4 ms·

People want to take a selfie at the top. No one is "enjoying the view" anymore - certainly not the shallow masses. It is enshittification.

by aredox 2y ago

creata 2y ago
> enshittification Tangentially, what does enshittification mean now? Quoting Wiktionary, at one point it meant "The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits" (coined by Doctorow), but now people seem to use it to mean... things becoming shit?
- aredox 2y ago
  Things turning to shit? The word coined by Doctorow is new, but the phenomenon itself isn't (just talk to any car enthousiast).
- hangsi 2y ago
  You are right. The grandparent post ironically uses word this in a cheapened, shallow way when they can use it freely in their own writing. You could argue this is the very sort of activity they were criticising when they posted! We are all vulnerable.
- cdoctorow 2y ago
  See: https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/14/pearl-clutching/#this-toilet-has-no-central-nervous-system https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/14/pearl-clutching/#this-toi... > Second: the fact that a neologism is sometimes decoupled from its theoretical underpinnings and is used colloquially is a feature, not a bug. Many people apply the term "enshittification" very loosely indeed, to mean "something that is bad," without bothering to learn – or apply – the theoretical framework. This is good. This is what it means for a term to enter the lexicon: it takes on a life of its own. If 10,000,000 people use "enshittification" loosely and inspire 10% of their number to look up the longer, more theoretical work I've done on it, that is one million normies who have been sucked into a discourse that used to live exclusively in the world of the most wonkish and obscure practitioners. The only way to maintain a precise, theoretically grounded use of a term is to confine its usage to a small group of largely irrelevant insiders. Policing the use of "enshittification" is worse than a self-limiting move – it would be a self-inflicted wound.
glimshe 2y ago
Let them do it. We have no right to tell people they have to learn to climb to get to top of the Everest. I can't draw but I want to create my Art using AI. What I now see is a bunch of people who associate their self worth with a rare talent and don't want others to join the party. I want to resolve the issues around copyright for training, but once this is out of the way I want to draw exclusively through AI because it's the only way I can do it. And I LIKE IT. I'm a skilled pianist. The funny thing is that I heard similar criticisms about computer music a couple decades ago. "No playing skill needed". Despite knowing how to play, I'd rather do computer music nowadays anyway. Please stop telling me what I can and can't do!
- creata 2y ago
  I'm not disagreeing with "let them do it", but the comparison with computer music isn't really fair. Computer music, as it existed a couple decades ago, still played exactly what you asked it to, and it wasn't filling areas where you underspecified the music with a statistical model of trillions of existing songs. And that's the difference, for me: the ability to underspecify, and have the details be filled in and added in a way that to the audience will be perceived as intentful, but which is not.
  - gombosg 2y ago
    Agreed - computer music compared to live music is what, say, Adobe Illustrator is to drawing. Or a Wacom drawing table, but definitely not prompting AI to draw for you. Whether drawing (writing etc.) through AI counts as drawing (as making art) is a debate we have to resolve in the upcoming future.
  - d0100 2y ago
    Tell that to guitar effects, electronic music and anything that has any amount of randomness added As soon as we get more control over AI output, those arguments will finally die their well deserved death To those that AI art offend: don't think of people as artists, but simply as art directors dealing with stubborn artists that won't ever work to spec
jeffhuys 2y ago
In someone's mind, you are part of the shallow mass. You're just not shallow in the parts of reality that you care about. Don't feel superior for you are not.
- aredox 2y ago
  Like you, I am ready to admit that one man's turd is another man's gem, and that cultural "prescriptors" and gatekeepers often got it wrong. Unlike many, I am not going to follow along into caricatural post-modernism where nothing is good, nothing is bad anymore.
  - eric_cc 2y ago
    > nothing is good, nothing is bad anymore Explain to me why nihilism is factually incorrect? Good and bad is all relative to the perceiver.
    - aredox 2y ago
      I am sure your argument is well received at your code review.
      - eric_cc 2y ago
        Haha fair but I was thinking more in a “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” way. Code is a way of creating something that itself may or may not be good. But the actual code - I agree, it can be objectively bad. The Nihilism concept, as I mean to use it here, is more about meaning, values, aesthetics. Concepts like Logic & Math, not so much.

