Hurrah! The Slow Content Movement Is Here to Save Us All From AI-Driven Enshittification
Perhaps, like me, when you first came across the term ‘enshittification,’ as gloriously elucidated by Observer columnist John Naughton, your heart skipped with joy? Yes! I thought, finally, here is a deliciously cathartic term that perfectly captures the social-media-driven theft of my time and brainpower.
In case you missed the memo, the word enshittification, first coined by tech critic Cory Doctorow, describes the way in which digital platforms are trapping society within highly addictive and increasingly detrimental cycles of fast-paced and low-quality content consumption.
In short, our daily fix of doom-scrolling is actively enshittifying our lives, and worse yet, we’re often too absorbed in our excremental immersions to notice.
As this idea rolled about in my mind, I realized that the term can, and perhaps should be applied even more broadly. You see, as much as it pains me to put it into words, I have a growing hunch that the social media treadmill is only a facet of a far larger and ominously looming enshittification apocalypse, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way.
To me, a broader interpretation of the term elegantly encompasses the surging wave of a loneliness epidemic, swelling concern over dopamine addiction, the potential algorithmic deterioration of democracy, and the rising use of AI technology to do everything from covertly generating college essays to setting up morally unanchored and misinformation-spreading ‘chatbot journalism’ content farms.
There’s a chance you’ve seen these red flags raising in your peripherals too. Isn’t it nifty to have added a convenient word to the collective lexicon that can readily lump them all together?
As my freelancing endeavours have informed me, beyond the scope of savvy corner-cutting students and websites crafted solely to suck eyes towards endlessly generated adverts, AI is also increasingly being harnessed by more tangibly valuable businesses around the globe, large and small, to create much of their branding and audience messaging.
In my little corner of the web, this shift in the modality of commercial content creation has been increasingly pulling me away from imaginative endeavours and instead pitting me in an editor’s battle against words that range in nature from simply lacklustre and painfully repetitive to — more sinisterly — an abundance of fiction masquerading as fact.
At times, clients share that their content-in-development was AI-generated, while at others, they have purchased it from a third-party and are, if anything, concerned about plagiarism but blissfully unaware that something else may be amiss. Either way, I dutifully wade into the thick of not only eliminating hollow repetition but also fact-checking statements and sources for hallucinatory flurries — spawned by AI’s tell-tale tendency to simply make things up.
As I observe and try to stay in step with these changes in my industry’s functioning, I also worry, as most do, about the news of alarming incidents of things like brazen deepfake scams and the tragedy of an AI chatbot allegedly encouraging suicide. But there are additional, more all-encompassing concerns on my mind.
In March of this year, a study from Goldman Sachs raised the alarm that the technology behind tools like ChatGPT threatens to make as many as 300 million full-time job roles redundant, while simultaneously taking at least a partial chunk out of two-thirds of jobs across the U.S. and Europe.
Not long after this bombshell landed, we discovered that Dr Geoffrey Hinton, the so-called ‘Godfather of AI,’ had quit his position at Google due to concerns about the ‘existential risk’ posed by the creation of a true digital intelligence. In fact, he fears that AI progress could lead to the end of civilisation within five to twenty years, and perhaps even less. Yikes, Toto, I have the feeling we’re not in Kansas any more.
As anxiety-fuelling as my existential dread may be following these revelations, for now, at least, it is the more gradually creeping enshittification that is keeping me up at night — as we each unwittingly spend more and more time glued to screens that feed us content without a trace of entwined human touch or empathy.
And why might I be more pressingly worried about this subtle online erosion than an overarching threat to societal stability? Vitally, because my late-night ponderings have led me to conclude that it is within this domain — the territory of the subtly enshittified — that our ultimate universal undoing or salvation will take root. Meanwhile, we are absolutely and unequivocally asleep at the wheel.
I am almost certain you’ll agree that as we navigate many of our favoured contemporary digital landscapes, most of us experience a mild and seemingly inexplicable feeling that something is off. No matter how much we plug our minds into the abundance of what’s available, we somehow wind up feeling more disjointed and, well, to quote Eminem, discombobulated.
I put this phenomenon down to a discreet but increasingly dominant void in authenticity within the endless seas of superficial content that we sail upon — making our digital experiences instinctively unpalatable even when they feel observably Instagrammable and shiny.
