Many businesses, in their search for profitability, seek efficiency. For some, this means reducing their products or services to the bare minimum acceptable to their customers. For online platforms in particular, this phenomenon has a name: "ensh*ttification" — a term coined by writer Cory Doctorow in 2022 to describe the lifecycle of these platforms. Initially, they are useful and beneficial to users, but eventually, they start exploiting these same users, favoring corporate clients and shareholders, and gradually deteriorate in quality, leaving people without alternatives until they become completely irrelevant and die. This concept became so prominent online that it was selected as the Word of the Year in 2023 by the American Dialect Dictionary.

In some ways, this idea isn't entirely new — consumer goods companies have replaced ingredients for cheaper versions in their products to improve margins for decades. This is how we got beer made out of corn and chocolate that is essentially hydrogenated fat. The difference is that when the perception of quality loss becomes widespread, the market self-regulates in various ways: internally (by making the previous quality a premium segment, using "100% malt" as a claim, or bean-to-bar chocolates as a fast-growing niche, etc.), or externally (through regulation or mass migration to other competitors).

However, things are more complicated now: we are essentially discussing monopolies or products without alternatives, or services where the loss of quality is only noticed when it's too late, given the speed at which this is happening.

WHEN MORE BECOMES LESS

There has been a noticeable drop in the quality of Google's search results, partially due to a flood of content produced by LLMs. Google has acknowledged this and is trying to address it in various ways.

"Books" entirely written by generative AI are being sold on Amazon. In some cases, fraudsters attribute the work to well-known authors, with little or no response from the company.

Similarly, the press has also succumbed to the “more, faster” syndrome, with quality as an afterthought. Edward Zitron went through this in detail and eloquently summarized it:

As a consequence, it happened to trends — Matt Klein was the first to raise the alarm. There’s an alignment of perverse incentives for more and more data-poor hogwash disguised as "trends" to be published because it is known that its a hot subject for attention. Remember the story of the boy who cried wolf?

On a broader interpretation of this concept, it has also come for apparel. The average American buys 68 pieces a year (2018), five times more than in the 1980s. The forces that have pushed the market in this direction have redefined expectations of price, quality, and durability — this is one of the major risks of an "enshittified" sector: lowering the bar. Patagonia understands this and is attempting to address it.

The bad news is, as some of the examples above illustrate, AI has shown that its downside emerges much sooner than other very impactful technologies like social media. Also noteworthy is how (the misuse of) AI plays a key role in replacing quality with volume.

The good news is that when this deterioration occurs, there is room for someone to occupy the diametrically opposite space (as the brilliant Al Ries once said), if the barriers of entry are not insurmountable—a big IF.

What About Insights and Understanding People?

In the business of understanding people, regardless of the discipline—be it UX, CX, or market research — the same pattern of uncritical acceptance of one-sided opportunism is already unfolding, with several platforms promising miraculous solutions. This field is particularly vulnerable to ensh*ttification because the consequences of poor decisions only become apparent after the damage has already been done, and unfortunately, there are many uninformed buyers out there. It's very telling that many promise "faster and cheaper," but few promise "better." Seth Godin has a brilliant quote on this.

Some platforms, with promises clearly detached from reality, have already angered professionals in research, UX, and CX across the internet. What this anger overlooks is the most problematic part: the target audience for these businesses are those who think they already understand, who cannot assess quality, those who think it takes too long, those who think it's unnecessary, those who do not understand how this work is done, or generally, amateurs with an unjustifiable excess of self-esteem, not the experts who should (or supposedly do) know better. Herein lies the danger — what happens if we “ensh*ttify” the people and the departments who ensure connection with the needs and expectations of those paying the bills, and as a result, protect the company from ensh*ttification? We have a huge collective responsibility here.

The outcome of using any platform depends on prior knowledge, meaning if you're not an expert, don't expect any tool to make you one. Perhaps the best practical example is generative image tools — designers, photographers, artists, and those with a solid repertoire of illustration techniques, camera angles, and photographic styles achieve much better results than the generic robot images and blue-tinted dashboards that have flooded LinkedIn recently (apparently, nobody read about distinctive assets), often accompanied by posts that seem to have been written by Mojo Jojo. Similarly, a better repertoire implies a much greater ability to assess quality and know what is "good enough."

And Now What? 

Messiah-like promises and hyperbolic speech are red flags in almost everything — this subject should be no different.

Critical thinking and parsimony are much more reliable guides for dealing with new technological possibilities than the amygdala and euphoria — as the dot com era investors can attest. Common sense suggests controlled experiments and circumstances where inputs and outcomes can be compared and focusing on improving efficiency in operational aspects rather than intellectual ones until quality is benchmarked. An objective evaluation is only possible when you know exactly what you're sacrificing.

When budgets are tight, there are multiple alternatives to consider: hiring part-time professionals, freelancers, converting certain deliverables into an "as a service" model, among others. Relying on unprepared individuals supported by tools or completely delegating the work to platforms are the worst possible alternatives — even worse than doing nothing. If the result of our work is to make better decisions, doing nothing and assuming ignorance is much better than relying on synthetic evidence and dubious data — this holds true for qualitative as well.

