Douglas Adams wrote, "Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
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Douglas Adams wrote, "Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that's invented between when you’re 15 and 35 is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're 35 is against the natural order of things."
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/11/lapsarianism/#nostalgia-is-a-toxic-impulse
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/11/lapsarianism/#nostalgia-is-a-toxic-impulse
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I think about this quote whenever I get angry at the technology around me. When I rail against the Great Enshittening, am I simply committing the sin of nostalgia ("Nostalgia is a toxic impulse" -J. Hodgman)? I am, after all, *old*.
I've written before how conservatives' yearning for "simpler times" is really just a wish to be a child again.
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I think about this quote whenever I get angry at the technology around me. When I rail against the Great Enshittening, am I simply committing the sin of nostalgia ("Nostalgia is a toxic impulse" -J. Hodgman)? I am, after all, *old*.
I've written before how conservatives' yearning for "simpler times" is really just a wish to be a child again.
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The reason times seemed simpler during your childhood is *that you were a child*, and if your parents did their job, they shielded you from a lot of the complexity of *their* adulthood so you could enjoy *your* childhood:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/24/hermit-kingdom/#simpler-times
That's where the "National Customer Rage Survey" comes in. It's been surveying a panel of 1,000 representative consumers every three years for a decade, continuing a research project that started in 1976.
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The reason times seemed simpler during your childhood is *that you were a child*, and if your parents did their job, they shielded you from a lot of the complexity of *their* adulthood so you could enjoy *your* childhood:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/24/hermit-kingdom/#simpler-times
That's where the "National Customer Rage Survey" comes in. It's been surveying a panel of 1,000 representative consumers every three years for a decade, continuing a research project that started in 1976.
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The survey measures respondents' attitudes towards the businesses they deal with, and as of 2025, it's fair to say, customers are *pissed*:
https://customercaremc.com/2025-national-customer-rage-study/
We're experiencing more problems with the products and services we use. Those problems are more severe, they make us angrier, and they produce lingering stress. More and more, we are seeking revenge on the businesses that piss us off.
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The survey measures respondents' attitudes towards the businesses they deal with, and as of 2025, it's fair to say, customers are *pissed*:
https://customercaremc.com/2025-national-customer-rage-study/
We're experiencing more problems with the products and services we use. Those problems are more severe, they make us angrier, and they produce lingering stress. More and more, we are seeking revenge on the businesses that piss us off.
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So it's not just me, an old man yelling at the cloud. The world is getting *shittier*.
The latest Customer Rage Survey inspired *The Guardian*'s Heather Timmons to launch a new investigative series looking at how *fucked up* everything is. Her inaugural installment is very good, and it's drawn a massive reader response:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jun/04/us-consumer-rage-prices-economy
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So it's not just me, an old man yelling at the cloud. The world is getting *shittier*.
The latest Customer Rage Survey inspired *The Guardian*'s Heather Timmons to launch a new investigative series looking at how *fucked up* everything is. Her inaugural installment is very good, and it's drawn a massive reader response:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jun/04/us-consumer-rage-prices-economy
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I spoke with Timmons this week about the series. She told me she's been deluged with emails from readers who feel that the world is *different* now - and many of them cite my work on enshittification. Timmons wanted to know what advice I had for her readers. I told her that I don't think you can solve this as a consumer, because this isn't a *market* problem, it's a *political* problem, and shopping isn't politics:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/21/purity-culture/#stop-fucking-that-chicken
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I spoke with Timmons this week about the series. She told me she's been deluged with emails from readers who feel that the world is *different* now - and many of them cite my work on enshittification. Timmons wanted to know what advice I had for her readers. I told her that I don't think you can solve this as a consumer, because this isn't a *market* problem, it's a *political* problem, and shopping isn't politics:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/21/purity-culture/#stop-fucking-that-chicken
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Later, Timmons forwarded one of those emails to me. It gave an eloquent and evocative account of just how rancid the vibe is these days. The writer said that when they and their spouse encounter this rot, they cite Stephen King's *Dark Tower* novels, quoting the oft-repeated phrase from that series: "The world has moved on."
