Everything is Shit: Tracking the Great Enshittening

WhatTheBuck · February 8

11 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

My disruptive idea is exactly this, you pay just one bill per month and it’s for EVERYTHING. The content—- we will call them “shows”— goes straight to your TV. Most of it is junk and you never watch it but you really want to watch a few things. And you pay one big check to one company, which negotiates with “content creators” for the stuff that comes to your TV.

What do you think?

We used to call that cable tv.

52-80 · February 8

10 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

This captures an extreme version of the phenomenon: massive price add for minimal value-add. "Sure, that $40 Austin FC ticket just cost you $65, but you get the convenience of having it on your phone!!!" Having my ticket on my phone isn't worth $25. For my family of 4, it's not worth $100. Mail me paper fucking tickets, like I used for the first 40 something years of my life, and they worked fine. The Ticketmaster fees were still shit, but they weren't 50%+ added to the ticket price.

I don't mind paying an additional price commensurate with the value-add. Would I pay $5 a ticket for the convenience of it being on my phone? Probably. That's about what that convenience is worth.

There are a jillion other products and services that suffer from this: they have gotten slightly shinier or more convenient....but not nearly in proportion to the massive price increase that comes with them. The only "value" that a shitload of enterprises are "adding" is "the value of charging a shitload of money."

Can you show where the massive price increase in entertainment spending is?

956 Worldwide · February 8

1 hour ago, WhatTheBuck said:

We used to call that cable tv.

Edited February 8 by 956 Worldwide

February 8

Captainant · February 8

2 hours ago, 52-80 said:

covid era:

https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2021/07/net-worth-gains-in-2020-were-the-largest-for-the-least-wealthy

longer term:

you can change the reference datum yourself: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=EVn4

2 hours ago, 52-80 said:

Can you show where the massive price increase in entertainment spending is?

IMO, a study from 2021 probably won't have great data for 2022 and onwards.

MonkeyDoughnut · February 8

My beef - it's not a "convenience" fee if it's the only way I can get it, it's an "inconvenience" fee and should be called such.

956 Worldwide · February 8

3 minutes ago, MonkeyDoughnut said:

My beef - it's not a "convenience" fee if it's the only way I can get it, it's an "inconvenience" fee and should be called such.

Meanwhile airlines charge you more if you want a paper pass. All this shit is chiseling, as hayden said. Never making something better and just charging for it, taking things that exist and making them shittier.

The grocery store auto-checkout is another one. “You’ll bag your own shit and also this machine will yell at you and shut down if you need to adjust what you bagged. But we are saving money on cashiers and baggers and those savings will be passed….oh, we are experiencing lots of retail shoplifting at the auto-cashiers so of course our prices…..”

Very, very few advances in anything are there to make the end-user’s experience better, it’s just to extract more and give less. Chiseling.

February 8

I'm one of the few folks who sees self-checkout as a win for me, the consumer. I'd much rather bag my own shit, according to where it goes in my pantry/ fridge- or with much higher regard for integrity/ care for the product. I also don't have to fake with the small talk with some fucker who doesn't want to talk to me either.

I also like having about 32 stations available, as opposed to 4 checkout lines with people buying enough groceries to make the trip to Oregon. It almost always saves me time.

Edited February 8 by slorch

bschoolprof · February 8

Yeah, self checkout is far superior to the old way. I'd get stuck behind some shitbird paying for toothpaste and diapers with a pile of coupons and a letter of credit from the bank of luxembourg.

DigglerontheHoof · February 8

30 minutes ago, slorch said:

I'm one of the few folks who sees self-checkout as a win for me, the consumer. I'd much rather bag my own shit, according to where it goes in my pantry/ fridge- or with much higher regard for integrity/ care for the product. I also don't have to fake with the small talk with some fucker who doesn't want to talk to me either.

I also like having about 32 stations available, as opposed to 4 checkout lines with people buying enough groceries to make the trip to Oregon. It almost always saves me time.

I'd agree if I got, say, a 5% discount for going self-checkout and doing their labor, but that's not the deal so.... fuck 'em. Additionally, I go to the store about twice/month, so I usually have more than 30 items. Trying to fit all that on the 20"x 20" checkout area is a beating. And don't get me started on looking up produce.

I usually grocery shop at low-traffic times, so I'll let the minimum wage person check out and bag my stuff.

Captainant · February 8

26 minutes ago, slorch said:

I'm one of the few folks who sees self-checkout as a win for me, the consumer. I'd much rather bag my own shit, according to where it goes in my pantry/ fridge- or with much higher regard for integrity/ care for the product. I also don't have to fake with the small talk with some fucker who doesn't want to talk to me either.

I also like having about 32 stations available, as opposed to 4 checkout lines with people buying enough groceries to make the trip to Oregon. It almost always saves me time.

21 minutes ago, bschoolprof said:

Yeah, self checkout is far superior to the old way. I'd get stuck behind some shitbird paying for toothpaste and diapers with a pile of coupons and a letter of credit from the bank of luxembourg.

