They’re right, except for one thing; once you know what to look for, these people are easy as hell to spot.
They’re drawn to power, in any form. They consolidate it. They build power systems around them. And they exploit it.
You can spot them because they’re the people who, somehow, the rules never apply to. There’s always an exception, a workaround, an excuse, a rationale, a condescending it’s more complicated than that, dear.
They’re the people who say the right things but never follow through. We’ll be fully transparent, followed by radio silence.
The ones who convince you to give them authority for a good cause. We should form a committee to establish some common principles, but it ends up being a committee of one, and the principles sufficiently vague to be twisted to work any way.
I think we have natural instincts for detecting these people, but we’re taught from an early age to suppress them. Never judge a book by its cover!Always give people the benefit of the doubt!Respect your elders!You just have trouble with authority!
We’ll never be free of these psychopaths until we learn to spot them, confront them, and prevent them from building and growing their power systems.
It’s my opinion that the modern web is massively enshittified, and was so long before that term came into play.
Too much focus on flashy (and often obstructive) presentation, constant reinvention of the wheel, and no regard for the actual information being delivered.
I mean, you mention “semantic markup” to your average web developer and they just stare at you blankly. They’re like the seagulls from Finding Nemo: DIV? DIV!DIV!
Useful information structures? Meaningful metadata? Consistent patterns? Forget about it.
HTML and JavaScript are part of the problem. They provide too much freedom and not nearly enough structure or guidance.
And even if you put all that aside, JavaScript is an abomination that is entirely unsuited to the purpose it’s being used for. Ask any JS developer. Or look at how many ridiculous frameworks have been slapped over the top of it in a vain attempt to address its inadequacies.
Or one of those homeless camps that are everywhere now.