It's also important to consider the flip side of the democratization discourse — the populist tone masks that expertise and experience become worthless, quality doesn't matter, and radically underestimates the complexity of things— "it's simple, you can do it too." Even though commercial aircraft spend over 90% of flight time on autopilot, pilot training takes about 1500 hours. Why would a critical function like connecting people's needs with business objectives be okay to delegate to laypeople?

There is a potential wonderful future with a lot less operational work, more complete views of the people we need to understand, and possibly better discoveries, but its arrival depends on us not believing in magical solutions. Stopping the ensh*ittification depends a lot on these choices—and there's a lot at stake!

5 Questions for… Els Dragt

Els Dragt is an Amsterdam based independent trend researcher with over twenty years of experience in spotting and analysing seeds of change. 

At , she currently focuses on training people how to research trend themselves. Some of clients include Harbour of Antwerp, Swinkels Family Brewers, Manchester City Football Group and the Dutch government. As a guest lecturer Els shares her expertise at various universities worldwide where they use her 3-phased trend method in their study programs.

Els is an author of several research publications, such as ‘How to Research Trends’ and ‘Dare to Ask’ (BIS Publishers).  She’s recently revised “How to research trends” with new sections focused on people working in companies (vs. agencies or researchers) and how they can integrate trend capabilities and trend skills in their businesses - so more focus on team activities and on setting up a trend department or community of practice from within.

There's been some discussion particularly among strategists on how trending is often mistaken for trends nowadays. How and where do you draw the line?

ELS: Yeah, I think that's always a balancing act in because in the media a lot of people of course hear the word trend often in a different context than we as trend researchers use it.

I think we use it in a more wider, with a more wider meaning. So for instance, when I use the word trend, I mean like shifting values and needs, whereas in the media they are often talking about trends in a more micro way. So that would be maybe my line drawing, whereas I don't like to focus only on the micro trends, the hypes, the fads, whatever core hashtag is trending.

So it's not about trend or trending, but about shifting values and needs, which moves more, evolves more slowly than hypes and fads, but also stays on for a longer time. 

How would you define rigor in trend research in your investigation practice? 

ELS: I think that by triangulating your methods, so working in a mixed method way, so doing field research, doing desk research, and also using a lot of different sources across industries, that really helps to have rigor in your trend research than just having three signals that are very micro and just following whatever they are saying. So yeah, I think this combination of expanding your sources, really trying to get information from all kinds of different places about emerging signs of change, and also showing how you've done the research, so be very transparent in your research methods, will help to create more rigor and more richness in your trend research.

What would you consider the most transformative or influential non-tech trends at the moment? 

ELS: I’m always kind of wary about questions where people ask me about the most influential trends, because then my worry is always that people will just want to hear about one or two trends, and then, you know, miss out on everything else. I think the goal of doing trend research is to show you all the different types of directions the future might go into, and that it's not just one linear direction with just one trend leading the way, but of course I understand why you ask, and especially the non-tech trend part I find interesting, because when you do trend research where you focus on shifts in values and needs, the focus also lies on, you know, values and needs, and not so much on what can help you to fulfill these needs, like technology is just more a means  to fulfill a need, than that it's the core of the way that I would do trend research, so I never have like specific tech trends in my overview. Of course there are signals that relate to technology or like megatrends in there, but at the core I never really have like tech driven trends.

But to give an example, so when we talk about AI for instance, or what's happening in the metaverse, or this kind of stuff, I would call it more like people seeking for enriched sensory experiences, or more of hybrid reality kind of experiences, where they can have seamless interactions with each other in a more enriched way, than that I would say like the core is, the trend is the metaphors, if you catch my drift. Okay this is maybe a bit of a fake answer, or not very concrete, but I hope you can do something with it.

What sort of advice and tips would you give to people that are end users of trend research like marketers, strategists and others in the business world? How can they separate the wheat from the chaff? 

ELS: I think what I said with question one is that it's better not to just follow whatever it is being hyped on socials or in the media. At least when you are an organization that wants to work more long term and take the long view, then it's better not to focus too much on these hypes and just look beyond all the shiny things that are dubbed as trends. The focus more on what kind of cultural shifts are beneath all these new behaviors, styles, gadgets, mindsets, so to really understand what's going on.

So I think and what I propagate is: please have some people with trend related skills in your company. They don't have to be like 24-7 trend watchers, but like a marketing person that also knows about trends or strategies, that also knows about trend theory, because these types of capabilities will help your company to understand better what to do with trends, that's in the end the goal: how to use trend insights in the best way. Yeah, so my advice would be, in your hiring process, to also include these kind of capabilities.

What's something that's going on at your particular place in the world right now that you think could or should become relevant trends?

ELS: I'm located in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and I think a lot of things going on right here are focused, of course, on very political things going on, in the sense of war and power dynamics and also about emergence of right wing politics, because people are looking for guidance in this very complex world. So I can also feel that over here, and also because of the cost of living is getting higher. So I'm a bit wary about this movement going on, because when you look into history, you know, not a lot of good things came out of depression… economy, depression combined with complexity in the world and people's feelings about it.

So, yeah, what can become relevant trends? That's a hard question, I think, to answer when you're in the midst of it. But I also maybe I like to focus on the hopeful thing. So I also see a lot of initiatives emerging that are actually like countering polarization here, you know, kind of more focusing on empathy, exchange between people, listening to others, and also maybe more conscious about like data and data tracking and how it can be used in more aware and conscious ways.