#trying to use a web browser

[hindbodes]

Jack in, Firefox! Power UP!

View Image Context Menu Item battle chip, in! Download!

YouTube Redux battle chip, in! Download!

YouTube Bring Back Dislike Bar battle chip, in! Download!

Remove YouTube Shorts battle chip, in! Download!

De-Round Twitter Corners battle chip, in! Download!

Stylus battle chip, in! Download!

Custom Stylesheet Remove Tumblr Navbar Stickiness, battle chip, in! Download!

Tumblr Savior battle chip, in! Download!

DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials battle chip, in! Download! 

Separate Stop Button From Refresh Button battle chip, in! Download!

My choice of VPN battle chip, in! Download! 

YouTube End Screen Card Remover battle chip, in! Download!

Firefox userChrome.css Code Changes to put Tabs on Bottom, power up!

Adblock Plus battle chip, in! Download! 

Normal Adblock battle chip, in! Download!

Ultimate Adblock battle chip, in! Download!

Ublock Origin battle chip, in! Download!

AdNauseam battle chip, in! Download!

Alright, just 14 more battle chips and I’ll be ready to navigate cyberspace on my new PET that I just bought!

[woodnrust]

Okay just joined the waitlist for a pillowfort account but I doubt that I'll use it because as of right now it's appears to be pretty much dead and I'm not sure if the circles that I'm in would do well on there anyway since it seems that it's centered around being cutesy (?) but I'm willing to give it a shot because even though I have an insta account there's no way I'm going back there :(

[blackpearlblast]

you can give seven days of internet connection to someone in gaza for just 6 USD

gazaesims.com is a website dedicated to helping people donate esims for people in gaza. (for the ultimate guide to donating an esim, see http://tinyurl.com/gaza-esims) there are multiple options for where to purchase an esim to donate, for the price i listed you want to use nomad esims. you can get a $3 discount by using someone's referral code from the notes of this post. it also will give the referrer credit to buy more esims! (you can only use a referral code on your first purchase) @/fairuzfan also a tag for esim referral codes here, some of which are nomad. BACKPACKNOMAD is another code to get $3 off your first purchase, it's been working for some people but not others so try out a referral code instead if you can't get it to work. also it took over an hour for the email with my information to come through so don't panic if it doesn't show up right away. (logging back into your nomad account seems to have helped some people get their emails to send!) NOMADCNG is a code for 5% off any middle east region nomad esims from connecting gaza. it can be used on any purchase, not just your first but is generally going to give less off than the first-purchase only codes, so use those first. it can be used in combination with nomad points. AWESOME NEW CODE: nomad esim discount code for 75% off any plan, NOMADCS25 do not know how long it lasts but this is an amazing deal esp. since they are really low on esims right now! (nomad promo codes do not work on plans that are already on sale, unlimited plans, and plans under $5)

weekly tuesdays only code on nomad web, PST timezone! it gives 10% off plans 10gb and above. NOMADTUE

for the month of may, first time referrals give 25% off for a person's first purchase and 25% off the referrer's next purchase! it's a great time to use someone's referral code from the notes if you are a first time buyer.

troubleshooting hint 1: if you are trying to pay through paypal, make sure you have pop-ups enabled! otherwise the payment window won't be able to appear.

troubleshooting hint 2: if you are trying to purchase an esim using the provider's app, it may block you from purchasing if your phone does not fit the requirements to install and use their esims. use their website in your browser instead and this problem should go away.

edit as of 5/21/24: holafly (israel and egypt), nomad (regional middle east), simly (palestine and middle east), mogo (israel), and airalo (discover) are currently in the highest in demand. here is a purchase guide i made that covers all of the esim platforms, including these three platforms. if it has been more than 3 weeks since you initially sent your esim and your esim has not been activated, you can reforward your original email with the expiration date in the subject line. you can see gothhabiba’s guide for how to tell if your esims have been activated. if your esim has expired without use, you can contact customer service to renew or replace it.

[seithr]

girl i need to get this new laptop i swear to god

[mayonaisalspray]

HEY YOU!

Do you have an obsession with Ace Attorney? At least mild respect (or fear) for Miles Edgeworth? An inability to focus on your tasks? All of the above? Well I have just the thing for you!!

For the low price of opening it on your web browser of choice, you can use my handy dandy program I’m tentatively calling “Miles Edgeworth Glares At You For Being On Your Phone Instead Of Working”

Features include setting a timer(wow!), victory music, and an image of one very angry looking prosecutor! That’s more than one feature!

