John Herrman’s recent piece about the “junkification” of Amazon is among the latest of many essays observing the internet’s apparent descent into entropy—an ongoing degradation of user experience across various platforms, and a corresponding corruption of whatever aesthetic unity they once had. About Amazon, Herrman writes, “More products are junk. The interface itself is full of junk. The various systems on which customers depend (reviews, search results, recommendations) feel like
Literally the first thought I had after thoroughly enjoying Substack for the first few hours was, How long until it becomes extremely shitty? I think on some level everyone expects digital spaces to eventually become trash – enshittification has become part of the deal of being online – but do you think there is any meaningful effort to make things less bad? Somehow I don’t think AI is going to make the internet more beautiful.
Haha yes...anytime something is pleasant or aesthetically appealing online, we're waiting for the other shoe to drop. I don't currently detect any broad effort to fix this. There are obviously a lot of small companies and individuals making "less bad" things but growth seems to unavoidably corrupt in this way. Perhaps a broader economic shift away from VC-fueled growth pressure will lead to better incentives.
I don't think AI is going to make the internet beautiful either...the "cleaning up" process I describe in the post would be more of a superficial minimalism that attempts to paper over the enshittification - like the minimalism of a fast casual restaurant. Aesthetically, it might even be worse!
Literally the first thought I had after thoroughly enjoying Substack for the first few hours was, How long until it becomes extremely shitty? I think on some level everyone expects digital spaces to eventually become trash – enshittification has become part of the deal of being online – but do you think there is any meaningful effort to make things less bad? Somehow I don’t think AI is going to make the internet more beautiful.
Haha yes...anytime something is pleasant or aesthetically appealing online, we're waiting for the other shoe to drop. I don't currently detect any broad effort to fix this. There are obviously a lot of small companies and individuals making "less bad" things but growth seems to unavoidably corrupt in this way. Perhaps a broader economic shift away from VC-fueled growth pressure will lead to better incentives.
I don't think AI is going to make the internet beautiful either...the "cleaning up" process I describe in the post would be more of a superficial minimalism that attempts to paper over the enshittification - like the minimalism of a fast casual restaurant. Aesthetically, it might even be worse!