Enshittification

by Corey Doctorow

Info

Date Finished: 1/14/2026

First Sentence: It's not just you.

Last Sentence: And I think that's pretty important.

Companion Album:

New Cover

A book cover for "Enshittification" with the subtitle "Why everything suddenly got worse and what to do about it." The cover is designed around complex, full-page ASCII art of a poop emoji creating patterns on a white background. The main title and subtitle are contained within a white text box near the top. The author's name, "Cory Doctorow," is at the bottom in a large, bold font, partially obscuring the ASCII pattern.

A Few Thoughts

Enshittification takes a lot of things I feel in my gut, lays them out clearly, and explains why I feel them. The specific reasons why Facebook started to suck after my college years. Why moving from my beloved Zune HD to Spotify never felt quite right. Why a content career, necessarily beholden to the whims of platforms, feels hollow.

It's not all bad news, though. The final third of the book offers you enough hope to try to do your part. It's one of the reasons I'm doing this project: creating something unpolished and unoptimized for platforms. Enshittification is worth a read if you use the internet.

Cover Notes

I give myself a strict time limit on these. Unfortunately, that really hit me on this one. I figured out how to make ASCII art, and then my time was up, so it’s … not my best. But now I can make ASCII art!