Why Everything Seems Worse

Enshittification Isn’t Just in Tech Anymore—It’s Everywhere

I usually avoid newspaper video essays. They’re often all style, without much substance. But a recent Wall Street Journal video piece on the shrinking hotel room caught my attention, and for good reason: it perfectly captures how the hospitality industry has quietly, systematically degraded the guest experience.

Irons and ironing boards? Gone. Desks and chairs? Replaced by awkward ledges. Closets? Reduced to open hangers on the wall. Even minibars and bathtubs—once basic features—have been eliminated in many so-called “modern” hotel rooms. And don’t get me started on frosted-glass bathroom windows, my personal design pet peeve.

It’s all part of a broader shift: smaller rooms, fewer amenities, and a more claustrophobic experience dressed up in the language of minimalism.

The Degradation of the Hotel Experience

This isn’t just about cost-cutting. It’s enshittification—a term coined by writer Cory Doctorow to describe how platforms and services get worse over time as companies wring more value out of users while giving them less.

First, they attract customers with quality and convenience. Then they start taking things away, slowly enough that most people don't notice—or don’t feel empowered to complain. And oddly enough, guest satisfaction scores haven't collapsed.

Hotel chains keep cutting, and many customers just adjust. But step back, and the pattern becomes clear: what used to be standard is now a premium, and what once felt welcoming now feels transactional. It's a race to the bottom, disguised as smart design.

Welcome to the Age of Less

Take the increasingly common example of hotel bathrooms with no bathtub, no sink inside the room, and a sliding door that never quite seals shut. Add to that the frosted or glazed glass wall separating bathroom from bedroom—an architectural feature that offers no real privacy.

On the surface, this might seem like a stylistic decision, an embrace of sleek minimalism for the modern traveler. Or it might be framed as a response to changing consumer habits—“no one takes baths anymore,” designers insist.

But that’s not what’s really going on.

What we’re seeing isn’t innovation—it’s spatial austerity. These changes are primarily about size-cutting: shrinking square footage to reduce construction and cleaning costs, while preserving the illusion of space and comfort.

Bathtubs take up room. Swinging doors require clearance. Opaque walls make a small space feel smaller. Glazed windows and sliding doors aren’t about beauty or preference; they’re hacks—tricks to offset the claustrophobia that comes from designing rooms that are simply too small for the functions they once supported.

By removing barriers (like real doors) and fixtures (like tubs and sinks), architects simulate openness in a footprint that’s been quietly reduced. And because this shift is marketed as “modern,” many guests don’t immediately register it as a downgrade. But it is one. It’s a visual illusion wrapped in aesthetic language—a way of making shrinkage look intentional, even desirable.

The hotel bathroom becomes the perfect metaphor for enshittification: it still looks like what you expect, but it functions with far less comfort, privacy, and substance. You’re paying the same—or more—for less. And you’re being asked to feel good about it.

When Cheaper is Better

What’s especially striking is that the most basic budget motels—those far from the boutique chains and luxury brands—often offer more amenities than their higher-priced counterparts. For a fraction of the cost, you’re likely to get a bigger room, a functional desk, a microwave and mini-fridge, free parking, free breakfast, free internet, and a coffee maker with actual coffee.

Some even still provide hair dryers, irons, and bathtubs—items that used to be standard across the industry but are now treated as indulgences in many upscale properties.

This inversion of value makes clear just how performative much of modern hotel “design” really is. Prestige chains charge more while delivering less, cloaking austerity in the language of efficiency, sustainability, or style. Budget motels, by contrast, have no illusion to maintain. They compete by offering what travelers actually need—and they’re proof that the erosion of amenities in pricier hotels isn’t inevitable. It’s a business strategy. One that banks on branding, habit, and the slow normalization of decline.

How Enshittification Became a Business Model

What’s happening in the hotel industry is just one expression of a much broader pattern—as the economist Paul Krugman explains on Substack. Originally used to describe the decline of digital platforms like Facebook, Amazon, and Uber, enshittification follows a predictable logic: companies start out by offering real value to users to attract a large base, then gradually strip away that value to maximize profit—first squeezing users, then suppliers, until what’s left is a hollowed-out experience wrapped in familiar branding.

It’s not a glitch in the system; it is the system. And as Krugman points out, it’s not confined to tech anymore. It’s a business strategy rooted in network effects and market dominance—one that’s now spreading across industries that once positioned themselves as public-serving or culture-shaping.