The kicker, I suspect, is that even if the content in question isn’t AI-generated — and even if it aims to draw our attention to genuinely nifty products or services — it is so often crafted solely with clicks, conversions, shares, likes, and advertising dollars in mind, rather than any intention of providing honest and meaningful up-front value.
So our minds process the letters, sound bites, clips, and images just as our bodies might digest junk food. Sure, we’re full up on content. Perhaps we’re even temporarily satisfied. But are we nourished? Not so much.
At this point, it’s worth pointing out that it’s not my goal to be yet another harbinger of humanity’s downfall at the hands of the machines, nor to criticise the many brands trying their best to figure out how to navigate into increasingly unknown waters successfully. As my headline implies, I do see a warm glow of hope leaking through the foundational cracks appearing in all of that structurally unsound enshittification.
So let us use that rather neat fast food pun as an unexpected bridge towards optimism, because it aligns beautifully with the wordplay of a relevant rising movement. One that may just allow us to step out of the murky quagmire and onto higher ground.
This call to action is none other than the Slow Content movement, which, with any luck, is set to become just as elegant a salve to the rise of enshittification as the Slow Food movement was in the 1980s and 90s to the heart disease-inducing over-reach of deep-fried and plastic-wrapped empty calories.
To my knowledge, the loudest champion of this inspiring cause so far is Julius Honnor, founder of content strategy agency Contentious Ltd. It was he who gave a keynote speech on the very topic at the 2022 Utterly Content Global conference and breathed life into the campaign over at SlowContent.org. The latter presents a vision of content that prioritises ‘enrichment over transactions,’ ‘contemplation over acceleration,’ ‘purpose over profit,’ and ‘the citizen over the consumer’ — to grab just a few of the campaign’s most comforting conceptual morsels.
Another exciting organisation advocating for the sanctity of our human brains in the midst of all this fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants madness is the Center for Humane Technology, as seen in the hugely popular documentary The Social Dilemma, and active in ‘leading a comprehensive shift toward technology that strengthens our well-being, global democratic functioning, and shared information environment.’ Hmm, perhaps that succinct mission statement holds the key to finding our way toward the stability of the shoreline?
I truly hope so, because I fear that we all — whether content consumers, creators, or both — have an essential and pretty urgent choice to make. We can continue to passively lean into the gravitational pull of enshittification and the potential chaos that may follow in its wake, or we can turn away and start moving in another, healthier, and less soul-crushing direction.
My own well-nourished gut tells me that, while big-tech ethics committees and government panels wrestle with how best to regulate the acceleration of world-changing technology, it is our responsibility to engage with putting our time and eyes where our hearts lie, seeking out the brands, platforms, and creators who are giving us the real-deal value, connection, and authenticity that will lastingly shape our lives for the better — and perhaps save us from tumbling into the abyss.
Rather tellingly, that report from Goldman Sachs also suggested that generative AI could raise global GDP by 7%, making it seem all the more certain that its emergence will alter life in some way for just about everyone. However, with some trepidation, I hope that these widespread adjustments will involve more broadly life-improving changes, along the lines of saving the Amazon rainforest, detecting cancer earlier, and generally contributing to greater global equity — as opposed to funnelling yet more money upward while bringing a swath of humanity to its knees.
As I vividly imagine what this tipping of the technological scale might evolve into, more question marks are raised. Will these emerging tools truly inspire and enhance our existence or are such arguments simply hallucinations, as the brilliant Naomi Klein recently argued? Will the disenfranchisement that follows mass redundancy feed the kind of authoritarianism that may further abuse the power of AI? Let’s not wait for those who have, at best, a flimsy leash on the runaway tech to ask such big questions on our behalf.
As someone who has long balanced immense excitement about these kinds of sci-fi advancements with a Linda Hamilton-inspired readiness for the rise of the robots, I truly hope that we can steer ourselves away from both rapidly spiralling enshittification and any Terminator-esque end-game apocalypse.
With that in mind, I’ve picked my side and plan on participating in the pushback. My first contribution is a bit underwhelming, I grant you — being less along the lines of mounting a muscle-bound underground resistance and more that of energetically sprinkling the #slowcontent hashtag around. At this stage in the game, I suppose that will have to do.
