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Oh I think the role of the 'jester' is super-important; humor (and music!) is an incredible carrier medium for cultural commentary. And I hate tone policing.

I just think Cory Doctorow should grow the hell up. I've been reading his stuff for like, what, almost two decades now(!).

Edgelords were fun up through the mid-2000s and then the rest of us grew up, realized shock value was for teenage boys, and learned to prefer well-constructed and thoughtful arguments over angst and vitriol.




What poorly constructed and non-thoughtful arguments does he make? His site pluralistic has lots of interesting long-form-twitter essays.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-b... is one I'm reading now. It's clearly, bluntly stated (good, makes it hard to avoid) and cites lots of examples.

He doesn't seem to go for shock value (to me.) That said, the term 'enshittification' is not shocking to me because of the swearword; I think we're all used to calling things BS, for example. I don't use terms like that at work, or at home, but that's personal taste in communication; it's not shocking and sometimes they are the most accurate and succinct terms.


I'm not going to re-litigate every single one of Doctorow's many good and awful arguments.

What I can say is that I can't say "enshittification" on a quarterly earnings call – y'know, to audiences with the power and authority to affect actual change.


Perfect collary, if you can't say things like that in a group, that group is incapable of change anyway.


so your local/state/national government and workplace (which may or may not be the very places accused of enshittification) can't cause change?




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