Australia’s oldest dictionary of Australian English has chosen “enshittification” – a slang term referring to the deterioration of products and services online – as the word of 2024.
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Yep that would be a word my mates would think up to describe things going towards being sh*t. As we tend to say things are going to sh*t. With that word is just describing the process of how they are going to sh*t.
'Cellodrama': The overheard parts of a mobile phone conversation between some stranger breaking up with his girlfriend.
"aww, c'mon babe, don't be like that ... no, NO ... she was kissing me ... that's not true, your brother is a liar ... hey don't say that, we can ... babe? Jenny? ... JENNY??"
etc.
Of course the most attention-grabbing word wins without it being necessarily the most beautiful or useful entry. Reminds me of the "Boaty McBoatface" disaster.
Lol this is so absurd. The dictionary isn't a set of approved words. It's a snapshot of the way the language is currently being used. Enshittification would be a word whether it was in the dictionary or not. It's been used for a long time, and it's not attention grabbing unless you're a prude
I think I know what I am saying. A German entity publishes a "word of the year" and someone else publishes the "bad word of the year" ("Unwort des Jahres"). This is just for marketing purposes to remind people a dictionary or some entity still exists. Usually the choices are controversial, too.
It's not really a "slang" word in the common sense. It is a neologism coined by Cory Doctorow in a 2022 blog post to describe the seemingly inevitable decline in quality of goods and services (initially in the tech world) when companies lose sight of their lofty goals and start chasing profits.
Interesting, Shaun Micallef uses a similar term to describe the destruction of the media through corporatisation and centralisation over the last 20 years or so, Shittification.
#Enshittification has happened for decades, but it really amped up since the 2020s. #Hypercapitalism means you have to destroy a company and its products and services in the never-ending quest for 'growth'. Steady profits are shit on. Growth is all. And growth comes w/higher prices or lower quality
Then your feeling would be wrong. The Macquarie is the generally accepted standard dictionary of Australia and understands that our language is a living one.
I'll definitely be using that one but how can the oldest dictionary have a word that refers to online things. We didn't have Internet when it was written. Are we just adapting, if so what did it originally refer to?
This, BTW is why stuff like Latin are considered "dead" languages. It's not that no one knows how to speak it, but the meaning of words isn't constantly shifting and new words being created like living languages
Good that things like "reality" don't run by your place for things like your opinion then, eh? Otherwise the dictionary people would never get anything done!
Folks should know who coined the term, the brilliant Cory Doctorow, everyone should read his stuff, both fiction and nonfiction--https://pluralistic.net/
I'm miffed that I had to scroll past so many comments from people who only today discovered how words, dictionaries, and languages work, before I saw Cory given credit.
"He [Doctorow] adds a fourth stage to the tech platforms’ scatological journey from being good to users, to abusing them in favour of their customers, to abusing their customers to serve themselves.
Are you talking about Macquarie Investment Bank? Because that’s a completely different thing to the Macquarie Dictionary. The latter is the de facto standard of Australian English.
You’re thinking of Macarthur - and there’s evidence his wife Elizabeth did a lot of the farm management. They were early exploiting colonists who were ‘given’ Aboriginal land and ‘lent’ convict labourers to farm, by military govt.
A comment downthread suggests some people are confusing the Macquarie Dictionary and Macquarie Bank which is like confusing French bread and French doors. Very different things!
As part of drive for greater efficiencies, Trump to create new Department of Enshittification. Will combine old Department of Education, Department of Interior (includes Bureau of Indian Affairs), Veteran Affairs, Health and Human Services, Agriculture - poop - will include everything...
It's a clever conflation of lived platforms. It's a way of messing up, financialising and 'norming' a platform. I guess it's come from a tech corner. Nice.
There are two types of language dictionaries: prescriptive and descriptive. The first contains "proper" words. The descriptive type contains words the editors feel are needed to understand current usage.
Slang term is usually one that you're not supposed to use at like proper events.
"You know, the whole set up getting this funeral home's paperwork done really feels like enshitification since grandpa died. It's really gone down hill"
"I guess the Church Mass is suffering from enshitification too"
Fair guess regarding things I say but: it's just that in Australia (and Aotearoa/New Zealand where I am) is acceptable as, say, business meeting language. Full respect for it, and oddly enough no other aspersion on Australia
They would stand up there at a share holder meeting and say "This is how we are engaging in Enshittification in order to increase revenue fiscal year."
I mean it's a slang that means open abuse and manipulation of users for profit.