Try it out today!!

EDIT(final for real this time): I’ve made it so you can download and use it offline should you desire! Have fun

[tanadrin]

The fact that if someone posts a link to a tumblr post in a reply I cannot navigate to it using the tumblr app highlights the reason I hate apps replacing websites.

There’s nowhere in the tumblr app to enter a URL—your only option is to search up a user name and then try to find the post manually

If you copy-paste the link to a web browser like Firefox you get a login-prompt doorslam as soon as you scroll, even if you’re logged into the app.

You cannot easily click on a button from the webpage to load the post in the app

Even copy-pasting the URL is a PITA because the iOS tumblr app doesn’t actually let you select a portion of the text of a reply, only copy the whole thing to the clipboard.

I really hate the way apps break basic interface functionality that’s been standard for decades across different web browsers, to deliver content that is fundamentally just a webpage. @staff please fix this very annoying UI issue at least

[cutearose]

I miss when I could use the tumblr app for more than five minutes without it draining my entire battery and heating my phone up to painful temperatures

[mbrine]

I have hacked the mainframe (Inspect Element) (UPDATED FOR HALLOWEEN BOOP WAR)

MAX - 1000

LOL - 1500

OMG - 2000

WOW - 4000

*-* - 5000

WHY - 6000

PLZ - 7000

AAA - 7500

;_; - 8000

0_0 - 8500

T_T - 9000

MAX - ~9200? (Hard to tell, I've overshot this twice already)

BOO - 9500

TUM - 10000 given

BLR - 10000 received

How to Super Boop

On desktop, hover your mouse over the Boop button for around 5 seconds, and it will do 2 spins.

Once the button is done spinning, click on it and you can send a Super Boop!

EVIL BOOPS can be accessed by allowing the animation to play 3 times before clicking

One way to get Super Boops on mobile is using a web browser to access tumblr. Use "Desktop Site"/"Desktop Mode", then click and hold the button to send the boop. That'll convert it to a Super Boop button. It seems pretty inconsistent though.

For all clicking enthusiasts, do click this too, trust me, it's just as satisfying

Omg thanks everyone for the boops, I've been butterfly clicking the boop button for so many different people for the past 6 hours and I'm exhausted

I'm pretty sure this is also my most engaged post on any platform I've ever used, thanks for all the RBs and likes <3 <3 <3

If anyone's crazy enough to try reaching 10k without an autoclicker, here's what I did

Ok, one more tutorial for the boops before I go to bed for real.

How do I check my exact given and received boop count?

NOTE: You'll need to refresh the page to update the counters, unless there's another method to check the live count

Chrome

Go to your dash ("home" tab).

Press f12, or right click and select "Inspect Element"

In the window that pops up, click on "Sources" then "dashboard" under "www.tumblr.com" (Pic below for reference)

In the window showing the code, press Ctrl+F and type in either "givenCount" or "receivedCount".

Ta da! (Pic below for reference)

Firefox

Go to your dash ("home" tab).

Press f12, or right click and select "Inspect Element (Q)"

In the window that pops up, click on "Debugger", then "Sources" and "dashboard" under "www.tumblr.com" (Pic below for reference)

In the window showing the code, press Ctrl+F and type in either "givenCount" or "receivedCount".

Enjoy formatting (Pic below for reference)

Gonna take a break from Tumblr for now, my fingers are in shambles and I'm pretty sure I can hear the mouse clicks echoing around inside my skull. Thanks to everyone for making this random Singaporean guy's day, mbrine signing out! ❤

Here's a link to A vetted Palestinian family fundraiser masterpost by @/el-shab-hussein and A masterpost on how you can help Palestine

Happy April Fool's Day!

October 31st changelog:

Removed "bait links", now the link actually says where it directs to

Updated some info regarding tiers

[paper-mario-wiki]

The opposite of wiki isn’t discord, it’s encyclopedia dramatica.

incorrect.

encyclopedia dramatica is publicly available through a web browser without an account, and not locked behind a proprietary piece of software to access.

Discord, on the other hand, is the hand that pulls the suffocating rag of inaccessibility over the face of anyone trying to learn anything regarding any niche online phenomenon.

JUST MAKE A FORUM FOR YOUR FIGHTING GAME COMMUNITY!!! JUST PUT YOUR PROGRAMS AND SCRIPTS ON GITHUB!!! JUST HOST YOUR FILES ON MEDIAFIRE OR MEGAUPLOAD OR SOMETHING!!

i shouldnt have to announce my presence to everyone any time i join a server for a second to download one file! i dont like that i have to insert my digital footprint somewhere just because the information there isn't available anywhere else!