The hidden cost of self checkout is stores implementing worse and worse anti-shrinkage measures like receipt checkers and stores presuming more of their customers are thieves. Plus I've still been stuck waiting on the check out tender to finish helping some shitbird so he can look at my ID to let me continue checking out after scanning beer.

Plus what diggler said about too many items for self checkout. There's frequently only one or two manned lanes open otherwise

Neonmoon · February 8

Companies keep chiseling because Americans are fat lazy cash machines that sit back and pump out money when asked. Zero pushback

25% tip at counter service? Sure

6% commission to sell a home? Sure

$5 for drip coffee? Sure

Concert Fees 50%? Sure

Captainant · February 8

17 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

Companies keep chiseling because Americans are fat lazy cash machines that sit back and pump out money when asked. Zero pushback

25% tip at counter service? Sure

6% commission to sell a home? Sure

$5 for drip coffee? Sure

Concert Fees 50%? Sure

Well that and we don't really have much choice left if you want to buy a house or a concert ticket. Consumer choice is getting worse and worse, and shouldn't blamed for picking the least bad thing out of a set of shit options.

Companies are chiseling because consumers are picking between getting nothing or getting gouged.

DCA_HORN · February 8

16 hours ago, hayden_horn said:

so i've been meaning to make a post about this.

i've likened it the great chiseling. i think that's where we are.

i feel like everything described in this thread is very true and depressing but i think it has something more to do with wealth coalescing at the top, and i think covid accelerated it.

where is all the money going? it's all being funneled out of the working class. as a result, the chiseling. everything has to cost just $5 more for this or $3 for that, here's a microtransaction; fees for concert tickets are like 50% of the total cost now, which should be illegal. is that money going to the artist? very rarely.

i have a feeling that we are in an artificially good economy. it's all a fucking sham. it's simple math.

low unemployment? we have a border crisis! these are both artificial problems. everyone has a side hustle. everyone working two jobs. everyone complains about the tip screen tablet being flipped over, but that's just corporate costs being passed onto the customer. all the money is funneling to the top, as ever, but we've reached a tipping point where the dollars are fewer because wealth is accumulated and just sitting there, doing nothing except act as a societal anchor.

so they (everyone selling something) are chiseling.

pay your workers less, or only just enough, and try to cut every corner in the name of the next quarter's earnings in a similar manner to how mankind has treated the environment.

but i thik it all boils down to the greed and competition of wealth accumulation. who are the shareholders? you? me? our 401ks that we can't access and therefore serve as a bullwark in boosting stock prices? lol. no. i'm not going all bilderburg or whatever here, but i think the competition for fewer and scarcer resources makes people desperate and makes humanity steep in its worst stink.

so everyone is hustling to make it, but no one is getting anywhere.

everyone around me seems to be fixing, and nobody seems to be building.

if any of that makes sense.

You know what the trouble is HH? We used to make shit in this country. Build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guys pocket.

Captainant · February 8

3 minutes ago, DCA_HORN said:

You know what the trouble is HH? We used to make shit in this country. Build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guys pocket.

Way better margins in offshoring the manufacturing part of the business, bro. Less CapEx! It makes the EBIDTA numbers easier to lube up

Neonmoon · February 8

18 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Well that and we don't really have much choice left if you want to buy a house or a concert ticket. Consumer choice is getting worse and worse, and shouldn't blamed for picking the least bad thing out of a set of shit options.

Companies are chiseling because consumers are picking between getting nothing or getting gouged.

That's not really true.

you can refuse to tip counter service

You can negotiate a price to sell a home

You can fly allegiant or spirit

Yes, you can refuse to attend that concert if it's too expensive

Choosing not to go is a choice, a powerful one. A concert isn't bread, it's not like refusing to go will kill you.

Captainant · February 8

5 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

Choosing not to go is a choice, a powerful one. A concert isn't bread, it's not like refusing to go will kill you.

No disagreement there, but if you've been working 50hr weeks on end and are burnt out and you can't even go do something fun to enjoy the fruits of your labor, then what's the point? Just go work and burn yourself out, and then live a bare and meager life? MmmmmMMM! That's some good American Dream right there!

There's NO WAY it could be that the social contract has been torn up in the name of neverending quarterly growth, and that enshittification to consumers is a terminal state of that condition.

troph · February 8

15 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

My disruptive idea is exactly this, you pay just one bill per month and it’s for EVERYTHING. The content—- we will call them “shows”— goes straight to your TV. Most of it is junk and you never watch it but you really want to watch a few things. And you pay one big check to one company, which negotiates with “content creators” for the stuff that comes to your TV.

What do you think?

Can I get one of these?

if so I’m in.

Edited February 8 by troph

Homercles · February 8

16 minutes ago, DCA_HORN said:

You know what the trouble is HH? We used to make shit in this country. Build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guys pocket.

The corp world could use more Frank Sobotka. He did what he did not to massively enrich himself or serve shareholders, he put himself in a shit sandwich to protect his crew, help his family and the Union. Compare his motivations to Marlo, relentless and ruthless pursuit of power.

