#1 – The Enshittification of Corporate Creativity, 2025 edition

TL;DR: Enshittification is a term for how everything – from social media to your latte art – is spiraling into bland, corporate sludge. Blame greed, boredom, clueless institutions, AI’s mediocrity, and the “boom boom” meltdown. Creativity might still breathe, but it’s hacking up a lung. Hope you like ads.

There are times when a word just hits the Zeitgeist, and what better proof of this than the way "enshittification" went from neologism to standard vernacular during these last, shitty years. According to the Macquarie Dictionary, enshittification was the word of the year for 2024, after the American Dialect Society had given it the same accolade in 2023, but if you despite this haven’t come across the term until now, don’t fret. Whilst it has gained a lot of traction, it still seems to be popular primarily in the always-online parts of society, a word mostly used by those who enjoy nerding out over social media governance policies. You know, those sexy beasts. Still, this is an actual shame, as the term has potential far beyond the realm of the nerdy and wonky, and can be used to describe everyday phenomena, the kind we all come across. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

What is enshittification? It is at heart a made-up word, coined by the very talented Cory Doctorow in a blogpost from late 2022 that was later published in Locus. This was already noted by some of us who follow people like Doctorow, but it was the follow-up blog-post, which was (again) later published by Wired in January 2023 that got more people paying attention. The reason they (well, we…) did so was because what was done in these short essays was a piercing analysis of social media platforms, one that seemed to have great explanatory power. Succinctly put, enshittification was coined to describe how social media networks decay due to corporate greed and stupidity. Doctorow's brief definition of how this happens from the article in Wired stated that platforms tend to first be kind and useful to users, but that this is then sacrificed to be helpful to business users, after which the platform ceases to be helpful to much anyone, all in the naked pursuit of ever greater profits. Whereafter it dies, more or less slowly, and maybe this is for the best. Facebook used to feel friendly, then like a mall, and these days it just gives you the ick. Instagram used to be quirky pictures from your most fun friends, then trivial pictures from people you barely know, and now it seems to consist mainly of adverts and things trying to be adverts. This is enshittification in action. 

We can all recognize something very much like this, from various spheres of life. A café starts out great, but then it starts focusing on influencers or catering clients, and after a while it doesn’t even do this well. An artist brings a new sound and a novel energy, but becomes too caught up in monetizing this by collabs and TikTok-shenanigans, and becomes… something else (Yes, Doechii, this could happen to you.). In fact, just as I was about to send this off, Ars Technica hits with an article about "the worst offenders" of enshittification, which is worth a read. What Doctorow did so well was give us a word for this, a concept that explains this particular kind of self-selected decay, a kind of rot that late capitalism seems to have few natural defenses against. No wonder it became the word of the year, at least for some. It did thus not come as a great surprise when Doctorow went one step further, in a long essay published in Financial Times (of all places), and declared that “absolutely everything” would fall prey to this rot. Interestingly, however, that essay did little to empirically discuss such a claim. Instead it is a good extension of his original point, namely that social media platforms (and similar) had managed to evade the kind of things that normally kept corporates in check. Doctorow even clarified what these constraints were: "There are four constraints that prevent enshittification: competition, regulation, self-help and labour." (from the FT essay). Near-monopolies such as Amazon, Google, and Facebook do not have to worry about becoming worse, simply because there is little in the way of sensible competition – unless you count even shittier forms such as Temu and X. In a similar way, there has been a lack of regulation of platforms such as the ones Doctorow is railing against, as well as a distinct lack of interest among these to fix themselves (the notion of self-help he mentions). This leaves strong labor unions, which the platforms of enshittification has always identified as the Enemy, and guarded against. 

