‘What many of us feel’: Macquarie dictionary names ‘enshittification’ word of the year

The word “enshittification”, which describes the process of deterioration of the quality of a service or product, was recognized by the Australian Macquarie Dictionary as the word of the year, writes UNN with reference to The Guardian.

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In 2022, Canadian-British blogger Cory Doctorow coined the word “enshittification” to describe the process of a service or product being degraded by over-commercialization or abuse. This year’s word was named Macquarie Word of the Year.

Social media users, even if they don’t know the word – will have a deep understanding of the concept, how trolls, extremists, fools and vapids have taken over social media.

To explain this term, you can cite, for example, Instagram, which once mainly published cute videos with dogs and cats. And now it has turned into a platform saturated with many sellers, duck boys and insta beauties.

Or think of Twitter, once a useful microblogging site that has now been turned into a post-truth platform.

The Vocabulary Committee described the word “enshittification” as “a very simple Anglo-Saxon term wrapped in affixes which make it almost official, almost respectable”.

“This word reflects what many of us feel is happening to the world and to many aspects of our lives right now,” the committee said.

The author of the word is optimistic about how it can all end.

Actions on competition to prevent market dominance, regulation of things like digital privacy, more power for users to decide how they use platforms and combating worker exploitation could reverse the process, he wrote, because “everyone has an interest in desensitisation.” .

We will remind

The Cambridge Dictionary has chosen “manifesto” as the word of the year 2024.