STOP MAKING DISCORD SERVERS WHEN YOU SHOULD BE MAKING WEBSITES!!! STOP USING A CHAT CLIENT THAT'S GETTING WORSE WITH EVERY UPDATE AS A LESS HELPFUL AND LESS ACCESSIBLE INTERNET BROWSER!!!

[ilynotes]

as someone that has tried dropping chrome many times and tried switching to firefox many times i regret to say that in my experience firefox has actually caused my computer to slow down many times and all around has been slower and given me more issues than my experience with chrome. this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t drop chrome by any means, but what i am saying is i hope a better web browser comes out soon because firefox is really currently the only browser right now aside from chrome that has so many compatible extension and safety options. other browsers don’t have that as much yet

[reasonsforhope]

Article | Paywall Free

"A bid to break up Alphabet Inc.’s Google is one of the options being considered by the Justice Department after a landmark court ruling found that the company monopolized the online search market, according to people with knowledge of the deliberations.

The move would be Washington’s first push to dismantle a company for illegal monopolization since unsuccessful efforts to break up Microsoft Corp. two decades ago. Less severe options include forcing Google to share more data with competitors and measures to prevent it from gaining an unfair advantage in AI products, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private conversations.

Regardless, the government will likely seek a ban on the type of exclusive contracts that were at the center of its case against Google. If the Justice Department pushes ahead with a breakup plan, the most likely units for divestment are the Android operating system and Google’s web browser Chrome, said the people. Officials are also looking at trying to force a possible sale of AdWords, the platform the company uses to sell text advertising, one of the people said.

The Justice Department discussions have intensified in the wake of Judge Amit Mehta’s Aug. 5 ruling that Google illegally monopolized the markets of online search and search text ads. Google has said it will appeal that decision, but Mehta has ordered both sides to begin plans for the second phase of the case, which will involve the government’s proposals for restoring competition, including a possible breakup request.

The US plan will need to be accepted by Mehta, who would direct the company to comply. A forced breakup of Google would be the biggest of a US company since AT&T was dismantled in the 1980s."

-via Bloomberg, August 13, 2024

[hyuny-bunny]

skz + types of p*rn they watch (w/links) pt 1. hyung line

MDNI (+18) content warning: p*rn, nsfw links, mentions of rough sex, use of female anatomy, breeding, spanking, choking, fingering, oral (f receiving) most afab reader terms.

a/n: if the links are not working for you, you may need the app as most are not compatible with a web browser

pt 2. maknae line

chan: he's definitely watching twitter/x porn. as for what side of x he's on all depends on the mood. he definitely seems to stay on a more "vanilla" side. probably has a keen interest on size kink and breeding videos. but what they all have common is riding. it gets him so riled up seeing ones shot in cars because the next time he sees you it's all he thinks about. he'd love nothing more then to have you riding his dick, his hands holding your hips in place, eventually snacking a hand to lightly you choke and bunching your skirt in the other hand while you sloppily bounce on his cock. maybe he's taking you out to a nice dinner & movie but once your back in that car he's practically begging you to sit on his cock.

"baby, i need you so bad. come here, ride me, need to feel this pretty pussy on me."

breeding

riding

minho: there's so many things i could say about him. i don't think he necessarily needs porn to get off or actively looks for it, but i do think he loves being able to send you links that either remind him of the both of yours sexcapades or things he wants to do to you. i feel like he watches a lot of overstimulation, spanking, BREEDING, and just a sprinkle of voyeurism. i think he gets really turned on by the ones of girls in pretty lingerie wearing collars with bells, so every movement makes the bell ring. he almost collapses to his knees when he gets home one day to see you wearing the collar he bought, the one he'd been hiding and waiting for the right moment.

the only thing on your mind is the feeling of your sopping wet cunt being suffocated by minho's cock. he's got a fistful of your hair in hand, pulling you up from your pillow before landing a hard smack on your ass, never letting up on his thrusts.

overstimulation

spanking

changbin: another one in my books that loves size kink porn. not because i think he likes someone smaller, but more so the fact that he likes the feeling of being able to make someone feel so small. in seo changbins biceps, we trust. i think this one in particular will have him pleading with you to let him try it. you might feel reluctant because of any underlying insecurities at the though of feeling like you're "too heavy" (there's so no such thing to him) . it isn't till he's got you lifted up against the wall with no holding you either than his arms & shoulders, his mouth lapping away at your pretty cunt, any worries you ever had dissipated along with your ability to use your words.