They don’t want everyone back in the office for camaraderie, it’s about losing tax breaks. It’s not about serving your constituents, it’s about staying in office. I’m convinced prices stay high because they found people still bought their goods even after legit supply chain issues.

In leadership I look up to my dad. Started O3 as a reservist and made the tough choice to go active duty. Despite being almost 40 when he converted to AD, he still retired full bird and didn’t participate in chickenshit with his enlisted folks. They all loved him. He turned down a Group Commander slot, pinnacle of his career, because it was OCONUS and didn’t want to make my mom move overseas for a fourth time.

You can serve with distinction in your role and still treat people fairy. And no, I don’t think he woulda returned that xmas tree lol.

February 8

4 minutes ago, Captainant said:

No disagreement there, but if you've been working 50hr weeks on end and are burnt out and you can't even go do something fun to enjoy the fruits of your labor, then what's the point? Just go work and burn yourself out, and then live a bare and meager life? MmmmmMMM! That's some good American Dream right there!

There's NO WAY it could be that the social contract has been torn up in the name of neverending quarterly growth, and that enshittification to consumers is a terminal state of that condition.

50 hours/week is burnout territory?

lolz. We are so fucked with the victim complex.

Captainant · February 8

1 minute ago, slorch said:

50 hours/week is burnout territory?

lolz. We are so fucked with the victim complex.

Glad you found something in my randomly picked numbers you could disagree with so you can disengage from the discussion, champ. You really are a gem

February 8

9 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Glad you found something in my randomly picked numbers you could disagree with so you can disengage from the discussion, champ. You really are a gem

Maybe stop posting your lamentations/ talking points as facts?

You’re so persecuted by everyday life. Lolz.

Captainant · February 8

Just now, slorch said:

Maybe stop posting your lamentations/ talking points as facts?

You’re so persecuted by everyday life. Lolz.

These aren't my issues - I've got a great job that let's me WFH and shitpost quite a bit on surly. But I also recognize that I don't have a normative experience, and quite a few of my friends from high-school have not been having the same degree of smooth sailing as I have.

You know, it's actually possible be aware of something without being directly affected by it. It's not like it's a huge stretch to say that the average American worker is having a generally worse time now than any period in the last 10 years. Wages have not come close to keeping up with inflation, costs have far outpaced inflation, and the quality of product to the consumer is worse.

Are you trying to argue that enshittification isn't happening? Or are you just slorching just to slorch?

52-80 · February 8

2 hours ago, slorch said:

I'm one of the few folks who sees self-checkout as a win for me, the consumer. I'd much rather bag my own shit, according to where it goes in my pantry/ fridge- or with much higher regard for integrity/ care for the product. I also don't have to fake with the small talk with some fucker who doesn't want to talk to me either.

I also like having about 32 stations available, as opposed to 4 checkout lines with people buying enough groceries to make the trip to Oregon. It almost always saves me time.

stores around here have all 3 systems simultaneously: manned checkout; self checkout; prescanned checkout, where you had already scanned the item using your phone or portable store device while you shop. i use the latter 2 options and its great.

the only downside of self-checkout is when shitty stores have very few checkout stations, most of which are self-checkout, AND their customers are too dumb to operate them. thats a fault of the store's decision, not an indictment of the self checkout system.

Neonmoon · February 8

3 hours ago, Captainant said:

No disagreement there, but if you've been working 50hr weeks on end and are burnt out and you can't even go do something fun to enjoy the fruits of your labor, then what's the point? Just go work and burn yourself out, and then live a bare and meager life? MmmmmMMM! That's some good American Dream right there!

There's NO WAY it could be that the social contract has been torn up in the name of neverending quarterly growth, and that enshittification to consumers is a terminal state of that condition.

I'm not saying it's an awesome situation. It sucks for the non-rich. That's been apparent for a while. The hoi polloi need to not only demand change, but make choices that force change. So in a way it's blaming the consumer, but I like to think it's more telling the consumer to stop accepting the shit sandwhich and force change. Stop being passive and start being active.

Edited February 8 by Neonmoon

52-80 · February 8

38 minutes ago, slorch said:

Maybe stop posting your lamentations/ talking points as facts?

You’re so persecuted by everyday life. Lolz.

his entire schtick of 'everything is falling apart due to capitalism' is basically like him rebelling against his parents.

Edited February 8 by 52-80

Incredulity · February 8

in regards to the general enshittification of everything.

Purely anecdotal, it really seems like B to B service(soup to nuts) is going to stay in the pandemic period of quality. It seems like every fucking thing is a god damn act of sheer will to get taken care of.