People want to take a selfie at the top. No one is "enjoying the view" anymore - certainly not the shallow masses. It is enshittification.

by aredox 2y ago

People want to take a selfie at the top. No one is "enjoying the view" anymore - certainly not the shallow masses. It is enshittification.

creata 2y ago

> enshittification Tangentially, what does enshittification mean now? Quoting Wiktionary, at one point it meant "The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits" (coined by Doctorow), but now people seem to use it to mean... things becoming shit?

aredox 2y ago
Things turning to shit? The word coined by Doctorow is new, but the phenomenon itself isn't (just talk to any car enthousiast).
hangsi 2y ago
You are right. The grandparent post ironically uses word this in a cheapened, shallow way when they can use it freely in their own writing. You could argue this is the very sort of activity they were criticising when they posted! We are all vulnerable.
cdoctorow 2y ago
See: https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/14/pearl-clutching/#this-toilet-has-no-central-nervous-system https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/14/pearl-clutching/#this-toi... > Second: the fact that a neologism is sometimes decoupled from its theoretical underpinnings and is used colloquially is a feature, not a bug. Many people apply the term "enshittification" very loosely indeed, to mean "something that is bad," without bothering to learn – or apply – the theoretical framework. This is good. This is what it means for a term to enter the lexicon: it takes on a life of its own. If 10,000,000 people use "enshittification" loosely and inspire 10% of their number to look up the longer, more theoretical work I've done on it, that is one million normies who have been sucked into a discourse that used to live exclusively in the world of the most wonkish and obscure practitioners. The only way to maintain a precise, theoretically grounded use of a term is to confine its usage to a small group of largely irrelevant insiders. Policing the use of "enshittification" is worse than a self-limiting move – it would be a self-inflicted wound.

glimshe 2y ago

Let them do it. We have no right to tell people they have to learn to climb to get to top of the Everest. I can't draw but I want to create my Art using AI. What I now see is a bunch of people who associate their self worth with a rare talent and don't want others to join the party. I want to resolve the issues around copyright for training, but once this is out of the way I want to draw exclusively through AI because it's the only way I can do it. And I LIKE IT. I'm a skilled pianist. The funny thing is that I heard similar criticisms about computer music a couple decades ago. "No playing skill needed". Despite knowing how to play, I'd rather do computer music nowadays anyway. Please stop telling me what I can and can't do!

creata 2y ago
I'm not disagreeing with "let them do it", but the comparison with computer music isn't really fair. Computer music, as it existed a couple decades ago, still played exactly what you asked it to, and it wasn't filling areas where you underspecified the music with a statistical model of trillions of existing songs. And that's the difference, for me: the ability to underspecify, and have the details be filled in and added in a way that to the audience will be perceived as intentful, but which is not.
- gombosg 2y ago
  Agreed - computer music compared to live music is what, say, Adobe Illustrator is to drawing. Or a Wacom drawing table, but definitely not prompting AI to draw for you. Whether drawing (writing etc.) through AI counts as drawing (as making art) is a debate we have to resolve in the upcoming future.
- d0100 2y ago
  Tell that to guitar effects, electronic music and anything that has any amount of randomness added As soon as we get more control over AI output, those arguments will finally die their well deserved death To those that AI art offend: don't think of people as artists, but simply as art directors dealing with stubborn artists that won't ever work to spec

jeffhuys 2y ago

In someone's mind, you are part of the shallow mass. You're just not shallow in the parts of reality that you care about. Don't feel superior for you are not.

aredox 2y ago
Like you, I am ready to admit that one man's turd is another man's gem, and that cultural "prescriptors" and gatekeepers often got it wrong. Unlike many, I am not going to follow along into caricatural post-modernism where nothing is good, nothing is bad anymore.
- eric_cc 2y ago
  > nothing is good, nothing is bad anymore Explain to me why nihilism is factually incorrect? Good and bad is all relative to the perceiver.
  - aredox 2y ago
    I am sure your argument is well received at your code review.
    - eric_cc 2y ago
      Haha fair but I was thinking more in a “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” way. Code is a way of creating something that itself may or may not be good. But the actual code - I agree, it can be objectively bad. The Nihilism concept, as I mean to use it here, is more about meaning, values, aesthetics. Concepts like Logic & Math, not so much.