codexarcanum

destroy their ass

You seem so nice online, I never would have predicted this degree of violent foreplay. And making them lose to you at Catan first, that's some kinky shit!

The enshittification cycle Doctorow discusses is specific to online companies and services, but does have a certain general form that is applicable more broadly. But it isnt just "service degrades over time due to the tendency of profit to diminish."

It's about platforms, aka markets, aka middlemen. An online service doesn't just exist to serve customers. Initially, the platform holder caters heavily to customers and to suppliers. Netflix offers a seemingly unlimited buffet of video for a low monthly fee, but also they seek out content creators to license their works and hire them to make new exclusive works. Epic Games store, same deal: free games for customers, huge exclusivity deals for publishers.

Enshittification happens when you get big enough to play the sides off each other. Publishers are captive to your platform for access to the audience, the audience is captive for access to your exclusive content. Older companies sold directly to stores or consumers, making it easier to just put the squeeze workers or customers.

By controlling the platform/market, you can extract wealth from every aspect of it: degrade customer experience, lock in and underpay producers and employees, and if you get big enough you can even start bossing around the government. Look at how much Amazon makes by forcing shippers and postal providers to cater to them.

That dynamic is somewhat novel. Markets are traditionally regulated, controlled, (and profited by) the government. David Graeber talks about the origins of markets under monarchs in order to centralize sales of goods to supply armies more readily. The modern capitalist understands that if you own the market, then you've won.

This is just a high effort version of "...Then may God strike me dead!" but targeting a spiritual minority instead if the hegemonic national religion. Shouldn't the amount of un-smited politicians indicate that there is no God?

Incorrect. That's for pads. The tampon scale goes:

• Brut
• Extra Dry
• Dry
• Doux

Who is dankey kang?

I was focused on the production side, which I do think is primary in this issue, but i agree that there's a cultural issue on the consumer side as well.

I think it's an artifact of our accelerated society. When I was a kid, most of the adults I knew worked fairly regular hours at one job, came home, and watched a tremendous amount of cable TV. Movies were a special occasion at the theater, or there was some home theater. And video games were still new.

Now, most of the adults i know either work 2 jobs or work 1 job that stresses them out badly enough to be two. It also feels like maintaining life is just harder. Things should be faster but there's so many scams and middlemen now that you spend a lot of time researching and navigating situations to avoid trouble.

They stream media and play video games, and they have so much choice but so little time that it feels like you need to maximize the fun time.

But I think all that is still downstream from the capitalist mode of overproduction.

If it's bad, you didn't waste time on it.

If it's good, it'll get canceled before finishing.

If it's good and finished, it'll still be good and finished when you binge it all later.

Though IMHO, the problem is the same (capitalism...) problem affecting film and gaming: people have forgotten how to spread their bets out over a wide mid-market for modest returns overall. Instead, everyone is a gambler now and only invests huge money into safe projects they expect a monster return on.

You look at older shows and they weren't all great, but they'd make 40 episodes a season for under a million. Often, they weren't even all that good, but you'd get a few episodes a season that were solid and eventually, usually after 2 seasons, the cast and crew has learned enough about the characters and the making of the show to be good at it. Shows and creators today have no runway. You don't get 80 episodes to figure it out and start making regularly good content. You get like 1 episode to become a mega success, or you get canceled.

If you want to make games you either become an indie and work with a dozen people or less, or join one of the like 5 megastudios that make all the big games on a team of thousands. The 50 to 100 person mid budget studio barely exists today in any industry. It's killing content, killing variety, and it's going to kill the mediums because the next generation of creators doesn't have a place to learn and practice their craft.

OK but, hear me out: fuck the Democrats. When are we getting behind a new party; a real, actual, authentic, left-wing, coalition party? Where is the national movement to unify and overthrow the duopoly?

From Dusk Til Dawn, Salma Hayek.

Just imagining the perverted little Tarantino and Cheech puppets is giving me titters.

"We got velvet pussy, cloth pussy, fuzzy pussy, felt pussy..."

Remake Team America with real Matt Damon.

Kermit crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side.

I am Bert's complete lack of surprise