I am talking about ordering of products, delivery of products, after sales service of products, even getting a fucking salesperson to return a phonecall or email about a new product. fucking brutal.

immamac · February 8

On 12/29/2023 at 8:56 AM, Goredho said:

Most successful companies with a size > 200 employees are lesser than the sum of their parts, riding the success of some lightning-in-a-bottle happenstance and frantically trying to trap lightning-in-a-bottle again to keep investors satiated. Most of the companies mentioned in this thread rode the internet birthing pool wave to success and are now slothful corporate behemoths suffering under their own weight. So I think this convergence of enshittification, at least as described in this thread, is a baby boom of intardnet companies getting to be middle aged and living off their achievements from their 20s and 30s. Soon enough they will be wanting their medicare and social security.

This is cute, but not at all what's happening. What's happening is these corporations are seeking growth rates that are quite frankly absurd, and to be able to do it they are creating products in a circular customer ecosystem that essentially just pumps all money back to them somehow. When you look at the portfolios of some of these PE/VC firms and you realize that at the very end of the chain they hold stock in GOOG/AMZN/AAPL/MSFT etc and then they invest all their money in startups that just spend it on one of those 4 businesses then those businesses stocks go up and who gives a shit if your investment panned out because MSFT sustained a 38% CAGR and their stock is through the roof, rinse and repeat with the gains. It's actually comically absurd, these companies are being rewarded not for having a good product or even a product that matches market need, but because they are creating racketeered markets for the ultra wealthy to pour their own money into in a circular pattern. It's why if there was ever really a true sell off everyone would be fucked, because the fundamentals for all of these businesses doesn't exist. None of them provide true value.

Another way to look at this that is a bit more obvious. Download any smartphone game on android or ios. They are riddled with ads, like you can't play the game for 5 minutes without sitting through 7.5 minutes of ads. What are those ads of? Other games, when you install those games all those games have ads of guess what? OTHER FUCKING GAMES. Then you realize all these games are actually just fucking clones of all the other games and they are the same with different sprites, but largely the same logic tools, then you realize oh fuck all these games are just templates put out by Unity game engine to farm ads.

But who's buying the ads for these new games? The game companies who are siphoning off insane amounts of money to turn off ads, because that's the largest single transaction for any of these games, sure there's some of it that the moronic playerbase will pour in $100/yr into x 1000 which isn't chump change, but the 100000 users who buy the 7 dollars turn the ads off thing dwarfs it and those players go away.

It's all a circular economy merry go round and the only people making any of the money are the people siphoning it away and not providing any value (oh, and apple and google get a nice commission on all those in game purchases)

On 12/30/2023 at 12:35 AM, rpspeed said:

Stolen from reddit

Come pay 24.99 per month to watch the new season of your favorite show. When you want it, how you want it. That's right for just 25.99 you can watch all the seasons of the abruptly cancelled favorite show that ended with a cliffhanger. For the cost of only 26.99 you can grow to love new characters, and then mourn them as their distribution rights are pulled by another large mega studio. For just 27.99 though, with an additional 14.99 you can enjoy other great shows and your favorite characters spread across 2 amazing platforms. Act now and get 3 months for just $85 +$2.99 ad free!!

and personally I miss the days of no sales tax and two day shipping.

This is where we are now, PE/VC subsidized growth of these platforms on metrics that made no fundamental sense for a business (Operating Income, Free Cash Flow, Return on Invested Capital, etc) They focused on pure growth metrics like Daily Active Users, and Hours/Minutes streamed and churn, when it was finally time to grow up and they had a critical mass they legitimately did a 180 on all those numbers. They don't give a fuck about DAU, how much you watch or if you churn off, they are trying to capture enough of the actual metrics for this quarters earnings call to stay in business and not have "institutional" investors take away their gravy trains. The American consumer is enabling all of this by not holding companies accountable on account of FOMO or vanity. They are actually fucking leaches convincing people if you don't have Netflix you aren't cool so people have Netflix to be cool not because the shows are any good or because they actually feel like they get value out of it.

On 12/30/2023 at 8:19 AM, troph said:

If been thinking about this more. I think the answer is reading books (real ones), going outside and art. Make art, experience art. Humans were made to create and experience art, being in nature has tremendous health benefits. I’m more and more convinced opting out is the right answer.

This is mostly correct, but that doesn't create value in an economic sense and we don't live in a utopia with UBI just yet. What people should be doing is actually trying to innovate, but what's happened and what I encountered most recently at a large technology manufacturing company is that people don't actually know anything about what it is they are building. They have no understanding, no desire to understand and no willingness to change the way things are. On top of that corporate culture is not to "compete with your customers", but when you have a duopoly or a very small number of players able to produce at the scale you produce at, it's actually your fiduciary responsibility to maximize the product value chain, not to defer that value creation to someone further down the chain. This is what companies that have been deemed "ruthless" have no problem doing. They've integrated it into part of their business culture. You think anyone at Apple, Google, Microsoft, Broadcom, Oracle, Cisco gives a fuck about competing with their customers? They don't and it's why they are widely regarded as horrible companies to work with/for.

On 1/8/2024 at 6:33 AM, Samson's Wig said:

Love all the bending over backwards to justify theft over the last couple of pages. I wouldn't have said anything about the $100 mistake either, but that's because I'm a flawed individual, and I don't really give a shit. Pretending like you're not a thief when you're blatantly a thief is ridiculous. Just own it. The extremely weak attempts at justifying the behavior (mostly not from the poster who committed the act) are ridiculous but entertaining to read.

