The excre-mentalization of public life
The term “enshittification” was coined and popularized by tech journalist Casey Newton, to describe a predictable and frustrating lifecycle experienced by users of digital platforms and services. Initially, these platforms prioritize user experience, offering valuable, accessible, and often free services that rapidly attract large user bases. This the lock-in phase. It is focused on user-experience because at this stage, platforms are competing with many others. This means that they offer high quality services, often for free. At this stage, platforms may actually drive up huge losses, which are propped up by venture capitalists in an attempt to drive out competition. For the first nine years of its existence, Amazon made huge losses.
As soon as the user lock-in has been established, the second phase, that of monetization, sets in. As platforms grow and seek to maximize profits, their priorities shift dramatically. The focus shifts to extracting revenue—primarily through advertising, data harvesting, or paid features. This phase often introduces ads, subscription models, or algorithms designed to maximize user engagement (and thus profit), sometimes at the expense of user experience. This is also when the exit costs – the price to be paid for leaving the platform – are increased.
As soon as the major competitors have been neutralized, the secured lock-in allows for the erosion of quality, as the company now becomes too big to care. This is when user interests are sacrificed to increase monetization through intrusive advertising, algorithmic manipulation, data extraction, and paywalls. Whereas this leads to increased frustration and decreased trust, many users find themselves unable to exit the platform. This is the Extraction and Exploitation phase.
Newton’s analysis highlights how platforms like Facebook, Google, and Twitter undergo this transformation, turning from innovative spaces of connection and information into cluttered, exploitative environments that frustrate users and degrade trust. However, the user-experience is only one aspect of enshittification. As their business model shifted to phase 3, big tech companies also started to become major political forces. The so-called Tech Bros have major stakes in the enshittification of global politics. They are indeed the engineers of kakistocracy.
Initially, social media and search engines promised to democratize information and empower citizen engagement. However, as these platforms matured, their incentive structures warped political discourse. Driven by algorithms optimized for engagement and profit, they prioritized sensationalism, polarization, and misinformation over nuanced debate and truth. This environment rewards demagogues and amplifies the loudest, often least competent voices, undermining democratic norms. For example, Facebook enabled shady companies such as Cambridge Analytica to harvest the personal data of up to 87 million users without their consent, and used it to tilt the Brexit Referendum in the UK (2016) and the 2016 US presidential elections in favour of kakistocracy.
Social media platforms operating on click-bating and trolling, have established opinion bubbles and eco chambers that have enabled the commodification of attention. This provides the basis for incentivized disinformation campaigns, tribalism, and conspiracy theories, eroding public trust in institutions and expertise. Big tech’s dominance has also concentrated power in the hands of a few corporations that shape public discourse, often with opaque moderation policies and little accountability. These dynamics have facilitated the rise of authoritarian and incompetent political figures, exacerbating the decline of governance quality. Obviously kakistocratic comic book villains such as Trump, Netanyahu, Farage, Bolsonaro and Milei now dominate global politics.
In this context, kakistocracy emerges not just from political failures but as a symptom of a deeper systemic decay where platforms designed to connect and inform instead enable manipulation and degradation. Understanding this link is crucial to addressing the intertwined crises of technology, democracy, and governance. Thus, beyond tech, the concept of enshittification serves not just as a metaphor for but as an accurate description of broader systemic decline, where institutions or practices that once served public or communal good deteriorate under pressures of greed, mismanagement, or authoritarian control. In this sense, the term resonates deeply with critiques of political systems, media, and corporate governance. Understanding enshittification allows us to critically assess how power and profit motives undermine the original purposes of social, technological, and political structures, calling attention to the urgent need for accountability and reform.
Kakistocracy does not need arguments and it does not engage in public debate; it often only needs smear its excrement on the walls of public discourse to obtain the desired results. Two interconnected examples suffice here as proof: (1) the so-called Epstein files and (2) the genocide in Gaza.