"bin-binnie please i-i can't hold on much longer" a string of whines follow suit. he's been at it for a while and you've already had two orgasm but he's relentless. all you can hear are his groans and the squelching sound of his tongue abusing your cunt. he lifts his head up from between your thighs with you hand webbed in his hair, mirroring your worn out lustful look.

size kink

making you feel small

hyunjin: to me, i think hyun goes either of these two ways. he's the most depraved man known to walk this earth that loves it sloppy, messy, wet and downright lustfully filthy. the latter also leads me to believe he's not big on porn, prefers either his imagination or his OWN videos. one he's recorded (with your consent + encouragement) while you've done it together. he needs the passion of either love or the passion of wanting to make the either cum so hard they've gone to heaven (preferably both). if he's watching videos, his favorite ones always have the girl shaking and crying in pleasure by the end. he needs to see the passion, lust to be able to get off. when it's you, it's different, if anything it brings him back to those moments to fully remember the need between the two of you. that being said he's heavy into breeding/cumplay and semi restraining. he loves seeing the hands held behind the back and holding someone in place while they fall apart in his lap + cock.

it was supposed to be a quick kiss, which turned into heavy petting, and now he's brought your leg over his hips. the panties you were wearing discarded somewhere in the room, one arm is wrapped around you holding you tightly to his chest while his other hand is at work. his middle & ring finger are knuckle deep thrusting into you and he's groaning into your neck sucking hickies in all your favorite spots.

semi restraints

playing w you in his lap

[blackpearlblast]

a rundown on the listed e-sim platforms from this tweet from mirna el helbawi. visit esimsforgaza to learn about this effort. (they also have a tutorial on how to purchase an esim and send it to them)

update v12 (5/21/24) holafly (israel and egypt), nomad (regional middle east), simly (palestine and middle east), mogo (israel), and airalo (discover) are currently in the highest in demand. if it has been more than 3 weeks since you initially sent your esim and your esim has not been activated, you can reforward your original email with the expiration date in the subject line. you can see gothhabiba’s guide for how to tell if your esims have been activated. if your esim has expired without use, you can contact customer service to renew or replace it.

troubleshooting hint 1: if you are trying to pay through paypal, make sure you have pop-ups enabled! otherwise the payment window won't be able to appear. (this issue most frequently seems to occur with nomad)

troubleshooting hint 2: if you are trying to purchase an esim using the provider's app, it may block you from purchasing if your phone does not fit the requirements to install and use their esims. use their website in your browser instead and this problem should go away.

nomad

for the month of may, first time referrals give 25% off for a person's first purchase and 25% off the referrer's next purchase! it's a great time to use someone's referral code from the notes if you are a first time buyer.

you can use a referral code to get $3 off your first purchase and also make it so the person whose code you used can buy more esims for gaza. many people have been leaving their referral codes in the replies of this post and supposedly a referral code may eventually reach capacity so just keep trying until you find one that works! BACKPACKNOMAD is another code to get $3 off your first purchase, it's been working for some people but not others so try out a referral code instead if you can't get it to work. NOMADCNG is a code for 5% off any middle east region nomad esims posted by connecting gaza. it can be used on any purchase, not just your first but is generally going to give less off than the first-purchase only codes, so use those first. it can be used in combination with nomad points. AWESOME NEW CODE: nomad esim discount code for 75% off any plan, NOMADCS25 do not know how long it lasts but this is an amazing deal esp. since they are really low on esims right now! (nomad promo codes do not work on plans that are already on sale, unlimited plans, and plans under $5)

weekly tuesdays only code on nomad web, PST timezone! it gives 10% off plans 10gb and above. NOMADTUE

nomad also seems to be kind of sluggish sometimes when it comes to sending out emails with the codes. you can look for them manually by going to manage -> manage plans -> the plan you purchased -> installation instruction and scroll down to install esim via QR code or manual input then select QR code to find the QR code which you can screenshot and email to them. often just the act of logging back into your nomad account after purchase seems to cause the email with the code to come through though.

mogo

mogo's website is fucking annoying to navigate and i couldn't find any promo codes, but their prices are massively on sale anyway. you have to pick if you want your esim to be for iphone, ipad, or android for some reason. according to statcounter, android makes up approx. 75% of mobile markets in palestine while iphone represents approx. 25%. so i would probably recommend prioritizing donations of android esims but if you can afford multiple, try buying an iphone one too? if i can find any official direction from the connecting gaza crew on this i will update with it.

