Lexical Compendium
Wait... what is this? Sometimes I come across a word, phrase, idiom, quote, reference, bit of slang, person of interest, etc that either I don't know or I find amusing, interesting, etc. This is a collection of those items so that I can refer back to them in emails, texts, etc.
Recent Entries:
- : defenestration
- : fridging
- : groyper
enshittification
Enshittification is the progressive decay of an online platform or service as it prioritizes profit extraction over user experience.
The term was originally coined by Cory Doctorow in 2023 in an essay titled The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok [1] in which he wrote:
Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two-sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.
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References:
- Wired: The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok Reference ID wired-the-enshittification-of-tiktok
- Wikipedia: Enshittification Reference ID wikipedia-enshittification
- The New Yorker: The Age of Enshittification Reference ID the-new-yorker-the-age-of-enshittification
- YouTube @TheAdamConover: The Ensh*ttification of Everything with Cory Doctorow Reference ID youtube-theadamconover-the-enshttification-of-ever
- Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It - Doctorow, Cory. New York: MCD / Macmillan, 2025. Reference ID enshittification-why-everything-suddenly-got-worse
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humanic
For a while now, I've been searching for a term that captures human-made creativity -- as opposed to something created by an LLM. Occasionally I see the word organic used in this context. [1] It works, but it feels a little off. Organic implies something that happens naturally, often without human involvement.
Here I'd like to proffer humanic: a word meaning pertaining to or originating from human agency or creativity, particularly in contrast to work produced by AI. An appropriate antonym in this context might be synthetic. So: humanic and synthetic. I like the symmetry.
The word humanic isn't actually new. Historically, it referred to the study of human nature.[2] But let's reclaim it to also denote cultural artifacts made by humans in a world where if feels like we're just moments away from being saturated with purely synthetic content. Maybe others will organically come upon this usage. I'll use this space to record any sightings.
The word humanic is not necessarily anti-AI, it is descriptive of origin, not ideology. We may need another word to convey sentiment and preference.
Example:
"Oh, I love the theater. It's so refreshing to see content that is entirely humanic."
Note: Anthropic might have also been a good choice, but this, ironically, is already the name of a popular LLM.[3]
Other contenders: anthrogenic, anthropogenic
Updates:
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References:
- Stat Significant: How Much AI Will Audiences Accept in Music and Movies? Reference ID stat-sig-ai
- Definition: Humanics Reference ID definition-humanics
- Wikipedia: Anthropic Reference ID wikipedia-anthropic
- YouTube: Thomas Flight - Why AI "Art" Feels So Wrong Reference ID youtube-thomasflight-whyaiart
- The Independent: The most downloaded country song in the US right now was made by AI Reference ID independent-breaking-rust
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quishing
Quishing is a portmanteau of QR and phishing. It is a form of phishing that uses QR codes to trick victims into visiting malicious websites.
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References:
- Cloudflare: What is quishing? Reference ID cloudflare-what-is-quishing
- USPIS: Quishing Reference ID uspis-quishing
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