Well yea, language changes over time. Words are said differently, conjoined until the original is not in use anymore, and new words are added that need definitions or to be better specified.
Did an interesting Google search: 1960s slang still used today. You might do the same and see if any of that “urban” slang has slipped into your vocabulary. (ankle-biters, hacker, and cherry picked)
Fun fact off the top of my head: the first ever computer bug was a literal fly stuck in a machine (if these were the first telephones or earlier equipment, I can't remember) which they had to fish out.
If slang is used enough it becomes a real word. Dont forget that “ok” likely started out as a joke and that “hello” was invented as a telephone greeting until it became our main general greeting.
This is how words are created, its how language evolves
I mean yea fair, but it's an Australian dictionary. We have slag for all kinds of shit that are more official and more widely used then the full words.
Also it's not really a slang term. Slang is usually using a word in a way that it typically isn't. Enshittification isn't slang for anything, it's its own concept
Slang words are still words. The dictionary is descriptive, not prescriptive. It's not a set of rules governing the language, it's a snapshot of how the language is currently being used.
you'd want Unshittifier. Unshittifiable, and Unshittify.
Otherwise those add ons are just going to make your use of them worse and worse with less features, more hoops to jump through, and it will embed a trojan to let it reinstall itself when you uninstall it so you can't get rid of it normally.
Would that refer to things that Elon has specifically put his hands on? Or just a general term for billionaires buying stuff and running stuff into the ground?
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Good word.
It will get used in new and interesting ways.
"aww, c'mon babe, don't be like that ... no, NO ... she was kissing me ... that's not true, your brother is a liar ... hey don't say that, we can ... babe? Jenny? ... JENNY??"
etc.
He deserves full credit for this stroke of genius.
It is the perfect word for the situation.
"ENSHITTIFICATION-Used in a sentence: The enshittifaction of America will accelerate the day Trump becomes president again.
Just in time for the mid term elections
Fat thumbs, because I work with my hands for a living
Also Macquarie might have had quite a lot to do with the general enshittification of things.
It's a living-changing record, not a doornail.
for future en-clusion
“e n s h i t t i f i c a t i o n”
'Then they die,' he wrote."
This is Macquarie University
The other one is Macquarie Group
Both names after some ancient English geezer as is half of Sydney
Seems to be a lack of imagination tbh. 🫣
As part of drive for greater efficiencies, Trump to create new Department of Enshittification. Will combine old Department of Education, Department of Interior (includes Bureau of Indian Affairs), Veteran Affairs, Health and Human Services, Agriculture - poop - will include everything...
https://youtu.be/-oxQ5fmiI9M?si=DMddx0MzcSOcvyKS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification#
Scum gave the Nazi Musk money to destroy Twitter. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/12/24/elon-musk-twitter-funders/
Initially it referred to the often repeated pattern (good at first then increasingly less good) for digital apps. Eg Facebook, YouTube etc.
It is now creeping into other areas where the service provided has been deliberately downgraded.
It resonates everywhere.
"You know, the whole set up getting this funeral home's paperwork done really feels like enshitification since grandpa died. It's really gone down hill"
"I guess the Church Mass is suffering from enshitification too"
Can you expand on your theme?
They would stand up there at a share holder meeting and say "This is how we are engaging in Enshittification in order to increase revenue fiscal year."
I mean it's a slang that means open abuse and manipulation of users for profit.
Also the examples you gave. Both of which are heavily 'regulated' or divine. I accept those.
However, I wonder if the state or church are still arbiters for acceptable language?
Would a TED talk entitled 'enshittification' be OK? Or a YouTube video?
🤔
That you incorporated 'archetype' into your sentence I now feel that you may already have deeper insights than I could reach.
Give us your thoughts on the boundary of slang v respectable.
Essentially the main problem is the use of the word shit in the middle.
You could possibly get fired over using the word, in front of paying customers that complain. Thus slang.
Would they dock you points for doing an essay on this topic? XD
I don't know how better to explain it really at this point.
Would people be shocked if it was used at a funeral, wedding, bingo Hall, over a hospital loud speaker, etc.
Ted talks and YouTube videos are cousins. They are tools of thought revolution. Not cousins of High Society Gatherings.
This is how words are created, its how language evolves
+ It's fun to say and explains the term well 😂
X-enshittification is what happened to Twitter.
Otherwise those add ons are just going to make your use of them worse and worse with less features, more hoops to jump through, and it will embed a trojan to let it reinstall itself when you uninstall it so you can't get rid of it normally.
Much of the world in one word
:)