The Enshittification of Everything

Recently, Sam Altman raised eyebrows when he announced the next upgrade to ChatGPT. He hinted that, in a new policy of “treating adults as adults,” age-verified users might soon be able to use ChatGPT for erotic purposes, among other things. It didn’t surprise me. I’ve been watching a steady decline in AI, social platforms, and digital tools. And with AI, that decline seems to be happening at roughly the same rate it takes a xenomorph to reach maturity.

Every major platform (Facebook, X, Instagram, Pinterest, ChatGPT, Grok, Claude, you name it) started as a human centred endeavour. I still remember Facebook’s tagline: “It’s free and always will be.” And technically it is, if you don’t care whether anyone ever sees you. If you want visibility now, you pay for the blue checkmark and boosted posts. The platform begins as a place to build connexion or community, and over time it shifts to serve advertisers. Startups rarely turn a profit, so eventually the feed fills with ads. At first a few, then a flood. And one day you wake up and realise you are no longer the priority.

After that, everything becomes profit-centred. The search function and the algorithm no longer give you what you need or ask for. They give you whatever someone has paid to place in your path, or whatever will keep you clicking. Your experience becomes sub-par unless you buy the subscription model. And now Elon Musk is pushing hentai-style AI companions while Altman floats the concept of an X-rated ChatGPT.

Extraction Culture

When you listen closely you can hear the hum of extraction in every click, every scroll, every “free” account. The term that neatly names this decline is enshittification. It was coined by the writer and activist Cory Doctorow in late 2022, then published in a blog post and picked up by Wired.

Here is how Doctorow describes it: a platform begins by serving its users, making itself user-friendly and generous. Next it serves advertisers and business-customers. Finally it serves itself, squeezing both user and business side until something useful collapses beneath the weight of extraction.
In short: user → advertiser → platform.

That pattern is woven through far more than social apps. It is built into our economic system. Unchecked capitalism treats attention as a commodity. What once felt like connection, service, community now gets rationed, hacked, monetised, discarded. We feel it as spiritual numbness. Every curated “feed” is trying to keep you engaged long enough to extract value. A tool that promised to help us think is now trying to influence how we think.

Extraction culture puts us into service of the machine instead of the machine serving us. The user becomes the raw material. The algorithm becomes the boss. The promise of liberation via technology becomes a new kind of bondage.

To live spiritually in this age means seeing the extraction, feeling the bleed, and choosing another orientation. We might refuse to be siphoned. We might reclaim attention, reclaim stillness. We might be users and not just used.

The Spiritual Cost

There is a cost that cannot be measured in money. Every notification, banner, autoplay clip, and blinking icon chips away at silence. The mind fills with static until intuition sounds like a distant voice behind a wall. Presence becomes something we remember rather than something we live.

You cannot hear your soul when every app is screaming for your focus. The body knows this even when the mind pretends not to. The constant hum of alerts and algorithms creates a kind of low-grade possession. It keeps us pacing in mental circles, always reacting, never arriving.

Taoism has warned about this for centuries. When something loses harmony it does not drift gently. It swings into excess, then into chaos. A tool designed to connect becomes an engine of distraction. A platform built for creativity becomes a slot machine in your pocket. The imbalance reveals itself in burnout, apathy, and the dull ache of overstimulation.

When harmony is gone, collapse is only a matter of time. Not the dramatic fall of an empire in a single night, but a gradual erosion of inner life. First we lose the quiet. Then we lose the ability to notice it is gone.

The Temptation of Convenience

Convenience is the bait. We tell ourselves we are choosing efficiency, connection, visibility. What we are really choosing is sedation. The dopamine hit of a like, the soft distraction of the scroll, the relief of not having to face the quiet. People tolerate the degradation of these platforms because exhaustion makes everything look like help. When you are tired enough, even a cage can pass for structure.

I know the tug-of-war because I am in it. I told myself I needed more accounts, more platforms, more presence if I wanted to sell my book. So I built profiles and pages and strategies. I created a brand that needs feeding like a coal furnace. In the end, it became a second job layered on top of the one I already have. And for all the noise and effort, I have not sold that many more books.

What it did cost me was time. Time I could have spent writing the next novel, the one I am supposed to release in November. The endeavour has been counterproductive. The tools that promised visibility pulled me away from the actual work. It is a strange feeling to be busy and undermined at the same time.

Convenience whispers that it is helping. Meanwhile it siphons energy from the thing that matters. The trap is not always coercive. Sometimes it is comfortable.

The Taoist Countermove

There is always a moment when the fantasy of escape arrives. Throw the phone in a river. Delete every account. Buy a cabin and let the world digitise itself into madness without you. The impulse is honest, but it is not the only path.

Withdrawal does not have to mean disappearance. You can remain in the world without feeding every system that drains you. The Tao does not tell you to burn down the village. It shows you how to move through it without becoming tangled in its noise.

Mindful engagement is the counter. Use the tools without making them temples. Step back when the feed begins to shape your thoughts. Create without asking an algorithm for permission. Rest without broadcasting that you are resting. Non-attachment is not apathy. It is the refusal to be ruled.

You can walk through Babylon without becoming a citizen. You can post without performing. You can connect without sacrificing your silence. The point is not to vanish into the woods. The point is to remain sovereign in a world that keeps trying to rent your attention back to you.

When you stop feeding the engine, even slightly, you begin to hear yourself again.

Reclaiming Inner Authority

Reclaiming inner authority begins in silence. And I'm not talking about the complete absence of sound. I'm talking about the refusal to let the world speak first. When you return to that space, something in you remembers its original shape. Attention becomes sacred again, not a resource to be harvested.

Sovereignty is not a loud declaration. It is the quiet act of choosing when to listen, when to speak, when to create, and when to be still. Discernment becomes a kind of rebellion in a culture that wants you reactive, restless, and reachable at all times.

The world keeps handing us scripts. Post now. Respond now. Care about this. Ignore that. Keep scrolling. Stay outraged. Do not ask why you feel empty. Inner authority is what interrupts that current. It places choice back in your hands.

You decide how your energy is spent. You decide when you are available. You decide what deserves your thought, your time, your spirit. That choice does not need to be dramatic to be powerful. Even a small shift in attention is an act of resistance.

To anyone reading this: your focus is not cheap, and your presence is not incidental. Reclaim it like something alive. Let silence speak before the feed does. Let your soul set the pace. The world will adapt or fall away, and either outcome is fine.

Closing Thought

Babylon will keep buying billboards in our heads and calling it connection. Let it. Every system that forgets the soul eventually collapses under its own hunger. The only question worth asking is whether you collapse with it, or walk away intact.

Pull your spirit back from the teeth of the machine. Guard the quiet. Everything real begins there.

Peace, and keep asking the big questions,

The Sage Wanderer

P.S. - If you have enjoyed my newsletter posts, would you consider buying me a coffee? It’s donations like yours that keep me going, and I greatly appreciate it.