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After you've read "On Bullshit" by Harry Frankfurt, you'll stop hearing that as just potty-mouth. Frankfurt's philosophy and human psychology in that essay was

After you've read "On Bullshit" by Harry Frankfurt, you'll stop hearing that as just potty-mouth. Frankfurt's philosophy and human psychology in that essay was a much needed tonic, to name a really quite specific /indifference to truth and consequences/. It's frustrating that he chose to overload "bullshit" as it makes it hard to talk in a sophisticated and nuanced way with sensitive people. We surely don't need another neologism for what everybody already knows. Actually when I say " /total indifference to truth/ " it hits a lot harder. Only one rather stuffy junior once pulled me up on "bullshit" and claimed offence. But when I say total indifference to truth, I've had far more senior figures say "isn't that a bit strong?" Well chosen words have power. But it's still frustrating when you want to convey they precise nuance of Frankfurt's observations without saying BS. I have the same discomfort with Doctorow's "enshitification". Once the novelty of throwing it into a conversation wears off, it becomes a struggle to find the perfect word for the precise process of cynical organisational exploitation that it describes. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit

FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
Doctorow's "enshittification" is close to what management-consultants learn as "brand harvesting" -- the classic example being Schlitz beer, a once-beloved brand (I am told), where MBAs substituted cheap ingredients in order to trade on the name until the name was destroyed. The brand is no longer used. Possibly there is a difference though, in that "enshittification" implies less intentionality or understanding of the second-order consequences (brand destruction), whereas "brand harvesting" leans into it in the most cynical way possible, implying that the value of a brand is something that one could rationally choose to liquidate. It seems that it's basically the same thing as the debasement of a currency (like a brand, also a symbolic thing), or the Cantillon Effect, which (like brand harvesting) exploits the fact that information takes time to propagate and people take time to learn and react. There's a window where your adulterated beer still has the respected label, where your newly-printed dollars are not yet in general circulation, or where ad revenue is up and your customers haven't yet bothered to cancel their Netflix subscriptions.

FooBarBizBazz 3y ago

Doctorow's "enshittification" is close to what management-consultants learn as "brand harvesting" -- the classic example being Schlitz beer, a once-beloved brand (I am told), where MBAs substituted cheap ingredients in order to trade on the name until the name was destroyed. The brand is no longer used. Possibly there is a difference though, in that "enshittification" implies less intentionality or understanding of the second-order consequences (brand destruction), whereas "brand harvesting" leans into it in the most cynical way possible, implying that the value of a brand is something that one could rationally choose to liquidate. It seems that it's basically the same thing as the debasement of a currency (like a brand, also a symbolic thing), or the Cantillon Effect, which (like brand harvesting) exploits the fact that information takes time to propagate and people take time to learn and react. There's a window where your adulterated beer still has the respected label, where your newly-printed dollars are not yet in general circulation, or where ad revenue is up and your customers haven't yet bothered to cancel their Netflix subscriptions.