The Downfall of Quality
Bostification, shtification, shtification—many names related to the shit that the internet is becoming. It's the process by which a product that originally satisfied its customers' promises is now reduced in quality for profit. Not for the customer, of course. But for the seller. In my opinion, which no one asked for, despite this being a common process in the capitalist system—after all, profit is everything in this system—it's incredibly dishonest. Let's face it, having to pay two or even three times more for a product and only receive a portion of what was promised, with the propaganda that you invested in something infinitely better and more valuable, is simply dishonest.
Poor-quality creations generate a bad reputation among longtime customers because eventually they'll realize the mess they've gotten themselves into. For example, an introductory course that once included everything basic is now divided into several micro-component parts of a whole, and you pay for each of them to obtain useless certificates that prove knowledge anyone could have acquired in ten minutes of reading. I know. Too specific. But want another example? How about that streaming service or cloud service you want to pay monthly, and you're willing to do so, yet at the time of purchase, it triples the price simply because the seller added several things you didn't ask for to the package, like artificial intelligence nonsense, some bonus you'll never use, just to charge you more monthly. And you don't even have the choice to remove them from the package and pay only for what you want, because what you want only comes inside that package. Even though it's a digital product that clearly won't kill anyone if you withdraw it. Anyway, profit. Shit.
We have common examples like social networks that are destined to become huge virtual shopping malls now. Even if you think you're using them to keep up with family and friends, the truth is that they've all become a huge virtual marketplace where your attention is the product—the more viral, the better—when they're not trying to sell you a product literally every other post. And I haven't even begun to complain about artificial intelligence here, because that's already a lost cause. You can't even tell something organic from something manipulated anymore. Quality production is minimal; what's produced doesn't go viral, and if you complain, it's likely to be stolen, copied, or replicated without consent by other users or AIs. This further reduces the motivation to even produce anything. One thing I've learned in recent months is that the creative process requires inspiration. You can't spit out production every day because humans aren't factories, and as much as we love doing it, we get tired of it eventually. And that's understandable.
On the other hand, even knowing this, we want to see something incredible, and we want it now. We're so used to so many amazing things that we've forgotten what it's like to be even minimally bored, or how to wait for something. How to simply exist without the constant need to be connected. To be able to truly enjoy cultural production when it arrives. But this impatience and greed are bullshit, and the internet is just a mirror. - But I won't be hypocritical here; it's not just greed. Where some enjoy themselves absurdly unnecessarily, others do it to put food on the table. At this point, it becomes systemic, and there's no right answer for this within the internet. But maybe, maybe there is. Down at the sugar daddy's house with a lot of power and influence. Who knows.