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Later, Timmons forwarded one of those emails to me. It gave an eloquent and evocative account of just how rancid the vibe is these days. The writer said that when they and their spouse encounter this rot, they cite Stephen King's *Dark Tower* novels, quoting the oft-repeated phrase from that series: "The world has moved on."
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At this point, I should warn you that the following contains some *Dark Tower* spoilers, so if you're planning to read a decades-old (but very good) dystopian western/science fiction crossover series, and if spoilers bug you, this might not be the essay for you.
Spoiler alert!
Still with me? OK, then.
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At this point, I should warn you that the following contains some *Dark Tower* spoilers, so if you're planning to read a decades-old (but very good) dystopian western/science fiction crossover series, and if spoilers bug you, this might not be the essay for you.
Spoiler alert!
Still with me? OK, then.
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In the *Dark Tower* novels, we crisscross a fallen world in which decay is all around us. The buildings are rotten, the machines have stopped working and no one knows how to fix them, babies and livestock alike are frequently born with deadly congenital defects. Much of the world has fallen into wasteland, cracked and barren.
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In the *Dark Tower* novels, we crisscross a fallen world in which decay is all around us. The buildings are rotten, the machines have stopped working and no one knows how to fix them, babies and livestock alike are frequently born with deadly congenital defects. Much of the world has fallen into wasteland, cracked and barren.
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An army of wreckers, led by the demagogue John Farson (who styles himself "The Good Man") are slowly but surely conquering the land, laying waste to those few remaining outposts of civilization and conscripting the young men in the conquered lands to march on their neighbors.
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An army of wreckers, led by the demagogue John Farson (who styles himself "The Good Man") are slowly but surely conquering the land, laying waste to those few remaining outposts of civilization and conscripting the young men in the conquered lands to march on their neighbors.
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It wasn't always this way. There was a time when the world was defined by hope and virtue and light, when the machines were fixed and the crops were harvested. Life wasn't golden - there were still squabbles and sorrows and even wars - but life was *good*.
And then the world moved on.
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It wasn't always this way. There was a time when the world was defined by hope and virtue and light, when the machines were fixed and the crops were harvested. Life wasn't golden - there were still squabbles and sorrows and even wars - but life was *good*.
And then the world moved on.
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For reasons that no one truly understands, the normal push/pull of decay and renewal turned into a one-way, irreversible process in which everything that crumbled or snapped or burned up couldn't be repaired or replaced or recovered. Our mysterious ability to beat back the Second Law of Thermodynamics - an absurdity we probably should have always treated as an aberration - has collapsed. The world has moved on.
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For reasons that no one truly understands, the normal push/pull of decay and renewal turned into a one-way, irreversible process in which everything that crumbled or snapped or burned up couldn't be repaired or replaced or recovered. Our mysterious ability to beat back the Second Law of Thermodynamics - an absurdity we probably should have always treated as an aberration - has collapsed. The world has moved on.
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The *Dark Tower* series is a long, long, *long* Bildungsroman, with many detours through the life-stories of the characters in the ensemble cast, as well as the biographies of many of the figures they meet along the road. It's mostly an adventure novel, as road-trip tales tend to be, but those character studies and the lore that they surface - from our world and theirs - creates an overwhelming, many-layered, richly textured sense of loss and worse, of *despair*.
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The *Dark Tower* series is a long, long, *long* Bildungsroman, with many detours through the life-stories of the characters in the ensemble cast, as well as the biographies of many of the figures they meet along the road. It's mostly an adventure novel, as road-trip tales tend to be, but those character studies and the lore that they surface - from our world and theirs - creates an overwhelming, many-layered, richly textured sense of loss and worse, of *despair*.