a good referral code to use for mogo is 8R29F9. the way things are worded are confusing but as far as i can tell, if you use it we both get a 10% discount on your first purchase. (the referrer gets a 10% voucher that allows them to top up in use esims, they are someone who i know has bought a lot of esims and will be able to make good use of the top-up discount vouchers!) also upon signing up it automatically generates a password for you which you can change by downloading the app. (check your email to find your account's current password)

holafly (also looking for holafly esims for egypt now)

holafly is pricier than the others and the only promo code i could find was ESIMNOW for 7% off. someone in the tags mentioned GETESIM7 as another 7% off code they had received, so if you have already used ESIMNOW or can't seem to get it to work, try GETESIM7. another 7% off code is HOLAXSUMMER7 which is valid until june 2nd. referral codes only seem to give 5% off and they don't stack. (i don't remember the source, it was on some sketchy coupon site i don't want to link to and only can recommend because i tried it myself) you can also use my referral link for 5% off if you can afford the 2% worse deal on your end, it will give me $5 credit which i can put towards buying more esims. connecting gaza has also posted the promo code HOLACNG for 5% off but since it is less than the 7% off codes and as far as i can tell does not give credit towards others to buy esims like the referral links, i would consider it lower priority for use.

simly (note: simly must be downloaded as an app to be used, the website link is to help people confirm they are downloading the right app)

i have not personally used simly so i am going to be going off of the sixth slide of mirna el helbawi's instagram guide, with some corrections from someone who has successfully purchased an esim from simly. after downloading the app and making an account, search for palestine or middle east and purchase your preferred package. the page the app takes you to after your purchase should have the QR code to send to the esimsforgaza email, it won't show up in your email receipt. someone kindly left her referral code in the tags of this post, it gives $3 off your first purchase and will give her $3 credit to put towards purchasing more esims for gaza. the code is CIWA2. (if this referral code doesn't work, try one from the notes of this post!) according to someone in the notes, ARB is a simly promo code for 25% off esims that is still working as of march 3rd.

airalo

some people have noted issues trying to sign up for airalo using the browser version of the website, it worked for me but if you are struggling you can give the mobile app a try and that should work. you can use a referral code to get $3 off your first purchase and give the code suppler a $3 credit for buying more esims. KARINA9661 is a code sourced from this post which is also a wonderful example of how using people's referral codes can really make a difference. if for some reason that referral code isn't working, you can find more in the notes of the original esim post i made here.

@/fairuzfan also has a tag of esim referral codes for various platforms!

(note: mogo and holafly both link to israel esims as there are no general regional packages for the middle east like on nomad and the esims for gaza website specifically linked to the israel package on mogo, so i linked to the equivalent on holafly.)

[sirfrogsworth]

sirfrogsworth please i am begging to know your boomer uncle’s thought process when he installed all those spam search bars what on earth was he TRUING to do

This was my Uncle Larry. He died in 2014 from a lifetime of smoking.

But while he was alive, he was what my grandma would refer to as "a character."

I feel like seeing his photo gives a partial explanation of the toolbar fiasco.

He was a man stuck in the 1960s but extremely curious about new things.

It was the early 2000s and I was trying to make some extra money. So when he was interested in getting a computer I offered to build him one from scratch.

What I didn't consider about this arrangement was that I was basically signing up to be my uncle's IT person. If something went wrong, it could possibly be due to a mistake I made.

He called me up complaining he couldn't see his websites and that the computer was running slower than normal.

I boot up his system and it takes 10 minutes to get to Windows. The desktop was filled with random programs he installed. And when I opened his web browser I was immediately greeted with a dozen pop up advertisements. Once I nuked them all, all of the different search toolbars were revealed. There was maybe a few inches of space for viewing websites and he had just been looking at photos a segment at a time for weeks before wondering if maybe it wasn't supposed to work like that.

I asked him why he installed all of this crap and he told me he didn't realize he had a choice. He just thought you had to say yes to everything that popped up on the screen. He also opened every spam email he received.

To make matters even worse, when he was searching for lewd pictures of Catherine Bell (aka the "JAG lady" with nice cans), he ended up on various softcore porn sites containing ever more dangerous pop up ads. And he clicked on all of those as well.

