The smartphone and its apps were supposed to make our lives easier, but they make them harder. This is by design and part of the "Dead Internet."
When Walmart introduced its "app" it was pretty cool. You could create a shopping list, go to the store, and use the store map feature to find the products you wanted in the store. The app would also tell you whether the item was in stock and how many were left in inventory. This was the same data Walmart "associates" had access to, with their little scanner devices that they are constantly leaving in the restroom or on a random shelf somewhere.
It was great. You could go to Walmart, buy what you wanted very quickly, and leave. And we can't have that, can we?
So, over time, the "app" morphed into one big online ad. The "shop in store" feature became harder and harder to find until you could not find it at all. Or if you did get to that part of the "app" it would constantly go back to online ordering, or ship-to-store, or store pickup. For some reason, Walmart would rather we order through our phones and then sit in our cars like friggin' Marie Antoinette, while servants load our groceries in the back. This is saving Walmart money?
No, it isn't. But it is making them money. You see, Walmart doesn't make money from me - I am a loss-leader half the time, buying store-brand "woven wheat" crackers for $1.99 a box instead of Nabisco-branded Triscuits (the electric biscuit) for $4.99 a box. They want shoppers to shop - to wander around the aisles and snatch at whatever colorful and fun thing seems appealing. They really hope you shop with hungry and fussy children or that you have low blood sugar yourself.
Lately, the gag is to get you to join "Walmart Plus" - a membership club like Sam's club or Amazon Prime. And the "App" prompts you to do this and it is very easy to hit "accept" by accident and find your credit card charged for the membership. And just when you think it is safe, the pop-up asking you to join shows up again. For this reason, I uninstalled the Walmart app from my phone. It no longer is of any use to me, as I am not interested in "shopping" on my phone or having people stuff groceries in the back of my car. And of course, I am in the minority on this - at least for the time being.
The same could be said to be true for most "apps" - they are worthless from the consumer point of view, but valuable to the app owner. Every website wants you to install their "app" so they can track your movements online, tell advertisers what you looked at, and so forth and so on. Oh, and of course, the "app" is a neat work-around over ad-blockers, which work only with browsers.
All of this is part-and-parcel of what some are calling the "Dead Internet" - the slow decline in quality of online content while at the same time it is smothered in ads and crass commercialism. It sounds alarmist at first, until you realize there is much precedent. The original dial-up Internet with is "usegroup" discussion groups (in ASCII text) was an online free-for-all. That is, until the SPAMMERs took over. One day you are having a nice discussion on alt-fans-startreck and the next day, there are literally thousands of ads about "Russian women want to meet YOU!" or "Win big at the online casino!" or other obvious scambait. This effectively shut down these discussion groups, which transitioned to website-based discussion groups, sponsored by advertisers.
The same happened to television. You watch old shows from the 1950s and 1960s and the show time of a 30-minute sitcom was at least 22 minutes. By the 1980s, these reruns were edited and chopped and sped up so the ratio of ads to content was 1:1. 15 minutes of ads for every 15 minutes of show. It sucked and people stopped watching - particularly when streaming became a thing. But you already know what happened to (and is happening) to streaming. Once again, they boil us like frogs.
I suppose you could say this in inevitable - part and parcel of human nature. We endure frog-boiling because of the way our brains are wired. "It's not so bad once you're up! Look at the view!" as one of the Monty Python gang once quipped while being crucified in Life of Brian. Eventually, human beings enshitify everything they touch.
Some argue that government intervention is the answer. Public Broadcasting! The BBC! CBC! Neutral parties who have no need for commercialization. But of course, the powers that run commercial media will have none of that. PBS now has "sponsorship" advertisements, and even though their share of the Federal budget is infinitesimal, the GOP regularly rails against it and calls for defunding it - not to save money, but to squelch its influence on media in America. And yes, the same conservative voices have called for the defunding of the BBC in the UK and CBC in Canada - again, not to save money, but to bolster their own, private networks.
Market mavens would argue that from the Economist's point of view, the fact that people tolerate this dreck is proof the system works. After all, Walmart would go out of business if people stopped shopping there. Lame-ass "news" sites would fold if people stopped clicking on them. And to some extent, this is true - but belied by the legions of people who complain about how crappy Twitter has become - while Tweeting their grievances on that very site. It is akin to young people bitching about Ticketmaster charging them a $50 access fee to buy tickets to Battle of the Rap Bands. They still buy the tickets and go. It is only when they can't sell out the arena that stars will pull back on pricing, or cancel a show claiming a terror threat or sore throat.
With Walmart, the problem is acute. There is no "better, lower-priced" alternative that is available in all 50 States. I know some people who refuse to shop at Walmart for political reasons, but shop at Publix instead, whose major shareholder was behind the January 6 insurrection or some such. Same shit, different day, but with higher prices. I have another friend who refuses to camp at an Army Corps park because they "don't believe in dams" which I cannot parse. Are they saying if they don't see them they won't exist? Or by paying $11 a night to stay there, they somehow are enabling the dam to exist - a dam built in 1939? I just don't "get" people sometimes.
Of course the biggest example of "Dead Internet" is how Google went, overnight, from the world's greatest search engine and database, to a shitty, AI-drive ad platform. No matter what I am searching for, Google assumes I want to buy something. But maybe this is just an indicia of an overall trend. Today we are all selling ourselves, as "influencers" or OnlyFans stars. Everyone has a side-gig or "hustle' it seems, and it seems so terribly boring and stupid, to me at least.
But I "get" enshittification. It is the tendency of humanity to drag everything to the lowest possible level. Maybe it is a law of nature, like Boyle's law about gas expanding to fill a vessel, or how water seeks its lowest level. Maybe this is inevitable - unless we unplug entirely.