So far, so enshittified. What I find strange, however, is that even though the word has been so good at capturing the vibe of the last few years, few have extended the notion. That Doctorow didn't, beyond suggesting it, can be forgiven – it is his concept, after all, and if he's most comfortable focusing on social media companies, we should let him focus on that. That said, you would think that such a powerful concept, with the extra kudos brought by being called out as the word of the year, would have been everywhere, utilized on everything. This has not, to the best of my knowledge, been the case. What I think is one of the reasons, and there might of course be others, is that Doctorow's analysis seems so thorough that discussing how it occurs in other businesses would amount to gilding the lily, a somewhat mechanical exercise that at best would add some detail from various industries. To me, this is a mistake. What has been presented this far has been business enshittification, an important but still limited version of a more general principle. It makes sense to start from here, but as Doctorow suggests in the FT essay is that this principle spreads. I agree, and in fact I think that what he identifies in a special case of something that has existed as a rot not in capitalism but in modernity in general, which might have reached an apogee in our own liquid modernity (Whaddup, ZB?) but which is a potentiality inherent in the modern condition.

Being the kind of contrarian I am, I of course focus on how this emerges in creativity and in particular in corporate such, i.e. the manner in which corporations try to utilize creativity as a dynamic, as a symbolic marker, and as a set of practices. To state that corporate creativity can, in some cases, be a case of creativity enshittified will for most people seem like an obvious statement – well, duh… Yet the interesting thing here is not that corporate creativity can be afflicted by a kind of decay, but the question regarding how such decay occurs. What Doctorow noted was that business logic can and often does play a role, but I would contend this is only one of the many ways in which corporate capitalism (by any other name) can create enshittification. In fact, I can, off the top of my head, think of four more variations to this theme, one quite specific to 2025 AD, all with their attendant ailments. If business enshittification is a case of rot, in that it causes platforms to decay, I would state that we need to consider the following:

– Cultural enshittification, which isn't so much a case of decay as it is one of anodynization, making things worse by encouraging the bland and the non-threatening. 

– Institutional enshittification, which represents an ossification of that which has been, blocking things from getting better and pushing for more of the same.

– Automated enshittification, where an over-reliance on tools and algorithms ensures that the average and the mediocre crowds out the original and the interesting.

– Boom boom enshittification, where the infrastructures that used to ensure that some fresh ideas, despite everything, had a chance to break through, are actively dismantled in the name of progress – the equivalent of poisoning yourself for health reasons.

It should be obvious that in reality and in practice, things are rarely this clear-cut, and we instead see several forms of enshittification going at the same time – such as when Hollywood pushes ever-worse superhero-movies because they a) are mainly about selling ads and toys (Doctorow's enshittification), b) something Hollywood feels it knows and is good at (institutional enshittification), and c) because the public is still prepared to pay to see one more Avengers-movie, even if it isn't all that (cultural enshittification). Nor are the categories mutually exclusive, and there are degrees of overlap (such as the obvious one between cultural and automated enshittification – as the automation in question is trained on cultural products). All that said, I find it important to note all of the ways in which enshittification can occur, and not just get caught up in blaming capitalist logics for everything (although, truth be told, they explain an awful lot). So…

Cultural Enshittification

Where companies might opt for ever worse versions of their product or service simply because it will make them more money – such as when John Deere make their tractors more difficult for farmers to fix, just so that they can make a buck on service contracts – we should keep in mind that there can also exist a cultural push and desire for more of the same. The enshittification here resides in our tendency to go for the safe, well-known option, rather than something more challenging or novel. We claim that we appreciate creativity and innovation, but this is often a misunderstanding. We like the kind of creativity we recognize, and the kinds of innovation we've been told to like by media and influencers, whereas truly novel things often scare us. Thus we get a culture of enshittification, where everything from movie posters to the interior decor of cafés begin resembling each other. The astute Alex Murrell wrote an essay on this that has been much reposted and shared (thus running the risk of becoming part of what he bemoans – an averaging function for critique), in which he refers to our current age as "the age of average". As the same platforms Doctorow criticizes for being good for no-one still remain quite good at spreading looks and aesthetics, global society is starting to homogenize – a cool hangout in Cape Town looks very much like the ones in Berlin these days – and creating a world in which creativity becomes enshittified simply be spreading to quickly and too efficiently. Here, the key cultural category of mimesis, i.e. copying, coupled with a bias for appreciating that which we already have and thus already know (sometimes referred to as "endowment effect"), creates the foundation for a kind of creativity skew.