Ad 1) For years, Donald Trump had denied to have had close ties with Jeffrey Epstein, despite ample evidence to the contrary. Video and photographic images of the two men enjoying each other’s company, public statements made by Trump, but also testimonies of several of Epstein’s victims all confirm that they were close friends and their friendship did involve an interest in women. Trump boasted about his back stage visits at teenage pageant competitions that he organized. Trump is also a close friend of Les Wexner. It is through Wexner that Epstein accumulated some part if not most of his wealth, such as his Manhattan Mansion.
Whereas Trump had frequently boasted about being transparent and releasing all kinds of secret documents, he has always been more cagy about releasing evidence related to the Epstein scandal. This erupted in July 2025 when both the FBI and the Department of Justice suddenly denied that there was a client list related to the sexual abuse of girls by Epstein and his associates, despite having claimed on several occasions, that these files exist. Since then, Trump’s personal lawyer and Deputy Attorney Genertal Todd Wallace Blanche had an eight hour meeting with Epstein’s partner in crime and conceited child-sex-trafficker – Ghislaine Maxwell – before she was moved to a low security facility. This has led to speculations that Maxwell is going to provide a character reference for Donal Trump by denying he was ever involved in sexual conduct with minors.
Whereas for many, the crucial question might still be whether it can be proven that Trump is guilty or innocent, the real story is that of kakistocracy. In a normal society, a close friendship between a public official and a convicted paedophile would be considered a terminal, career-ending scandal, especially if the public official had been found out as having lied about it. The fact that Trump’s lawyer visited a convicted paedophile sex trafficker, preceding an upgrade to her prison conditions, would normally have lead to an even bigger scandal. If it turns out that Maxwell will give a character reference in exchange for a presidential pardon or a sentence reduction, it will be merely a confirmation that Trump has indeed been involved in the sexual abuse of minors.
Only in a kakistocracy can a president be a paedophile. Whereas this may indeed be a little too extreme, even for the USA, it is undeniable that kakistocracies tend to embrace more problematic sexual practices, that include condoning violence against women and sexualizing underage girls. Kakistocrats love being adored by beautiful, young women which they use as trophies and evidence of their success and appeal. Women are often treated as objects or properties (Trump for example stated that Epstein had stolen girls from Mar-a-Lago), and their use is primarily decorative. The other uses of women are to produce babies and to be the means of degradation of male competitors. That is, so called alpha males seek to humiliate their male competitors by sexually denigrating the latter’s wives, girlfriends, sisters or daughters. Whereas outside of violent conflicts, this is primarily symbolic, it is alleged that in Gaza, for example, sexual humiliation is used as a weapon of war by members if the IDF. Whereas we can assume that this will always be the case with war, the remarkable aspect of this story is that already before the start of the recent genocide in Gaza, several prominent figures such as Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg (in 2015) justified sexual violence against Palestinian women as a permissible act of war.
Whereas Trump is clearly implicated in the Epstein/Maxwell saga, the Republican Party is still trying to pretend that there is no cover up. One of the means to do so is that of deflection. Their favoured method is that of smearing the opposition with accusations of things that they do themselves. Throwing your own excrement against the wall is a classical kakistocratic method of handling controversies.
What has slipped under the radar, however, is a specific controversy surrounding the former president Bill Clinton. Clinton – who used to have a sexual affair with a young intern called Monica Lewinsky – was allegedly blackmailed by the Israeli government, who are said to have had audio recordings of sexual telephone conversations between the president and the young woman. This was already reported by the Times of Israel in 2014 in connection with the attempted release of the Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard (who was released in 2015). In July 2025, Ryan Grim from Breaking Points revisited the allegations. Bill Clinton had allegedly told Lewinski about that their phone calls had been tapped. What is interested is that Kenneth Star, the special prosecutor investigating the Lewinski affair, was not at all interested in this aspect of Lewinsky’s testimony. This suggests either that the idea that Israel was tapping phones and spying on the US president was at that time considered less important than a president who had been lying to Congress, or – and this is becoming more relevant with the Epstein/Maxwell scandal – that this kind of knowledge had to be kept out of the public domain at all costs.