He loved the internet. It was a wonderland for such a curious person. He loved typing in random things and just reading and looking at pictures for hours. Aside from Maxim photos of TV celebrities, his searches were pretty innocent. He looked at old cars he used to own and lawnmowers he wanted to buy. He read old war stories and found websites helping him learn how to whittle walking sticks.

But he had no sense of danger. He had a Leroy Jenkins approach to life. He just sort of jumped into whatever without any fear or caution. Which is probably why my parents were so pissed at him when he offered 8 year-old me a ride on his new motorcycle. He immediately took me off-road and up a steep hill without a helmet or telling me to hold on. And it was a Harley, so not really meant for that terrain.

I tried a virus scan and it just said "You have every virus." So I had to nuke his Windows install from orbit. I then gave him computer lessons, which he paid me for, so that sort of worked out despite how frustrating it was to keep him from clicking on random things.

Uncle Larry taught me an important lesson.

Never tell your family you know about computers.

[invisibleintrovertartist]

This is a project I've been working on for a while. The idea was to draw all the members of NSR in traditional clothes inspired by various ethnic groups/cultures residing in Malaysia (or/and which were implied in the game). Below, I have listed first the characters; then the names of their traditional clothes; and lastly the countries (or cultures) said clothes are derived from.

DJ Subatomic Supernova: Baju Melayu — Malaysia

Sayu: Kimono — Japan

Yinu & her mother: Cheongsam — China

Neon J & 1010: Hanbok — South Korea

Eve: Sari — India

Tatiana Qwartz: Koubasanan — Kadazandusun (Malaysia)

(The traditional clothes aren't hundred percent accurate and I have most likely made some mistakes while trying to incorporate them with the characters, and thus have ended up doing a disservice of some caliber to them. If you want to see all these traditional clothes in their full splendor, I highly recommend and encourage everyone to make good use of the various web browser's search bars and local libraries' collections.)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Dirty words are politically potent

On OCTOBER 23 at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

Making up words is a perfectly cromulent passtime, and while most of the words we coin disappear as soon as they fall from our lips, every now and again, you find a word that fits so nice and kentucky in the public discourse that it acquires a life of its own:

http://meaningofliff.free.fr/definition.php3?word=Kentucky

I've been trying to increase the salience of digital human rights in the public imagination for a quarter of a century, starting with the campaign to get people to appreciate that the internet matters, and that tech policy isn't just the delusion that the governance of spaces where sad nerds argue about Star Trek is somehow relevant to human thriving:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell

Now, eventually people figured out that a) the internet mattered and, b) it was going dreadfully wrong. So my job changed again, from "how the internet is governed matters" to "you can't fix the internet with wishful thinking," for example, when people said we could solve its problems by banning general purpose computers:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

Or by banning working cryptography:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/09/04/oh-for-fucks-sake-not-this-fucking-bullshit-again-cryptography-edition/

Or by redesigning web browsers to treat their owners as threats:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership

Or by using bots to filter every public utterance to ensure that they don't infringe copyright:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/today-europe-lost-internet-now-we-fight-back

Or by forcing platforms to surveil and police their users' speech (aka "getting rid of Section 230"):

https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/

Along the way, many of us have coined words in a bid to encapsulate the abstract, technical ideas at the core of these arguments. This isn't a vanity project! Creating a common vocabulary is a necessary precondition for having the substantive, vital debates we'll need to tackle the real, thorny issues raised by digital systems. So there's "free software," "open source," "filternet," "chat control," "back doors," and my own contributions, like "adversarial interoperability":

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

Or "Competitive Compatibility" ("comcom"), a less-intimidatingly technical term for the same thing:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/competitive-compatibility-year-review

These have all found their own niches, but nearly all of them are just that: niche. Some don't even rise to "niche": they're shibboleths, insider terms that confuse and intimidate normies and distract from the real fights with semantic ones, like whether it's "FOSS" or "FLOSS" or something else entirely:

https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/262/what-is-the-difference-between-foss-and-floss

But every now and again, you get a word that just kills. That brings me to "enshittification," a word I coined in 2022:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

"Enshittification" took root in my hindbrain, rolling around and around, agglomerating lots of different thoughts and critiques I'd been making for years, crystallizing them into a coherent thesis:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

This kind of spontaneous crystallization is the dividend of doing lots of work in public, trying to take every half-formed thought and pin it down in public writing, something I've been doing for decades:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