The enshittening isn't just happening to corporations and their products/services. It's happening to all of us. But one thing has remained constant through the history of mankind: we'll come up with any half-assed justification to get one over on others, whether it's the tribe in the next valley or the "evil" corporation down at the shopping center. It all boils down to some version of, "They do something that I consider bad, and therefore it doesn't matter if I treat them poorly." It's the same weird instinct that makes people more likely to break into vehicles that have messy interiors or to litter on a street that already has graffiti sprayed on the buildings. We justify our own bad actions by the bad actions of others. It's ethically bankrupt but hardwired into our subconscious.

Torchy's is bad tourist food.

I think you hit on something really poignant here - this is a uniquely American problem at the moment and the rest of the world is watching and seeing how fucked up everything is and doing something about it. Culturally I think America has gotten too fucking soft and it's largely because Gen X as a whole are completely fucking spineless and neutered by design. Millenials are a bunch of entitled brats who are going to be the recipients of one of the greatest wealth transfers the world has ever known and Gen Z are a bunch of doomer fuckheads who are agents of chaos because fuck it my brain tingles are what is most important to me.

The problem isn't with the way we are raising our kids or not etc. The problem is that the perception of struggle, which drives mankind forward hasn't been an American ideal for going on 3 generations now. American's are now making up struggles so they can fight problems that are inconsequential to anyone but themselves or a small bubble they have identified. We've been an economic and industrial powerhouse for so long that we've lost our way and people can't actually focus on innovation. They focus on short term profit/gain vs long term vision which requires a struggle and has a chance of failure.

I just spent a significant amount of time in Mexico (both in a tourist destination and interior, actual mexico) and the difference is stark from a societal standpoint. Their economy is shaped completely differently and obviously it has it's extreme drawbacks as well, but culturally they don't identify with the enshittification of everything. They haven't let their children just become mindless zombies who do everything on an app. They live in the real world, in a world where you can't just rent a big bulldozer to build whatever you want. A world where cranes don't just freely exist, etc.

I don't talk much about my personal work life on the board, but I recently chose to leave my cushy executive forever if I wanted it job at a fortune 500 to start a new company which is going to be hard, but it's necessary to unlock a different future, not just for me, but for the way everything works. It changes modern computing as we know it. I took a package to leave a job that people work decades to get into so they can coast to go make no money and create value in the world. People largely don't do that anymore, they get to a certain place and then they give up on actually caring about what it is they are doing for work and they switch to what can I do with all the money I'm making, what kind of cars or vacations or schools do my kids go to etc. If you want to see what I'm up to here is the new company I started with 3 other executives who shared a vision of actually innovating and not just cashing our forever checks.

https://jrlabs.io

https://blog.jrlabs.io/posts/2024-01-03-what-is-cxl/

18 hours ago, hayden_horn said:

so i've been meaning to make a post about this.

i've likened it the great chiseling. i think that's where we are.

i feel like everything described in this thread is very true and depressing but i think it has something more to do with wealth coalescing at the top, and i think covid accelerated it.

where is all the money going? it's all being funneled out of the working class. as a result, the chiseling. everything has to cost just $5 more for this or $3 for that, here's a microtransaction; fees for concert tickets are like 50% of the total cost now, which should be illegal. is that money going to the artist? very rarely.

i have a feeling that we are in an artificially good economy. it's all a fucking sham. it's simple math.

low unemployment? we have a border crisis! these are both artificial problems. everyone has a side hustle. everyone working two jobs. everyone complains about the tip screen tablet being flipped over, but that's just corporate costs being passed onto the customer. all the money is funneling to the top, as ever, but we've reached a tipping point where the dollars are fewer because wealth is accumulated and just sitting there, doing nothing except act as a societal anchor.

so they (everyone selling something) are chiseling.

pay your workers less, or only just enough, and try to cut every corner in the name of the next quarter's earnings in a similar manner to how mankind has treated the environment.

but i thik it all boils down to the greed and competition of wealth accumulation. who are the shareholders? you? me? our 401ks that we can't access and therefore serve as a bullwark in boosting stock prices? lol. no. i'm not going all bilderburg or whatever here, but i think the competition for fewer and scarcer resources makes people desperate and makes humanity steep in its worst stink.

so everyone is hustling to make it, but no one is getting anywhere.

everyone around me seems to be fixing, and nobody seems to be building.

if any of that makes sense.

This is it, we are living in a simulation where the only objective is to funnel money up to the top. The reason the bottom 50% are building wealth is intentional. The middle class isn't good at donking off their money to fat cat megacorps, they are good at working with small businesses and can afford to pay more than the bottom dollar for the relationship or better experience they are going to get. The middle class is horrible for the wealthy and they must be destroyed or put off to the side.

