This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Sometimes a term is so apt, it's meaning so clear and so relevant to our circumstances that it becomes more than just a useful buzzword and grows to define an entire moment.

I'm quoting the New Yorker's technology columnist Kyle Cheka.

The term he's describing, well, it's so evocative that, unfortunately, we can't say it on the air.

I immediately grabbed onto it.

I knew what it meant.

I could apply it in my own experience

because everything just seems to be getting worse

all around us on our phones and on websites.

The term is inshidification,

and it was coined by Corey Docterow.

I've been following Corey Docterow's work for years and years on the internet.

He's someone who I always look to to understand what's going on online

and how the latest tech policy is changing and how things work.

And when I saw him starting to use this word in shittification,

where everything getting worse,

I just immediately understood what he was talking about, I think, as we all do.

In shittification was a word of the year in 2023.

And now it's the title of Corey Doctor O's new book.

Dr. O is a prolific and respected tech blogger, and he writes science fiction, too.

He also played a big role in the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which advocates for civil liberties online.

Here's Corey Doctoro, speaking with the New Yorker's Kyle Cheka.

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