After those first couple articles, "enshittification" raced around the internet. There's two reasons for this: first, "enshittification" is a naughty word that's fun to say. Journalists love getting to put "shit" in their copy:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/15/crosswords/linguistics-word-of-the-year.html

Radio journalists love to tweak the FCC with cheekily bleeped syllables in slightly dirty compound words:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/projects/enshitification

And nothing enlivens an academic's day like getting to use a word like "enshittification" in a journal article (doubtless this also amuses the editors, peer-reviewers, copyeditors, typesetters, etc):

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=enshittification&btnG=&oq=ensh

That was where I started, too! The first time I used "enshittification" was in a throwaway bad-tempered rant about the decay of Tripadvisor into utter uselessness, which drew a small chorus of appreciative chuckles about the word:

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1550457808222552065

The word rattled around my mind for five months before attaching itself to my detailed theory of platform decay. But it was that detailed critique, coupled with a minor license to swear, that gave "enshittification" a life of its own. How do I know that the theory was as important as the swearing? Because the small wave of amusement that followed my first use of "enshittification" petered out in less than a day. It was only when I added the theory that the word took hold.

Likewise: how do I know that the theory needed to be blended with swearing to break out of the esoteric realm of tech policy debates (which the public had roundly ignored for more than two decades)? Well, because I spent two decades writing about this stuff without making anything like the dents that appeared once I added an Anglo-Saxon monosyllable to that critique.

Adding "enshittification" to the critique got me more column inches, a longer hearing, a more vibrant debate, than anything else I'd tried. First, Wired availed itself of the Creative Commons license on my second long-form article on the subject and reprinted it as a 4,200-word feature. I've been writing for Wired for more than thirty years and this is by far the longest thing I've published with them – a big, roomy, discursive piece that was run verbatim, with every one of my cherished darlings unmurdered.

That gave the word – and the whole critique, with all its spiky corners – a global airing, leading to more pickup and discussion. Eventually, the American Dialect Society named it their "Word of the Year" (and their "Tech Word of the Year"):

https://americandialect.org/2023-word-of-the-year-is-enshittification/

"Enshittification" turns out to be catnip for language nerds:

https://becauselanguage.com/90-enpoopification/#transcript-60

I've been dragged into (good natured) fights over the German, Spanish, French and Italian translations for the term. When I taped an NPR show before a live audience with ASL interpretation, I got to watch a Deaf fan politely inform the interpreter that she didn't need to finger-spell "enshittification," because it had already been given an ASL sign by the US Deaf community:

https://maximumfun.org/episodes/go-fact-yourself/ep-158-aida-rodriguez-cory-doctorow/

I gave a speech about enshittification in Berlin and published the transcript:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle/#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel

Which prompted the rock-ribbed Financial Times to get in touch with me and publish the speech – again, nearly verbatim – as a whopping 6,400 word feature in their weekend magazine:

https://www.ft.com/content/6fb1602d-a08b-4a8c-bac0-047b7d64aba5

Though they could have had it for free (just as Wired had), they insisted on paying me (very well, as it happens!), as did De Zeit:

https://www.zeit.de/digital/internet/2024-03/plattformen-facebook-google-internet-cory-doctorow

This was the start of the rise of enshittification. The word is spreading farther than ever, in ways that I have nothing to do with, along with the critique I hung on it. In other words, the bit of string that tech policy wonks have been pushing on for a quarter of a century is actually starting to move, and it's actually accelerating.

Despite this (or more likely because of it), there's a growing chorus of "concerned" people who say they like the critique but fret that it is being held back because you can't use it "at church or when talking to K-12 students" (my favorite variant: "I couldn't say this at a NATO conference"). I leave it up to you whether you use the word with your K-12 students, NATO generals, or fellow parishoners (though I assure you that all three groups are conversant with the dirty little word at the root of my coinage). If you don't want to use "enshittification," you can coin your own word – or just use one of the dozens of words that failed to gain public attention over the past 25 years (might I suggest "platform decay?").

What's so funny about all this pearl-clutching is that it comes from people who universally profess to have the intestinal fortitude to hear the word "enshittification" without experiencing psychological trauma, but worry that other people might not be so strong-minded. They continue to say this even as the most conservative officials in the most staid of exalted forums use the word without a hint of embarrassment, much less apology:

https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/chairman-of-irish-social-media-regulator-says-europe-should-not-be-seduced-by-mario-draghis-claims/a526530600.html

I mean, I'm giving a speech on enshittification next month at a conference where I'm opening for the Secretary General of the United Nations:

https://icanewdelhi2024.coop/welcome/pages/Programme

After spending half my life trying to get stuff like this into the discourse, I've developed some hard-won, informed views on how ideas succeed:

First: the minor obscenity is a feature, not a bug. The marriage of something long and serious to something short and funny is a happy one that makes both the word and the ideas better off than they'd be on their own. As Lenny Bruce wrote in his canonical work in the subject, the aptly named How to Talk Dirty and Influence People:

I want to help you if you have a dirty-word problem. There are none, and I'll spell it out logically to you.

