Boy I sure hope you’ve never called an image macro a meme or Dr. Hawkins is going to need a word with you.
Or, maybe we could marry that definition with Dr. Chomsky’s thoughts on language.
Or maybe we could review where that response lies on Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement?
Or perhaps go back to the time of Quine and merely revisit the principal of charity.
But none of that is actually necessary because what I was describing is actually a result of enshittification from Doctorows original definition anyhow, because the popularization of engagement-based algorithmic is specifically engineered to translate to ad sales, and anger-inducing content drives the most engagement.
Just because Lemmy itself didn’t do it for ads, we’ve been socially conditioned by the enshittification of other platforms. Recently Reddit, sure, but this isn’t a new playbook.
Go back even just 7 or 8 years and look at late night TV. Engagement spiked across the industry as people realized they could eschew generic comedy (Leno, Conan, Letterman) with something that looked similar but was just political ragebait with a punchline (Oliver, Noah, TYT)
But even THAT is following what we’d already seen in print and on “News” (Fox).
All of these platforms reshaped the nature of comedy and discourse after building a following in order to drive up engagement to drive as sales, by using anger as the tool to drive that engagement.
What I’m saying is that even if LEMMY hasn’t undergone “enshittification” directly, the social programming you’ve received from other platforms that HAVE make you the way that you are, and you bring it here.