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For the world has moved on, and despite the love and care and bravery of many of the people in that world, the world cannot be redeemed. Each terrible day of those people's lives is the *best* day of the rest of their lives. From here on in, it only gets worse.
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For the world has moved on, and despite the love and care and bravery of many of the people in that world, the world cannot be redeemed. Each terrible day of those people's lives is the *best* day of the rest of their lives. From here on in, it only gets worse.
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When Timmons' reader and their spouse greet every fresh depredation in modern life - hours on the phone with customer service to resolve a billing error that the company repeats every month, say - with "the world has moved on," they are invoking something *heavy*. This isn't just a rancid vibe, it's the *fucking end-times*.
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When Timmons' reader and their spouse greet every fresh depredation in modern life - hours on the phone with customer service to resolve a billing error that the company repeats every month, say - with "the world has moved on," they are invoking something *heavy*. This isn't just a rancid vibe, it's the *fucking end-times*.
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For all that the *Dark Tower* novels are a series of cracking adventures and thoughtful character studies, they are also a *mystery*. Over and over again, we are made to ask ourselves, *why* has the world moved on? Was it John Farson and his army? Was it the Man in Black, the evil wizard whom the book's protagonist has pursued across time and space? Was it the Crimson King, the evil force whom the Man in Black serves?
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For all that the *Dark Tower* novels are a series of cracking adventures and thoughtful character studies, they are also a *mystery*. Over and over again, we are made to ask ourselves, *why* has the world moved on? Was it John Farson and his army? Was it the Man in Black, the evil wizard whom the book's protagonist has pursued across time and space? Was it the Crimson King, the evil force whom the Man in Black serves?
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Well, yes - and no.
Midway through the novels, we learn that the Crimson King and his evil minions have laid siege to "the beams," vast ley-lines that span the universe and provide the force that pushes away entropy, creating breathing room where repair and care can live. "All things serve the beams," we're told. The beams are the organizing force of the universe, the answer to the riddle of how such pitiful things as we could have fought back remorseless entropy for so long.
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Well, yes - and no.
Midway through the novels, we learn that the Crimson King and his evil minions have laid siege to "the beams," vast ley-lines that span the universe and provide the force that pushes away entropy, creating breathing room where repair and care can live. "All things serve the beams," we're told. The beams are the organizing force of the universe, the answer to the riddle of how such pitiful things as we could have fought back remorseless entropy for so long.
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By attacking the beams, the villains of the series have all but snuffed out that force, and so *the world has moved on.*
When I read that email and the invocation of the *Dark Tower*, I was immediately struck by how apt this comparison is. Because, as I've written many times, there were *always* enshittifiers who would have plundered your data and money and treated you with naked contempt:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/04/object-permanence/#picks-and-shovels
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By attacking the beams, the villains of the series have all but snuffed out that force, and so *the world has moved on.*
When I read that email and the invocation of the *Dark Tower*, I was immediately struck by how apt this comparison is. Because, as I've written many times, there were *always* enshittifiers who would have plundered your data and money and treated you with naked contempt:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/04/object-permanence/#picks-and-shovels
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There were always enshittifiers, but those enshittifiers faced external forces that checked their wreckers' urge. They were held in check by competition, and regulation, and workers' sense of fairness and duty, and by the threat of new products and services that might pop up to correct the defects they deliberately introduced into their products by enshittifying them.
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There were always enshittifiers, but those enshittifiers faced external forces that checked their wreckers' urge. They were held in check by competition, and regulation, and workers' sense of fairness and duty, and by the threat of new products and services that might pop up to correct the defects they deliberately introduced into their products by enshittifying them.
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And the foundation - the Dark Tower upon which all the beams converged- was antitrust enforcement, grounded in the idea that we could not afford to let any company - not a "good" company, nor a "bad" company - get so large that it could no longer be regulated, lest its executives become "autocrats of trade":
https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/20/we-should-not-endure-a-king/
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