The fact that Israel had been spying on the USA, and the allegation that it had been attempting to blackmail Bill Clinton also indicate that Israel could be perceived as a threat to the integrity of the sovereignty of the USA. With the looming Epstein/Maxwell scandal – in which there are also strong allegations of the involvement of espionage and interests links to Israel – and the rapid erosion of public support for Israel in the USA, the return of the attempted blackmail of Bill Clinton is not to be taken lightly. Suddenly, what could long be dismissed as “baseless conspiracy theories”, are now quickly generating a much stronger foundation. There may be more at stake than merely “Trump” being implicated in sex with minors.
Should Trump be exposed and forced to resign, which is highly unlikely, the Israeli state will be very worried as he may also implicate them. Trump’s erratic behaviour (even for his standards) towards Israel does suggest that they have something on him, but he is only a useful asset to them, if this remains a secret. Thus, AIPAC are going to have to pressurize its assets in Congress in both parties to prevent this from happening. This provides a perfect explanation, why the Democrats are so incredibly ineffective as an opposition. Many of them are bought and paid for to ensure Israel continues to exist and right now this means that Trump needs to stay in power.
The enshittificatioin of the public sphere is exemplified by the way in which politicians and media treat the Epstein/Maxwell scandal as a voyeuristic spectacle of sexual debauchery. Many media outlets have used the opportunity to dig into witness statements and personal stories of victims, not as a means to provide them with a voice, but above all to entertain audience with accounts of depravity and abuse of power of Epstein himself. Also, the suspicious circumstances of his alleged suicide are subject to detailed speculations. What is missing, however, is a serious investigation into the circumstances of the many cover-ups that have taken place since the first allegations had been made. There are of course exceptions, but the fact that they are exceptions confirms the kakistocratic thesis.
Ad2) The genocide in Gaza is the second example of how kakistocracy thrives on the enshittification of the public sphere. It is, however, also related to the first. The allegations that Epstein was not just a sexual predator but also an asset of foreign – most likely Israeli – intelligence are not just mere speculative conspiracy theories; they can be traced by simply exercises in network analyses of who-knows-who and “follow-the-money”. It is certainly no coincidence that the trial of Sean Combs, who was acquitted of most of the charges, virtually vanished from the public domain after his lawyer denied rumours that Combs had sought a pardon from Trump.
Again, the shittification of the public sphere is in full flow as our collective attention is directed towards the sexualized debauchery and exploitation rather than, say, questions about so-called “honey traps” or extortion networks. Combs and Epstein had overlapping connections. This too, has remained virtually undiscussed.
At the same time as attention is directed to “sex scandals”, a genocide is taking place in Gaza, where nearly two million people have deliberately been out at risk of starvation by an illegal, occupying entity in the name of the ideology of Zionism that claims that the right of the State of Israel to exist automatically overrules the right of any other group of human beings to exist. I have already repeatedly stated that in the west, this issue of genocide has revealed a massive rift between the opinions of ordinary people, the vast majority of which oppose both the genocide and western complicity in the genocide, and the political and media elites, who by and large still aim to either deny, diminish or justify the genocide. Even the base of the most right-wing party in Germany, the AfD, has a (61%) majority opposing the genocide (albeit for a variety of reasons that do not all add up).
This continuation of this rift can only be explained by the shittification of the public sphere. Under Boris Johnson, the UK had already descended into a full blown kakistocracy, but only a few – myself included – predicted that it would simply continue under Keir Starmer. With the proscription of “Palestine Action” as a terrorist organization on the 5th of July 2025, Starmer’s government have exposed themselves as cynical, opportunistic and above all spineless kakistocrats. On Saturday 9. August, over 500 people – many of whom are elderly – involved in a peaceful demonstration against the genocide, had been arrested on terrorism charges. The fact that they have all been released, and the fact that for many this was the first time in their lives that they had been arrested, clearly proves that the British justice system does not actually believe that they pose a terrorist threat.
