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Inside: How twiddling enshittifies your brain; and more!

Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/28/twiddlehazard/

#Pluralistic

1/

A terrified, screaming man with wild hair wearing a greatcoat with his hand inserted beneath the lapel, covering his heart. He stands before a knob-festooned control desk and a background of hundreds of gridded knobs and dials. A grinning poop emoji peers over the control desk.

Image:
Stephen Drake (modified)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Analog_Test_Array_modular_synth_by_sduck409.jpg

CC BY 2.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

Rory D.
@rory@matcha.pub

@pluralistic@mamot.fr "But Google Search was so goddamned magic – before they cynically destroyed it [...] The collapse of Google into a giant pile of shit is like giving every web user a traumatic brain injury."

I sometimes wonder if the reason many people are so amazed by AI is because they forgot how drop-dead good Google search used to be. And it's only been a few years since it was well and truly enshittified.

@ferricoxide@evil.social

@rory@matcha.pub @pluralistic@mamot.fr

I feel like the first 15-20 years of my career were made possible by Usenet and then Google. Dunno if I'd be able to get to where I am now if I'd have started my career in the back half of the 2010s.

Frank Skornia
@fskornia@glammr.us

@ferricoxide@evil.social @pluralistic@mamot.fr @rory@matcha.pub Google in the short age before enshittification /and/ the rabid pursuit of SEO was so good.
As a librarian, there were reasons why we ran entire classes on getting people hooked on Google. And now there are reasons why we run entire classes on how to separate from Google.