Beyond Hotels: A Widening Pattern

We see the same logic of enshittification playing out across a wide range of cultural and intellectual institutions—sectors that once prided themselves on depth, independence, and public value but are now increasingly shaped by market pressures, managerial ideology, and short-term metrics of success.

In journalism, local newsrooms have been gutted, investigative reporting budgets slashed, and thousands of experienced journalists laid off. What fills the vacuum? A flood of ad-chasing headlines, celebrity gossip, “content” designed to juice clicks, and algorithmically driven outrage. Paywalls have gone up even as the substance behind them diminishes, while tech platforms like Facebook and Google siphon off ad revenue and visibility.

The goal is no longer to inform the public or hold power to account but to monetize attention. Even respected outlets increasingly rely on listicles, wire stories, and repackaged social media trends—streamlining the product while stripping it of civic depth.

In trade publishing, consolidation has left most authors beholden to a handful of giant conglomerates. Advances have shrunk dramatically for all but the biggest names, editorial support has been outsourced or eliminated, and authors are now expected to be full-time marketers—managing their own platforms, building personal brands, and selling their work through constant self-promotion.

Quality manuscripts often languish because they don’t meet the market’s trend-driven demands. Publishing still talks about nurturing voices, but the economics have hollowed out that ideal.

The fine arts, too, have been reshaped by enshittification. Museums and major cultural institutions increasingly depend on mega-donors and corporate sponsorships, which inevitably shape programming. Exhibit calendars now prioritize blockbuster shows that drive ticket sales and social media buzz—immersive van Gogh experiences, Instagram-friendly installations—over challenging or historically significant work. Public funding has declined, and artists without wealthy patrons or elite MFA credentials struggle to break through.

What once aspired to public enrichment now risks becoming spectacle for sale.

How Branding Masks Decline

Higher education offers one of the clearest and most consequential examples of enshittification. Universities have increasingly adopted the logic of the market—competing not on intellectual rigor or educational impact but on branding, amenities, and customer satisfaction. Administrative bloat has exploded, tenured faculty positions have been replaced by precarious adjunct roles, and the traditional academic mission has been diluted by managerialism and metrics.

But the shift isn’t only structural—it’s philosophical.

Institutions now sell "choice" as the defining value of the college experience. Students are promised limitless options: flexible course formats, online learning pathways, a dizzying array of newly minted majors and interdisciplinary programs—many launched without meaningful oversight or outcome assessment.

Master’s degrees have expanded rapidly, often as revenue-generating products rather than thoughtfully constructed educational experiences. Some offer little more than rebranded undergraduate content at a much higher cost.

Meanwhile, the language of “accommodation” and “accessibility”—crucial in principle—has in practice often become a catchall for convenience-driven customization. Courses are designed for asynchronous delivery, attendance expectations are lowered, and deadlines are negotiable. The classroom becomes less a place of shared inquiry and more a service environment, tailored to fit student preferences rather than challenge them.

Education is increasingly framed as something that should never be uncomfortable, demanding, or disorienting—which is precisely what real learning often is.

The result is a university system that still looks like the traditional academy—with libraries, lecture halls, mission statements, and mottos about truth and service—but that operates more like a retail platform. Students are treated as customers, faculty as service providers, and learning as a deliverable. Outcomes are measured not in critical thinking or civic responsibility, but in satisfaction surveys, completion rates, and LinkedIn-ready credentials.

Institutions that once defined themselves by what they stood for—intellectual depth, public engagement, scholarly seriousness—now define themselves by what they offer: convenience, options, and amenities.

Just like a hotel that removes the desk, the closet, and the bathtub but calls the room an upgrade, higher education continues to strip away its core under the banner of modernization. It still claims to enrich lives and serve the public good, but the dominant logic has shifted: not to cultivate minds, but to maximize yield.

It is, in short, a textbook case of enshittification—professionalized, rationalized, and disguised as progress.

This Is Not a Glitch

In every case, the same pattern unfolds: meaningful, mission-driven work is gradually replaced by thinner, cheaper, and more profitable substitutes. Institutions still trade on the authority of their past—just as a bare-bones hotel still advertises itself as a luxury experience—but the core has been hollowed out. The language remains high-minded, but the priorities have shifted. The goal is no longer to serve, inform, challenge, or inspire—but to extract value while giving back as little as possible.

This isn’t decline by accident—it’s a deliberate business strategy. And like shrinking hotel rooms that mask austerity with minimalist design, the enshittification of our cultural institutions often disguises itself as progress. But the result is the same: a steady erosion of quality, trust, and meaning.