3 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Meanwhile airlines charge you more if you want a paper pass. All this shit is chiseling, as hayden said. Never making something better and just charging for it, taking things that exist and making them shittier.

The grocery store auto-checkout is another one. “You’ll bag your own shit and also this machine will yell at you and shut down if you need to adjust what you bagged. But we are saving money on cashiers and baggers and those savings will be passed….oh, we are experiencing lots of retail shoplifting at the auto-cashiers so of course our prices…..”

Very, very few advances in anything are there to make the end-user’s experience better, it’s just to extract more and give less. Chiseling.

Late Stage Capitalism, it's unchecked and the American Populous has no desire or mechanism of accountability. https://www.citationneeded.news/review-read-write-own-by-chris-dixon/

Spoiler: Crypto has provided absolutely no value outside of speculative investment. It's a complete pump and dump.

Brisketexan · February 8

15 minutes ago, Incredulity said:

in regards to the general enshittification of everything.

Purely anecdotal, it really seems like B to B service(soup to nuts) is going to stay in the pandemic period of quality. It seems like every fucking thing is a god damn act of sheer will to get taken care of.

I am talking about ordering of products, delivery of products, after sales service of products, even getting a fucking salesperson to return a phonecall or email about a new product. fucking brutal.

If you would like me to read this post, press "7."

Please tell me, in a few words, what you are posting about....................I'm sorry, I didn't get that. Please try again..............I'm sorry, I didn't get that. If you would like to pay your invoice by phone, press "1."

bschoolprof · February 8

2 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

If you would like me to read this post, press "7."

Please tell me, in a few words, what you are posting about....................I'm sorry, I didn't get that. Please try again..............I'm sorry, I didn't get that. If you would like to pay your invoice by phone, press "1."

"agent! . . agent!!! agent!!! . . agent, you fucking piece of shit!!"

immamac · February 8

17 minutes ago, Incredulity said:

in regards to the general enshittification of everything.

Purely anecdotal, it really seems like B to B service(soup to nuts) is going to stay in the pandemic period of quality. It seems like every fucking thing is a god damn act of sheer will to get taken care of.

I am talking about ordering of products, delivery of products, after sales service of products, even getting a fucking salesperson to return a phonecall or email about a new product. fucking brutal.

Solving problems is not the goal. Extracting dollars is the goal. Stop thinking in terms of actual solutions to problems and start thinking in terms of how can you be a great customer to them and you'll get better help faster (for a fee of course)

Incredulity · February 8

As an example.

Attended a tradeshow event end of last year. Pissed off at vendor X over their performance so I engage with 2 of their competitors to see what might be available as an option. The booth personnel at both of the competitors knew absolutely fuck all about their products, but were more than delighted to gather my information and promise follow up. Months later fucking crickets.

I used to dread returning from tradeshows because every vendor who got your information had a swarm of people calling and emailing ad-nauseum even when told there wasn't any interest.

Oh well, gotta roll with it. just have to vent occasionally.

Incredulity · February 8

1 minute ago, immamac said:

Solving problems is not the goal. Extracting dollars is the goal. Stop thinking in terms of actual solutions to problems and start thinking in terms of how can you be a great customer to them and you'll get better help faster (for a fee of course)

Besides buying a significant volume and pay our bills on time so I'm not exactly sure what else to offer in that regard. Actually manufacture the product for them? Take on their R&D and supply chain...? Its infuriating.

MissingInAction · February 8

18 hours ago, hayden_horn said:

so i've been meaning to make a post about this.

i've likened it the great chiseling. i think that's where we are.

i feel like everything described in this thread is very true and depressing but i think it has something more to do with wealth coalescing at the top, and i think covid accelerated it.

where is all the money going? it's all being funneled out of the working class. as a result, the chiseling. everything has to cost just $5 more for this or $3 for that, here's a microtransaction; fees for concert tickets are like 50% of the total cost now, which should be illegal. is that money going to the artist? very rarely.

i have a feeling that we are in an artificially good economy. it's all a fucking sham. it's simple math.

low unemployment? we have a border crisis! these are both artificial problems. everyone has a side hustle. everyone working two jobs. everyone complains about the tip screen tablet being flipped over, but that's just corporate costs being passed onto the customer. all the money is funneling to the top, as ever, but we've reached a tipping point where the dollars are fewer because wealth is accumulated and just sitting there, doing nothing except act as a societal anchor.

so they (everyone selling something) are chiseling.

pay your workers less, or only just enough, and try to cut every corner in the name of the next quarter's earnings in a similar manner to how mankind has treated the environment.

but i thik it all boils down to the greed and competition of wealth accumulation. who are the shareholders? you? me? our 401ks that we can't access and therefore serve as a bullwark in boosting stock prices? lol. no. i'm not going all bilderburg or whatever here, but i think the competition for fewer and scarcer resources makes people desperate and makes humanity steep in its worst stink.

so everyone is hustling to make it, but no one is getting anywhere.

everyone around me seems to be fixing, and nobody seems to be building.

if any of that makes sense.

We are rats in a maze.