If you merely count in output, it would look like we're more creative than ever before. There's never been quite this much entertainment, or patents, or people who call themselves "creatives". We live in an age where creative tools have never been cheaper or more efficient, and the same goes for the manner(s) in which we can get creative works out into the world and in the hand of other people. Sure, sometimes the platforms rot underneath us, but still. Yet while all this is happening we can also see what a great anodynization is happening. Tons of new books, but many following the same romantasy or YA trends, self-published at the same pricepoints using the same Canva-templates. Unending newsletters, many of them trying to sell you on the idea of writing your own newsletter, teaching you the same tricks of monetization. Lots and lots of new restaurants, yet somehow most of them end up looking very similar, with their locavore tendencies, "small plates for sharing", and whatever today's "happening" condiment is liberally applied. No wonder, then, that many assume that this is all there is to creativity – the copying of a set of superficial tricks, "remixing" what already works, focusing more on the representation (on Instagram or at the London Book Fair) than on the idea. All the while, self-styled creativity gurus sit ready to dispense their wisdom, mis-quoting Picasso in stating that average artists copy, whereas great artist steal (often not knowing that they are in fact referencing T.S. Eliot on the work of poets), mollycoddling those for whom creating something that goes against the grain is too much work and too risky at that. No wonder, then, that corporate creativity has become a pale reflection of the work of artists and at the same time very competent at copying whatever happens to be part of the Zeitgeist – the same PR stunts, copycat innovations, and a way to latch on to the latest technology craze that is seems more like an involuntary spasm than a creative decision.

Institutional Enshittification

Interestingly enough, it might be possible that different forms of enshittification do not just bolster each other, but create more complex dynamics. One of the forms of enshittification that most people are well aware of, and where we've known of the issue long before the term came about, is institutional enshittification, which here stands for the tendency of all organizations to ossify over time. Consider the contemporary labor union. There was a time when unions were not only seen as dangerous, they were considered radical in their innovative use of power, avantgarde in how they organized themselves, and in general scary in their creative potential. In most countries, this is no longer how labor unions are seen or understood (although it should be noted that some of this creative power still remains in the US labor unions, due to how they never achieved the same level of institutional power they had elsewhere). Today, in e.g. most of Europe, labor unions are seen as slow-moving, sclerotic, and being almost wholly devoid of creative thought, whereas they used to be guerilla organizations, full of vim and vigor. This of course follows the same pattern as entrepreneurial organizations becoming large corporations, losing much of their agility and dynamism in the process. Ossification comes for us all, and just like middle-aged men like me start worrying less about the vigor of our minds and more about the state of our joints, institutions become occupied with retaining whatever they have, and less interested in taking novel chances. Consider, for instance, the country of Japan and the city of Tokyo. When I was a young man, they represented all that was forward-looking and exciting, and the future seemed to already be happening in the streets of Akihabara and Shinjuku. Today, Tokyo is a shadow of its former self, and Japan is hidebound.

So no wonder that creativity is having a bit of a hard time in today's corporate sepulchers. The products might become worse due to commercial pressures and same-y due to cultural ones, but all the while the very foundation for them, the ground out of which they grow, is becoming less and less welcoming to anything akin to life. Rather than being fallow fields, many organizations these days are barren ground, too enshittified unto themselves to be able to identify, let alone nurture, creative ideas. Doctorow's enshittification suggests that this might be happening, but does not take into account the capacity for organizations to create new, better things. However, if the blight he so clearly sees in the focus on the same business logic, over and over again, takes root in an organization, there is no point in trying to generate some kind of new starting point, as the process has already been taken to its logical conclusion. What I feel is missing from Doctorow's analysis is this – the way in which the cynicism he sees in the developing business model actually becomes something that infects the host organism, and makes change evermore difficult. He suggests that "self-help" might be a way out of enshittification, but the institutional form thereof makes any such move very unlikely – the enshittification of the product is mirrored in the organization itself. So it might not be the product or the service that is suffering, or this might not be the actual problem. I can no longer count the number of organizations I've worked with who come to me saying they have an "idea problem" or a "creativity problem". They never do. They have a problem with their organization and its culture, and by the time they get in touch with me, they've usually had one for years.

