stop giving your attention to algorithmic garbage designed to make you angry, stupid, and addicted.
Because shittification does not just destroy products.
It destroys culture. It destroys trust. It destroys craftsmanship.
It destroys patience. It destroys the idea that things should be built to last.
And maybe that is the real battle.
Not left versus right. Not young versus old. Not rich versus poor.
Maybe the real battle is between people who still believe life should be made better — and institutions that have learned how to profit by making everything worse.
That is shittification. And it is everywhere.
But it only wins if we accept it as normal.
BTW, AI is the next thing to go to shit. We are in the first step of this one… They are getting you addicted.
