I’ve noticed this quite a bit. I have a couple tshirts I bought for $2 on clearance when I worked at JcPenis. They’re still good 15 years later. But anything I bought in the last few years just falls apart. The irony is, the tshirts I bought in Japan last year for maybe $8 each are built like tanks even though they’re made in China (Uni Glo lol).
You mean Uniqlo?
Looking at the tag now… yes lol … my bad. I wonder if I’ve been pronouncing it incorrectly all this time.
Seriously! Any recent shirts I have feel like they are made of tissue paper. Even just looking at then wrong causes a hole, and the stitching uses the cheapest thread imaginable. It’s horrible.
Totally, pants as well. I’m in a hot climate so I wear a bit thinner stuff but ripping the pant leg in half when it got snagged on something at work? And I mean up to my underwear. I half ass sewed it up with some string I had at the shop.
Very annoying they giving Cory Doctorow credit for the term Enshitification for a book he made in 2022 for a term that was around years before he “made” the term.
To give Cory credit, he was also one of the first people to use it in online forums, years earlier.
He is quite open about the fact that he didn’t invent the term
Edit: just looked it up in my copy of the book, and there he says he coined it. But I’m pretty sure he posted somwhere that it’s possible that he grabbed it up somewhere. otoh, multiple people coming up with a word happens all the time
I’m just amazed people don’t say “crapitalism”.
Ohhh, that’s a good one!
In other news, water is wet.
Fucking Uniqlo, they used to have the best basics. All my underwear came from them. Of the pack I bought 8 years ago I still have undies, the more recently bought ones all started getting holes within a year.
They also refused to back out of Russia when they invaded Ukraine and everyone else was closing up business there. They went on my shit list way back then.
I’m sure lots of those businesses probably just did it temporarily and went back for that sweet imperial cash, but the brazenness of Uniqlo giving zero fucks seemed like a bad sign.
Apparently they’ve been accused of some pretty heinous unethical work practices at their factories, too. Sucks because I liked lots of their clothes, but what are you gonna do?
surprised _pikachu.jpg
Resources and energy to produce things got more expensive. Income of the consumers didn’t go up. So how do you keep earnings high? Lower the quality.
I dont think it got more expensive to make. They just want to squeeze every penny. Because shareholders.
CEOs get a lot of hate for this kind of thing, but the shareholders get away with it. When are people gonna blame them?
some of us already do blame them. some of us want law breaking corporations to fine (on a small share level) and arrest (on larger levels) shareholders. do it once and this shit would stop. didnt china execute a capitalist who did some shit recently?
Yeah like nobody names the shareholders who sued UnitedHealthCare for temporarily approving more insurance demands after the CEO’s death. They were not happy to lose money and sued after ! WTF ! But someone made the decision to sue and others approved it who is THAT inhumane?
That isn’t the driver, it’s their cover story. The second there was a hint of any societal/logistics issue, corps slammed that price gouging gas pedal down to 1000mph and kept ot there. Now, every once and a while, when they “learned a lesson” speed goes down to 800 or so for a come weeks and then resumes at 1200 mph. They won’t stop until they are regulated by governments
Don’t forget that they ALSO raised prices. By much more than their costs temporarily rose to. And then never lowered them again.
my last bag I bought was a leather bag, hand stitched by a real leather worker. I will never need to buy a new one as long as I care for it properly.
A very sad topic but the website kept a really high quality!
We need a long campaign of trust-busting to fix all this shit.
I can’t help but think that shitting all over your trading partners is a good way to get spit on your burger.
Companies being too big is not a problem that is confined by political borders.
Enshittification refers to internet sites, services
Why can’t it also refer to physical goods and services that deteriorate due to profit-seeking?
It can and it does.
Because there are more accurate names like:
Planned obsolescence
Shrinkflation
And probably more
Remember when it was called planned obsolescence? Pepperidge farm does.
But it’s more than that. Planned obsolescence is only a part of the problem.
Private equity: After paying millons for a company, got to find shortcuts to proffit… And make stakeholders happier.
I guess from now on, American company is not a sign of quality.
I say it so often, that it has become a mantra: Nothing works any more.
Private equity employs practices that should be illegal
I work in manufacturing and I have seen the quality of raw materials degrade substantially since covid times. We expected it to be a dip but no, it has just continued to get worse.
Time to hit the vintage shop. Find the Emo outfit from the early 2000s that was designed not to discintigrate after it left the shelf.
Hmmmm. Less departments? Heads of departments not qualified or educated for that area by any stretch of the imagination? Safety guidelines reduced to mere suggestions or deleted completely? Entire Global Pandemic Response system, in place mind you, burned to the ground. Cancer research a pipe dream. Gas over $4. Diesel fast heading to $7. You know where I’m going. Regulations that protected us and soaring prices that force and allow big business to charge more and put less into their products got us here - I think. Just sayin’.
“Government overreach! Bureaucracy! Big government is inefficient! Nanny state! Self-reliance! Freedom rah rah!”
Watch out for those talking points. They sound great. Like common sense. Based.
But really they are all about combating regulations that protect us from the excesses of greed which are tearing this world apart.