52-80 · February 8

18 minutes ago, MissingInAction said:

We are rats in a maze.

the world is a vampire

Chopper · February 8

3 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

oh, we are experiencing lots of retail shoplifting at the auto-cashiers so of course our prices…..”

A claim made by the retailers association which, by the way, was complete bullshit. 11/29/2023

"The various sources of crime data — from government agencies and private groups — tell a consistent story. Retail theft has not spiked nationwide in the past several years. If anything, it appears less common in most of the country than it was before the pandemic."

"in its own 2022 report, the retail federation itself attributed only 37% of all shrink to shoplifting — not half."

But the tv news media ran with it (they're heavily enshittified).

Edited February 8 by Chopper

troph · February 8

35 minutes ago, immamac said:

This is mostly correct, but that doesn't create value in an economic sense and we don't live in a utopia with UBI just yet. What people should be doing is actually trying to innovate, but what's happened and what I encountered most recently at a large technology manufacturing company is that people don't actually know anything about what it is they are building. They have no understanding, no desire to understand and no willingness to change the way things are. On top of that corporate culture is not to "compete with your customers", but when you have a duopoly or a very small number of players able to produce at the scale you produce at, it's actually your fiduciary responsibility to maximize the product value chain, not to defer that value creation to someone further down the chain. This is what companies that have been deemed "ruthless" have no problem doing. They've integrated it into part of their business culture. You think anyone at Apple, Google, Microsoft, Broadcom, Oracle, Cisco gives a fuck about competing with their customers? They don't and it's why they are widely regarded as horrible companies to work with/for.

My response was as a consumer - specifically to social media and its ancillary products and services. So in that regard I don't owe anyone, anything.

My response as a business person is I can't personally innovate at scale and keep the level of service I feel comfortable offering. I'm an expensive lawyer that likes to provide intense levels of customer service. I fail often but succeed more often. I cannot scale that. Too many competitors don't give a fuck and too many workers don't give a fuck. other business endeavors similar - own several small businesses that are growing, can grow but will always be small compared to public companies. high level of customer service, not scalable to intense levels because of that. so I probably succumb to the tragedy of the commons in a form of I can't make it much better so get mine while I can without sacrificing too much of my morals.

As a side note, I don't think fiduciary responsibility is the right term, though I get what you mean, it's frankly more corporate ethics. Once upon a time a fiduciary duty meant some level of "do the right thing" but it's not more like an unfettered, consequences be damned "loyalty pledge". Fiduciary responsibility, is oddly the problem, and the fiduciary responsibility is to profit unfortunately. In terms of governance, corporate ethics is where the innovation needs to occur.

mdmost · February 8

One thing that's not enshitting in grocery stores...online ordering and pickup. I have saved myself almost 30 minutes to an hour each week by not having to go to the grocery store and pick out stuff. Just order it online, drive up and park, get my groceries delivered to the back of my car, and head home. Have only had a few instances of them screwing up like missing something or giving me something incorrectly. Thanks Covid!

Schulz2.0 · February 8

1 hour ago, 52-80 said:

his entire schtick of 'everything is falling apart due to capitalism' is basically like him rebelling against his parents.

There also used to be stay at home moms who did the majority of the childcare and housework. Now you have two parents working 40+ hours a week and doing childcare and housework.

Incredulity · February 8

10 minutes ago, troph said:

As a side note, I don't think fiduciary responsibility is the right term, though I get what you mean, it's frankly more corporate ethics. Once upon a time a fiduciary duty meant some level of "do the right thing" but it's not more like an unfettered, consequences be damned "loyalty pledge". Fiduciary responsibility, is oddly the problem, and the fiduciary responsibility is to profit unfortunately. In terms of governance, corporate ethics is where the innovation needs to occur.

The counter parties I am referring to above are not global behemoths. Most are independent small to medium sized businesses who used to(pre-covid) have a good level of service/performance. Not being able to respond to customers has become the SOP at a lot companies now.

In response to fiduciary duty. Profit isn't a dirty word. My view is that means doing what is economically best for the company. That means satisfied customers buying more products/services.

Foosters · February 8

Any of you all had the experience of shopping at an Amazon Fresh grocery store? Scan your phone when you walk in, and then the eyes in the sky detect everything that's placed in your cart. No checkout. No payment. Just walk out.

Da Fino · February 8

3 minutes ago, mdmost said:

One thing that's not enshitting in grocery stores...online ordering and pickup. I have saved myself almost 30 minutes to an hour each week by not having to go to the grocery store and pick out stuff. Just order it online, drive up and park, get my groceries delivered to the back of my car, and head home. Have only had a few instances of them screwing up like missing something or giving me something incorrectly. Thanks Covid!

Did you always dislike going to the grocery store? The one I go to is pretty efficient on the inside. I have gotten to where I enjoy bringing a kid to ride in the basket and take time to pick stuff out, try out new offerings, etc. Plus you never get stuck with shitty fruit or soggy greens. I don't see that as 30 minutes to an hour each week that I lost.

