Today's threads (a thread)
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Wednesday's threads: The cost of doing business; and more!
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116288728549787261
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My latest novel is "Picks and Shovels," a historical technothriller set in the Weird Era of the PC, about Ponzi schemes, techbros, and the dawn of enshittification:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels
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My latest nonfiction book is the internationally bestselling "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," from MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
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My latest novel is "Picks and Shovels," a historical technothriller set in the Weird Era of the PC, about Ponzi schemes, techbros, and the dawn of enshittification:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels
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My latest nonfiction book is the internationally bestselling "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," from MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
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My ebooks and audiobooks (from FSGxMCD, Tor Books, Head of Zeus, McSweeneys, Beacon, Verso and others) are for sale all over the net, but I sell 'em too, and when you buy 'em from me, I earn twice as much and you get books with no DRM and no license "agreements."
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My ebooks and audiobooks (from FSGxMCD, Tor Books, Head of Zeus, McSweeneys, Beacon, Verso and others) are for sale all over the net, but I sell 'em too, and when you buy 'em from me, I earn twice as much and you get books with no DRM and no license "agreements."
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Upcoming appearances:
* #Montreal: Bronfman Lecture (McGill), Apr 10
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/artificial-intelligence-the-ultimate-disrupter-tickets-1982706623885* #Montreal: Drawn and Quarterly, Apr 10
https://mtl.drawnandquarterly.com/events/4863920260410* #London: Resisting Big Tech Empires (LSBU), Apr 25
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/globaljusticenow/2042691* #NYC: Enshittification at Commonweal Ventures, Apr 29
https://luma.com/ssgfvqz821/
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Recent appearances:
* Do you feel screwed over by big tech? (Ontario Today)
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-45-ontario-today/clip/16203024-do-feel-screwed-big-tech* Launch for Cindy's Cohn's "Privacy's Defender" (City Lights)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuVCm2PUalU* Chicken Mating Harnesses (This Week in Tech)
https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/1074* The Virtual Jewel Box (U Utah)
https://tanner.utah.edu/podcast/enshittification-cory-doctorow-matthew-potolsky/* Tanner Humanities Lecture (U Utah)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6Yf1nSyekI23/
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Recent appearances:
* Do you feel screwed over by big tech? (Ontario Today)
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-45-ontario-today/clip/16203024-do-feel-screwed-big-tech* Launch for Cindy's Cohn's "Privacy's Defender" (City Lights)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuVCm2PUalU* Chicken Mating Harnesses (This Week in Tech)
https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/1074* The Virtual Jewel Box (U Utah)
https://tanner.utah.edu/podcast/enshittification-cory-doctorow-matthew-potolsky/* Tanner Humanities Lecture (U Utah)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6Yf1nSyekI23/
You can follow these posts as a daily blog at pluralistic.net: no ads, trackers, or data-collection!
Here's today's edition: https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/30/players-of-games/
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24/
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You can follow these posts as a daily blog at pluralistic.net: no ads, trackers, or data-collection!
Here's today's edition: https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/30/players-of-games/
--
If you prefer a newsletter, subscribe to the plura-list, which is ad-/tracker-free, and is utterly unadorned save a single daily emoji. Today's is "
". Suggestions solicited for future emojis!--
You can also get a fulltext RSS feed, licensed CC BY 4.0:
24/
I'm also on Bluesky. Read today's thread there at:
https://bsky.app/profile/did:web:pluralistic.net/post/3micaaszacs27
eof/
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Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Market participation is exhausting; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/30/players-of-games/
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@pluralistic The metabolic cost of participating in systems optimized for a different cognitive type is real and largely invisible. What exhausts most people energizes the architects of the game — which is also why the rules stay the way they are. The hagglers don’t experience the market as a burden. They built it to feel like home. Especially the financial architects in tech — they didn’t just learn to haggle. They refined what counts as the table.
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Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Market participation is exhausting; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/30/players-of-games/
1/
@pluralistic
This reminds me of another topic you wrote about recently: professional awe.One reason I wanted to a university professor is for job security: I didn't want to have to constantly worry about getting the next job. In other words, I didn't want to HAGGLE over my employment, and was willing to take low pay to get it. Yet increasingly, tenure is under attack in part because of the hagglers, who demand the right to renegotiate everyone's employment.
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@pluralistic
This reminds me of another topic you wrote about recently: professional awe.One reason I wanted to a university professor is for job security: I didn't want to have to constantly worry about getting the next job. In other words, I didn't want to HAGGLE over my employment, and was willing to take low pay to get it. Yet increasingly, tenure is under attack in part because of the hagglers, who demand the right to renegotiate everyone's employment.
@ThreeSigma @pluralistic I think you'll find it's because management want to keep cutting everyone's pay and conditions, get rid of tenure, and make as much money as possible. The coasters, those crusty tenured academics who sit there doing the same old same old, do noting to help the case against this.
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@pluralistic
This reminds me of another topic you wrote about recently: professional awe.One reason I wanted to a university professor is for job security: I didn't want to have to constantly worry about getting the next job. In other words, I didn't want to HAGGLE over my employment, and was willing to take low pay to get it. Yet increasingly, tenure is under attack in part because of the hagglers, who demand the right to renegotiate everyone's employment.
@ThreeSigma @pluralistic I guess it always will be (unless your profession can lock employment to only union members - but that's.a whole other mess for those both in and outside the union). Your employer and a potential employee can tailor a deal where both can find a better than average deal from it - that's a win for the university management, and fuck you because they really can, as long as someone is doing your job today, they're probably ok and you're... not their problem.
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@pluralistic
This reminds me of another topic you wrote about recently: professional awe.One reason I wanted to a university professor is for job security: I didn't want to have to constantly worry about getting the next job. In other words, I didn't want to HAGGLE over my employment, and was willing to take low pay to get it. Yet increasingly, tenure is under attack in part because of the hagglers, who demand the right to renegotiate everyone's employment.
@ThreeSigma
RIP Fobazi Ettarh, author of the article articulating vocational awe that Cory cites when referencing this idea.
https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/ -
@ThreeSigma @pluralistic I think you'll find it's because management want to keep cutting everyone's pay and conditions, get rid of tenure, and make as much money as possible. The coasters, those crusty tenured academics who sit there doing the same old same old, do noting to help the case against this.
@pluralistic @artemis
I was astounded by the attitude of many of my feckless colleagues that they deserved their positions and were not in any way the beneficiaries of fortune or circumstance. This easily led to “I got mine” and “I’m keeping my head down until this blows over”.Not everyone, but too many.
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@pluralistic @artemis
I was astounded by the attitude of many of my feckless colleagues that they deserved their positions and were not in any way the beneficiaries of fortune or circumstance. This easily led to “I got mine” and “I’m keeping my head down until this blows over”.Not everyone, but too many.
@ThreeSigma @pluralistic I know personally a faculty member who claims to 'negotiate his own worth' while benefitting substantially from union action to prevent unreasonable workload increases. Cannot see their own hypocracy. Meanwhile the institution benefits from the rest of us working above and beyond, hoping do demonstrate our value, on pitiful casual wages, locked out of professional development. Academia sucks.
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J jwcph@helvede.net shared this topic