Automated Enshittification

Yet if some forms of enshittification are very old indeed, others are far more modern. Today, of course, the key questions and challenges poised to any phenomenon, be it business models or creativity, is the one of automation, i.e. will this be something that can be done quicker and more efficiently with algorithmic systems such as AI? This stretches to creativity as well, for on a superficial level – the level of basic, unreflected idea generation – the new systems are highly optimized to deliver results that seem creative and in certain context might even be passed off as such. Now, some people will not even acknowledge this, and insist that whatever AI does it ain't creativity or even thinking, but I will not go into this deeper issue here. What I will adress here is that this kind of automated creation by necessity leads to a kind of enshittification, for several reasons.

One, the manner in which today's generative AIs tries to achieve creativity is by taking pre-existing creative outputs, turning these into patterns, and attempts to replicate these with new words. This is the reason I have tried to pitch the term "mediocrity engine" to describe their functioning, to emphasize the manner in which statistical means such as means and medians are utilized in the manner in which generative AI creates seemingly creative works. As automated systems do not really care about whether their outputs are creative or not, just if they can be passed off as being so, an increased use of such systems runs the risk of making averaged-out creativity – a process already ongoing in culture, as noted above – evermore present.

Two, through a process which is already being documented, the manner in which these new tools of automation is used are training us to accepting the output of mediocrity engines as being good enough, close enough for rock'n'roll, more grist for the mill. This would, in the long run, create a feedback-loop of enshittification, one where more and more average writing, music, ideas, and so on are pushed out into the world, and people get more and more accepting of this as the new normal, neither expecting or demanding anything better. As some have noted, this kind of "slop" (to separate it from spam) is already making LinkedIn a far more enshittified platform than it used to be, and the critical voices are neither loud nor multitudinous.

We should of course be careful about predictions when it comes to AI and its ilk, as the shape of things to come may surprise both the evangelists and the doomsayers, but there are shifts with respect to creativity that we are already seeing. The one I am surprised to have read little about is the manner in which the rise of the mediocrity engines has fitted in so perfectly with an enshittified media industry. If we take book publishing as a case, the seeds for automated enshittification lies not in the technology, but in the industry's turn away from things like literary fiction and towards whatever hybrid genre-niche that is seen as "hot". Booktok is also a symptom more than the ailment itself. Publishers no longer want to take risks, but churn out things with a pre-defined audience, either through the author's incessant social media-work or from fitting into one of the aforementioned niches. Category first, author second, actual text third; the industry had already spoken. Should we be surprised, then, when a technology that functions exactly in the manner this business model thinks becomes something akin to a juggernaut?

There is no point in just blaming the technology, just like we shouldn't blame McDonald's for the obesity epidemic. Sure, an AI can (and does) enable authors to churn out "romantasy" novels at a pace that seems to fill even the endless digital shelves of Amazon. But this is what we asked for – fast food, TV shows designed to be binged, more of the same books, over and over and over again. The only thing we missed was that technologies would arise that could fulfill our popular desires, generating more and more of the popcorn we seemingly can't stop eating/watching/reading. AI researchers may be afraid of Roko's basilisk and the paperclip maximizer, I am more worried about the never-ending popcorn machine (with a mediocrity engine heart). 

And Then… A Boom Boom Enshittification

We can also to all the forms of enshittification listed above add one that whilst not entirely new, still is very much of this moment, in particular in the US and countries looking to the use for cues. In fact, I only gave it the name I did to pay heed to a specific trend in the here and now, whereas the others are less tied to this specific time in the history of the world. Nothing this, there has in recent days been much written on the “boom boom vibeshift” that is occurring right now, something that has been connected in particular to the second act of Donald Trump’s presidency and the strange yet connected ascendance of the “soy right”. Part of all this is a deep mistrust of established institutions, particularly those associated with the nation-state. What we are seeing right now is that a number of countries, with the US being perhaps the most worrying case, are dismantling much of the frameworks and underpinnings of creativity on a national level. 