Keir Starmer and his ilk – as prime examples of the enshittification of institutional politics – should be tried and convicted for defiling democracy. Having won the last general elections with only a third of the overall vote, they did not really hold a very popular mandate to begin with, but they have chosen to abuse their power to defend a hostile, foreign entity, that has a proven record of interfering in British politics via smear campaigns and misinformation. The downfall of the previous leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, was orchestrated by Zionist entities within the Parliamentary Labour Party but also from outside of it. The BBC – as the mouthpiece of the wealthy few – also played a major role in the proliferation of smears, misinformation and false allegations.
The enshittification of the public sphere shows itself in the massive discrepancy between popular opinions on the genocide in Gaza and those of the media and political elites. The genocide in Gaza has exposed what we should never have forgotten: the wealthy few are waging a class war and they are ruthless. The laws which were supposed to protect human rights and human dignity are worth less than the papers they had been written on. International law, Human Rights, social security and so on were all offered to the working classes in western nations after the end of the Second World War to persuade them to remain loyal to nation states, despite the latter having betrayed them by sliding into corporatism.
Phase 1 of Enshittification is the offering of an attractive product – a liberal democratic nation state in which human rights and human dignity are guaranteed, within an international order that secures these rights for everyone – in a competitive market that also offered other products, such as international working class solidarity, anti-imperialism and even authoritarian communism. With the expansion of trade union rights, public health, public education, public entertainment (television, cinema, music) and social security, many members of the western working class could be persuaded to be “locked in” and even accept the abandonment of denazification.
Phase 2 of Enshittification is the monetization. This happened during the 1960s with advent of consumerism. “Free” television offered a lock in of viewers who had to watch commercials in order to continue viewing. It was never really free, because audiences were sold to advertisers. Entertainment meant exposure to a manipulation of needs, namely that one needs certain products to solve certain problems. As Marcuse described in One Dimensional Man, consumption created dependency, both material and mental. The alienation of labour continued as people were earning wages to be able to afford more goods that saved them time, but they had to keep working, to pay for new requirements (such as private modes of transportation). Ultimately, one works to be able to afford a vacation so one can recharge the batteries to return to work.
Phase 3 of Enshittification is the extraction and exploitation. By the time consumerism had irreversibly locked in the working classes, neoliberalism became possible, and started the great robbery of public services and goods, which were eroded and sold off to private entities, often at very low prices. Taxes were used to funnel money from the working class – via the state – to the private accounts of the wealthy few. Even though the state no longer offered a valuable product, the lock-in meant that the exit costs were extremely high. Moreover, there were no viable alternatives anymore. As Neoliberalism become exposed as a failure, its real “Daddy” – Corporatism returned to the scene and with it also a return to aggressive, radical ethno-nationalism, the militarized securitization of the public sphere and an increase presence of radicalized paramilitary forces that often iterate between legalized and illegalized organize crime.
Perhaps Casey Netwon should add a fourth phase to his Enshittification Thesis: Genocide. For those who are deemed to be without value or use – such as the Palestinians in Gaza, West Bank and East Jerusalem, or homeless people in Washington DC – there is no place anymore. The way in which western media and politicians have treated the Genocide in Gaza is cleary a kind of mental Enshittification in which we are lied to but the liars no longer do their best to hide it. Politicians supporting genocide simply scream louder and make more outrageous claims. That is, whereas genocide is a practice of the intentional and systemic murdering of groups of people because if their race, ethnicity, nationality or religion, there is a form of psychological warfare that intentionally murders a collective ability to state this publicly. The proscription of Palestine Action in the UK is an act of psychological genocide: it eradicates the unconditional existence of human rights and human dignity, which in turn are the foundations of democracy.
Both example show that there is a process of Excre-Mentalization of public life. On the one hand, we are constantly being distracted by shitty things generated for us by the endless stream of banalities. On the other hand, we are constantly being violated by dirty, old and racist men, whose erectile and cognitive dysfunctions need to be covered up constantly, and whose odious lies and deceptions no longer even pretend to be anything but crap.
Disaffected Sociology 
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