Don't be Afraid, Just Start the Tape

In the scene where Smoke teaches the young girl how to negotiate, they're standing in front of of a cafe. The shot of them negotiating is framed so that you see a sign in the cafe window advertising a Ham and Eggs breakfast - in other words, a full meal - for 25 cents. The editing makes sure to put that sign back into frame whenever the question of the value of money arises in their discussion.

Smoke offers her 10 cents a minute and asks if that works for her. She says yes. He says no, it does not and tells her to negotiate higher. The 25 cent sign is framed in the shot when he tells her no, reminding us *why* it's not a good value.

She comes back with 50 cents - which the sign has informed us is the cost of *two* meals. Smoke tells her that's too much and counters with 20, which is just under a full meal but we now know that's a fairly respectable price because we just got the high/low contrast of 10 being too little and 50 being too much.

The negotiation ends with her getting 20 cents per minute and we now know 1) 25 cents is the cost of a filling meal in this environment 2) This girl only needs to do five minutes of work to be able to feed herself for a over day (20 cents per minute times five is a dollar, which is four meals) 3) Smoke has the kind of money to throw around that over a day's worth of food for someone can be to him - as it is to our modern eyes - mere pocket change and 4) Smoke's the kind of person who can both be a violent gangster but also care about teaching this girl how to look out for herself so that one day maybe she too can throw over a day's worth of food around like pocket change.

Combined with 5) you can now use that 25 cents = a meal to do the math every other time money gets mentioned in the movie to understand just how much cash the Smoke Stack boys are dealing with.

Why might someone from a group of people that historically have been denied access to wealth, now brag that they have it?

“Rappers only talk about sex!”

Why might someone from a group that have historically been denied sexual autonomy now brag about their sexual escapades on their own terms?

“Rappers only talk about drugs and crime!”

This is because topless equality has been a basic push from feminists for literally decades, until Radfems and NeoCons bonded over wanting a trans genocide less than a decade ago.

It's literally why the "no tits on tumblr" and other lesser SESTA/FOSTA consequences* like it were so jarring. It set back FORTY. YEARS. OF PROGRESS in the rights of people with breasts or perceived as women to wear the same clothes as people without.

Do not let conservatives lie to you about this. The majority of people in the us and the VAST majority of States recognize the right of people to not wear a damn shirt. It isn't obscenity, it isn't even nudity, it's just something pericis men are allowed that everyone else isn't.

Y'know.

Basic sexual discrimination.

Amazon made their service worse, to force people to pay for Prime.

Nowadays, if you order from Amazon, there is a week long delay before your package is shipped. (on purpose)

I remember when orders would ship out the same day. (I remember - it was real)

YouTube didn't used to have ads. Now, ads play in the middle of videos. (it's worse than TV ever was)

The best can opener I have owned is over 40 years old. Modern ones just don't hold up as well. (The ones I bought new broke ages ago)

The bread machine my mom got for her wedding lasted 30 years. It's been replaced twice in the last 5 years. (How can you fuck this up?)

The cardboard tubes in the middle of toilet paper rolls have gotten larger. (This too?) Companies increasing the price of the product while selling you less. (REALLY?)

It sounds crazy. (it's the truth) When you talk about it, YOU sound crazy. (it's true)

Even when people believe you (do they really), all they can say is "it sucks". (it's too big) Because the problem is so big, so pervasive, what can we even DO about it???

To get the necessary laws written and passed, we need politicians, to get the politicians elected we need information campaigns, to fund campaigns we need money, and all the money is being hoarded by the people profiting from enshittification. (it sounds so fake)

Enshittification isn't planned obsolescence, which is just making things shitter by putting a time limit on how long they function. It's a feature that serves the seller and the stock holders, not the customer. Enshittification is a process, not a feature.

The beginning part of enshittification is deliberately making a better product than the nearest competitors, and giving it to people for free.

An essential part of enshittification is not merely drawing you in with something good, but making you depend on it as a key underpinning of your life. The only way you communicate with many of your friends and family (Facebook). The only way to order most items you need, when you need them (Amazon). The only way to process online payments (PayPal). The only way to get up-to-the-minute news and send out emergency messages (Twitter).

The first version of the platform (and it is specifically a platform thing - a platform being something you use to accomplish your other projects) has to be so good that virtually no one goes anywhere else anymore.

That step is like the old Starbucks thing of opening a million locations, offering a quality product, undercutting the local competition until they go out of business and you can't go anywhere else, at which point the prices rise and the quality goes down. The standard monopoly playbook.

But enshittification is more insidious than that. It's about creating a (virtual) place that you need to use not simply to get one product, but to accomplish the important things in your life.

People don't stay on Facebook because it's the only way to socially interact online - it's not! People are trapped using Facebook even though they hate it because their elderly parents and high school friends use it and won't use anything else.

People don't leave Amazon because when you rely on deliveries (eg you are disabled, you live somewhere rural, you need a package your next day or your boss will kill you), with a Prime account, it's the only way to accomplish what you need. AND it's the only way to watch a lot of your favourite TV shows, or access Kindle Unlimited books etc. When I choose between, say, Disney+ and Prime, I reflect that both companies suck, but Prime gets me free and fast deliveries that include everything from groceries to medicines to compost. I am disabled. When I can I order from somewhere else. But relatively frequently I can't. So right now I have Prime and not Disney+.

Enshittification isn't just about eliminating the competition, it's about *trapping* you into using something that gets worse and worse while being the only way for you to get things that are genuinely important. They make you live your life through them by taking indirect ownership of intangible things, like vital pathways to maintain your friendships, and then once they have you, they count on the combination of inertia and the value you place on those intangible things to keep you there no matter how bad it gets.

So I, who have never liked Facebook, even right at the start when I had to sign up to accept a party invitation, am still there, despite everything, because a whole bunch of my friends, my publishing network contacts, and my family, will not go anywhere else. They just won't leave. So leaving Facebook, for me, means severing contact with hundreds of people, some of whom are extremely important to me.

That's enshittification. It's the process by which they make sure you don't leave when it gets shit.

And yeah, the only way to tackle this is to regulate the fucking tech companies. Tell your MP.

Temple, Thanjavur, Tamil

Nadu - India