52-80 · February 8

19 minutes ago, Chopper said:

A claim made by the retailers association which, by the way, was complete bullshit. 11/29/2023

"The various sources of crime data — from government agencies and private groups — tell a consistent story. Retail theft has not spiked nationwide in the past several years. If anything, it appears less common in most of the country than it was before the pandemic."

"in its own 2022 report, the retail federation itself attributed only 37% of all shrink to shoplifting — not half."

But the tv news media ran with it (they're heavily enshittified).

1. the retail federation is a national survey. the common crime claim is for west coast cities - SF, LA, etc. and gee, looky here at the trend.

2. saying only 37% of shrinkage is due to external theft does not dispute anything. to dispute there is increased in retail theft, you'd have to show that 37% shrinkage reduce over time. and moreover, 37% still represents the HIGHEST source of shrinkage.

So did the retail federation really contradict claims of retail theft and crime? let's see what they actually say - you can read it yourself: https://cdn.nrf.com/sites/default/files/2023-09/NRF_National_Retail_Security_Survey_2023.pdf

The trend of the shift from lower shrinkages (<1.24%), increasing to higher level shrinkages (2-3%)

the net national change for survey retailers increasing 0.2% represents $20 billion. no biggie.

(and the original point is that the spike in theft was endemic to california, not a nationalwide phenomenon)

mdmost · February 8

Just now, Da Fino said:

Did you always dislike going to the grocery store? The one I go to is pretty efficient on the inside. I have gotten to where I enjoy bringing a kid to ride in the basket and take time to pick stuff out, try out new offerings, etc. Plus you never get stuck with shitty fruit or soggy greens. I don't see that as 30 minutes to an hour each week that I lost.

Yes and no. I dislike other people at the grocery store who aren't efficient and slow me down or just get in the way. I was pretty efficient at getting everything but it was an easy way to get time back each week by ordering. I usually wrap it into going to the pet store next door to grab dog and cat food or a run to the local coffee shop that's close by. I've never really gotten terrible fruit or greens. I may run in at times after they've delivered the order to my trunk to grab something I forgot to order earlier or something they said wasn't available online. Then I utilize self-check. It's nice though to just log in, roll through past items I bought, add them and checkout on the website. Less people are doing now so the quality seems to have improved on the service. Covid times it was a bit of a beating.

Brisketexan · February 8

12 minutes ago, Incredulity said:

In response to fiduciary duty. Profit isn't a dirty word. My view is that means doing what is economically best for the company. That means satisfied customers buying more products/services.

Except (as discussed in another thread), that concept of fiduciary duty has been reduced to just one thing: profits in the next quarter. Period. Investment that won't pay off for 10 years, meaning that the company has a red ink item of $50 million without immediately offsetting revenue sufficient to yield profit THIS QUARTER? Nope, that's a breach of your duty. Enacting a policy that is "softer," and involves a judgment call relating to what will ultimately make the enterprise more attractive to customers, and that can't be measured in immediate revenue? That's right out.

Our warped, narrow definition of "profitability" is a big contributor to enshittening.

TLDR version: treating customers like shit and ripping them off is lauded, because it yields an immediate profit advantage; the fact that such treatment will cost you customers (and profit) in the long-term is a non-issue, and is someone else's problem. The system incentivizes fucking people over today, who cares what it costs you tomorrow?

Edited February 8 by Brisketexan

52-80 · February 8

12 minutes ago, Schulz2.0 said:

There also used to be stay at home moms who did the majority of the childcare and housework. Now you have two parents working 40+ hours a week and doing childcare and housework.

1. do you think womens participation in the workforce is a bad or a good thing?

2. do you think the family had a better quality of life when it was common for women to stay at home?

beyond that, the fact of 2 working parents... is actually on a 3-decade decline. the current level are 1980s rate.

this is from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplements 1968–2020.

Fudge Nuggets · February 8

3 hours ago, Neonmoon said:

Companies keep chiseling because Americans are fat lazy cash machines that sit back and pump out money when asked. Zero pushback

25% tip at counter service? Sure

6% commission to sell a home? Sure

$5 for drip coffee? Sure

Concert Fees 50%? Sure

I don't participate in any of the above because I rule.

Deej · February 8

16 minutes ago, mdmost said:

I dislike other people at the grocery store who aren't efficient and slow me down or just get in the way.

I shop when the doors open at 6 a.m. for that reason.

Brisketexan · February 8

Just now, Deej said:

I shop when the doors open at 6 a.m. for that reason.

You should shop at 10:00 a.m. That is when the army of moms in yoga pants, having completed their morning workout and then their Starbucks run with their gal pals, shows up. It. Is. EPIC.

Deej · February 8

1 minute ago, Brisketexan said:

You should shop at 10:00 a.m. That is when the army of moms in yoga pants, having completed their morning workout and then their Starbucks run with their gal pals, shows up. It. Is. EPIC.

You don't want to see the Rundberg HEB's moms in yoga pants. Trust me.

Edited February 8 by Deej

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