Here is a toilet. Specifically-that's all we're concerned with, specifics-if I can tell you a dirty toilet joke, we must have a dirty toilet. That's what we're all talking about, a toilet. If we take this toilet and boil it and it's clean, I can never tell you specifically a dirty toilet joke about this toilet. I can tell you a dirty toilet joke in the Milner Hotel, or something like that, but this toilet is a clean toilet now. Obscenity is a human manifestation. This toilet has no central nervous system, no level of consciousness. It is not aware; it is a dumb toilet; it cannot be obscene; it's impossible. If it could be obscene, it could be cranky, it could be a Communist toilet, a traitorous toilet. It can do none of these things. This is a dirty toilet here.

Nobody can offend you by telling a dirty toilet story. They can offend you because it's trite; you've heard it many, many times.

https://www.dacapopress.com/titles/lenny-bruce/how-to-talk-dirty-and-influence-people/9780306825309/

Second: the fact that a neologism is sometimes decoupled from its theoretical underpinnings and is used colloquially is a feature, not a bug. Many people apply the term "enshittification" very loosely indeed, to mean "something that is bad," without bothering to learn – or apply – the theoretical framework. This is good. This is what it means for a term to enter the lexicon: it takes on a life of its own. If 10,000,000 people use "enshittification" loosely and inspire 10% of their number to look up the longer, more theoretical work I've done on it, that is one million normies who have been sucked into a discourse that used to live exclusively in the world of the most wonkish and obscure practitioners. The only way to maintain a precise, theoretically grounded use of a term is to confine its usage to a small group of largely irrelevant insiders. Policing the use of "enshittification" is worse than a self-limiting move – it would be a self-inflicted wound. As I said in that Berlin speech:

Enshittification names the problem and proposes a solution. It's not just a way to say 'things are getting worse' (though of course, it's fine with me if you want to use it that way. It's an English word. We don't have der Rat für englische Rechtschreibung. English is a free for all. Go nuts, meine Kerle).

Finally: "coinage" is both more – and less – than thinking of the word. After the American Dialect Society gave honors to "enshittification," a few people slid into my mentions with citations to "enshittification" that preceded my usage. I find this completely unsurprising, because English is such a slippery and playful tongue, because English speakers love to swear, and because infixing is such a fun way to swear (e.g. "unfuckingbelievable"). But of course, I hadn't encountered any of those other usages before I came up with the word independently, nor had any of those other usages spread appreciably beyond the speaker (it appears that each of the handful of predecessors to my usage represents an act of independent coinage).

If "coinage" was just a matter of thinking up the word, you could write a small python script that infixed the word "shit" into every syllable of every word in the OED, publish the resulting text file, and declare priority over all subsequent inventive swearers.

On the one hand, coinage takes place when the coiner a) independently invents a word; and b) creates the context for that word that causes it to escape from the coiner's immediate milieu and into the wider world.

But on the other hand – and far more importantly – the fact that a successful coinage requires popular uptake by people unknown to the coiner means that the coiner only ever plays a small role in the coinage. Yes, there would be no popularization without the coinage – but there would also be no coinage without the popularization. Words belong to groups of speakers, not individuals. Language is a cultural phenomenon, not an individual one.

Which is rather the point, isn't it? After a quarter of a century of being part of a community that fought tirelessly to get a serious and widespread consideration of tech policy underway, we're closer than ever, thanks, in part, to "enshittification." If someone else independently used that word before me, if some people use the word loosely, if the word makes some people uncomfortable, that's fine, provided that the word is doing what I want it to do, what I've devoted my life to doing.

The point of coining words isn't the pilkunnussija's obsession with precise usage, nor the petty glory of being known as a coiner, nor ensuring that NATO generals' virgin ears are protected from the word "shit" – a word that, incidentally, is also the root of "science":

https://www.arrantpedantry.com/2019/01/24/science-and-shit/

Isn't language fun?

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/14/pearl-clutching/#this-toilet-has-no-central-nervous-system