What is often forgotten in the creativity discourse is Braudel called the longue durée, the way in which e.g. creativity is supported and changed over the long run. We are so keen to look to what happens right now, taking at most a few months or a year into consideration (for an example, look at the title of this essay), that we forget what happens over decades, maybe even a century. The last 100 years in creativity has seen many shifts and changes, but perhaps none so central than the way in which education became seen as something of a universal right, and the way in which institutions were set up to ensure that we captured ideas even if they were unpopular, strange, or came from people who did not look like us. For all their flaws, our systems of education and support for e.g. the arts have made things possible that were not even thinkable previously. Today, at least in my home country, a child from a family with no cultural (or other) capital and little in the way of privilege can get a free education, go to a state-supported art school, get scholarships and maybe, just maybe, become a professional artist and thus seen and heard. Is the system perfect? Far from it. It is messy and insufficient and makes mistakes. But it's there, and so the space of possibilities for creativity becomes a little bigger. 

What is happening now, with broad attacks on school systems, departments of education, the arts councils, the very idea of diversity (and E&I), and so on, is the closing off of these spaces. Less money for culture, as it might be wasteful. More attention to white men, because one or two might have been overlooked at some point, somewhere. Less focus on an equitable education system, and less money for the free universities, because of the boom in the boom boom. It is a slow enshittification, this, and it might not even seem like one at first – none of us can prove a negative. Still, what this will do over time is that fewer of those from less privileged backgrounds will have the chance to bring their voice to the creativity choir, and our overall cultural mix will turn from beige to cream. The tendency to damn whatever doesn't fit the majority mold – as even the oft-praised and bestselling Kendrick Lamar surely knows by now – will narrow the creative space even more, as the last gasp of the Boomers is one of reminding everyone how things were back in their day. This new enshittification has been described as a backlash against transgressive creativity, as a new reactionary movement, and as neo-traditionalism. Were it only that, it might even be a boon to creativity – a similar movement in the UK created punk and all the glorious dynamics that started. What is more worrying is that the boom boom vibeshift targets not creative expression, but the institutions and frameworks that made them possible. Close down a club, and a new one pops up. Ban an album, and it proliferate ten times more as a bootleg. Close a school, and a generation suffers. Ban safe spaces, and a thousand flowers wither on the vine.

Is Creativity Doomed, Then?

Of course not. If we can say one true thing about creativity it is that it has a tremendous, unstoppable resilience. It has bloomed during wartimes and in the middle of atrocities. It has re-established itself in the middle of great drives towards homogenization. It survived the 1980's, the decade style and taste forgot. So no, just because there are strong forces of enshittification about does not mean that creativity is doomed, or even that it is badly wounded. What it does mean, however, is that a lot of things will be said under the guise of creativity that is instead part and parcel of the enshittification thereof. Further, the kind of corporation-driven enshittification identified by Cory Doctorow shows no signs of slowing down. 

What I have tried to do in this little essay, which became far longer than I had planned for it to be, is that we need to pay as much attention to the manner(s) in which creativity gets enshittified as we do to the ways it can be supported or sparked. Cory Doctorow did us a solid by introducing a term with which do discuss this, and what I have done here is just to try to extend this a little. Regardless if you agree with my take or not, you can see this essay as an inspiration to come up with your own ways of talking about enshittification, or developing your own frameworks to discuss threats towards creativity.

For if we do not create a robust discourse around what ails and threatens creativity, we cannot in good conscience say that we are fighting for it. To fight for something is in part to support it, but in part to battle something external that is threatening this thing. For creativity today, I fear that enshittification, in its multitude of forms, is such an external, threatening thing. So, quoting the poet Wallace Bruce:

Who kept the faith and fought the fight; the glory theirs, the duty ours.