I think Doctorow is casting the net too wide here. By this definition, bonsai is enshittifying trees. Tennis is enshittifying your opponent’s field position. Gardening is enshittifying plants.

For me, a key part of enshittification is the initial investment. Creating something tempting and underpriced that pulls people in, and then pulling the rug from under them. So if we must generalize outside of tech, then suburbs are enshittified cities, because they’re cheap to build and expensive to maintain and because they ruin other forms of housing through parking requirements. Cars are enshittified personal transportation, subsidized through (neo)colonial warfare and direct subsidies and raiding the commons of the public street until everybody is miserable and locked indoors and stuck in traffic. Cults are enshittified communities, love-bombing newbies and then ramping up the duties and the conforming pressure.

But lobbying to make unionizing harder isn’t enshittification because laborers weren’t pulled in. Expensive airport sodas aren’t enshittification because they’re leeching off a true reason for being there.

For me, enshittification is valuable as a concept because I can use it to warn myself and others to avoid getting pulled in. It implies “even if it feels worth it now, you will come to regret it”. Basically dodging the outcome of [relevant xkcd] by being able to summarize the bearded guy’s case in a single word that cueball can use to recognize the pattern.