cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/42644056

Consumers may be aware of some forms of enshitification but most consumers seem to be mostly ignorant about most forms of enshitification. They don’t know, for example, that washing machines now come with kill switches as a form of designed obsolescence. They don’t generally know that PCs made after 2013 have spychips.

So new rule:

Cities with more than 1.5 million inhabitants must each create something that can serve as a “museum of enshitification” as a public education effort.

Some of the exhibits might be:

• A washing machine where every component functions but it will not run any programs because the manufacturer’s secret kill switch has been tripped. It should be a hands-on exhibit so people can experience the frustration of trying to run it.

• Laptops with soldered-in components like RAM and batteries. Apart from a torn open laptop for display, there should be a list of brands and models.

• Laptops which reject power supplies that match the voltage and current specs but reject other brands.

• A room that shows how some washing machine brands use the same spare parts for 10+ years, while others change the design every year with spare parts that are hard to find because of the scarcity.

• A “positive UX room” of old PCs and a simulated 1995 Internet where people can use the web, IRC, etc free from Cloudflare and CAPTCHAs.

• A documents and media room where letters to and from manufacturers are on display to show their shitty refusals to support their customers. Visitors should be able to stick a USB drive into a port that fills the drive with copies of all such letters in the archive, organised so it’s easy to review by supplier and product.

• A media room showing how 1980s appliances came with complete manuals and repair steps, and wiring diagrams. Next to modern manuals which are a shitty template that starts with “You have purchased a high-quality product” without even enough competency to name the product (which is really a piece of shit).

What else?

The museum should be tailored for secondary school students and university students who lack an understanding of the evolution of enshitification.. who only have experience with the enshitified products that they over-rate.

The museum may simply be an extension of current museums of capitalism or museums of old computers.

Those examples are fine for nerds - but just show the size and quality of food items through the years. It will ring like a bell

Yes indeed. Would be good to have a jalepeño pepper exhibit exposing the conspiracy. That is, they used to be hot, but it turns out the biggest consumer of jalepeños are food suppliers who are canning. They want all jalepeños to be consistenly predictably mild, so they can just add chili oil to precisely control whether their salsa is “hot”, “medium”, or “mild”. Since individuals are such a small fraction of their market, they just get marginalised. This is based on research done by someone at UNM who wanted to find out why jalepeños have gotten so weak on a widespread scale. An exhibition could have samples of today’s peppers next to that which could come from some small farmer trying to maintain the old breeds of seeds.

You can’t taste an exhibit. I mean show literally the size of a snickers bar through the years.

Things in museums have to be astonishingly on the nose for the average person to get it. How would you convey through glass that one pepper is hotter? Also if someone likes mild peppers they think “well this suits me, it’s not all bad.”

No one wants to get less candy, or a smaller drink. Meet people where they are.

You can’t taste an exhibit.

An exhibit with samples to taste is the kind of exhibit that’s less forgettable and has more impact.

The walls could be covered with pics like Snickers bars.. and levels of heat peppers measure up to showing whatever standard heat scale is prevailing.

Things in museums have to be astonishingly on the nose for the average person to get it. How would you convey through glass that one pepper is hotter?

I’m not sure why you think exhibits must be in glass. If you tour a beer brewery, there is sometimes a box of hops for visitors to try.

Also if someone likes mild peppers they think “well this suits me, it’s not all bad.”

Not everyone has to react to all forms of enshitification. They should experience enough enshitified instances in the museum to walk away feeling enlightened.

Yeah, a timeline of the same brand of cereal, shampoo, the number of wash cycles from a laundry detergent container, etc. would be very effective.

I think an entire room devoted to ad intrusion would make people furious and realize how hot the water has become in which they're currently boiling. Show a given website or software product, then the same screen with ads added over time and the percent of screen space or time stolen per user and I aggregate per year. Youtube and Netflix would be particularly effective because of their familiarity.

An exhibit on how warranties and product guarantees have nearly become extinct. An exhibit contrasting a well made shoe on a timeline and how many shitty pairs of shoes equate to it, their cost, and the waste.

Noise pollution would be a great exhibit and disturb people appropriately. Blaring airline ads for credit cards you can't shut off in your seat, side effects from a prescription drug on TV, etc., the increased volume of ads compared to a tv show.

So many other options.

So many other options.

To properly cover the enshitification topic it needs to be a “mega museum” covering thousands of square meters. There is almost no limit to the quantity of exhibits.

Real estate is the only cost that would be hard to control. The products that fill the space would be infinitely vast and could all come from donations by their angry owners.

Realistically not going to happen; rotating exhibits would be more effective and also keep them contemporary as enshittification morphs. It would also build in an awareness it's not a static, finished time and is ongoing

Yeah, rotating sounds good. If several big cities have their own museum, the shit can rotate between them.

Does the museum itself get worse over time too?

It should, because it should improve in enshitification that visitors experience. There could be a door to enter a room that refuses to open unless you solve a CAPTCHA.

There is in fact a real world similar case. I went to visit a law office which was on the 5th floor of a building. I had to pass through a security desk in a lobby first. The security staff said all visitors must register first. They pointed to a touch screen. The interview process on the touch screen demanded an email address which was a required field. The guard said entering an email address is mandatory. So people without an email address are unable to physically meet the lawyers in person (which is what offline people often do).