#178 | STOP FEEDING THE MACHINE - START CREATING STUFF THAT MATTERS [Enshittification]

NB Throughout this breakdown I use the spelling enshitification. The more common spelling is enshittification. I am in a bit of a rush, so will change this to the more common spelling later.

In the last show of season 14 I brought you EPISODE 177 – 5 PRODUCTIVITY LIES, a show all about the common myths that sabotage our focus, our output and our sense of progress. If you missed it, please go back and check it out. Today though I want to dig into something important, vital even, because it’s something that has been bothering me for a very long time.

Before we get into that though, a number of you will remember that before the show was known as Film Pro Productivity & Success, it was simply known as Film Pro Productivity. Over the years the show has grown beyond film and filmmaking and into more of a show about productivity matters that help or hinder the creative process itself: discipline, momentum, mindset, and the realities of working in the creative arts.

From today forward, the podcast is returning to its original name: Film Pro Productivity. And I’m adding a subtitle that says exactly what it is: PRACTICAL GUIDANCE FOR CREATIVE PROFESSIONALS because that’s really what it’s all about.

Nothing else is changing. The show will continue to be based on my honest thoughts and opinions, experience-based and rooted in my work across film, TV and theatre - and aimed at anyone trying to stay focused and effective in a creative career. As I have said many times on this show there is no blueprint for how to do these things perfectly the first time, sometimes you have to feel your way through them and take a few blind turns along the way. Maybe I shouldn’t have used the term film pro in the title at all, but I’d rather not restart the whole thing, and I hope that the new subtitle for the show will help new listeners to understand what they are getting themselves into!

Every January we get bombarded with noise: resolutions, goals, habits, challenges… endless pressure to do more, post more, achieve more. But none of it matters if our time and creative energy are being pulled away by things that don’t have our best interests at heart.

Today I’m talking about a modern reality that every creative person faces, whether you’re a filmmaker, a writer, an artist, or anything in between.

It’s the feeling that the world around us, the systems we use, the platforms we rely on, have slowly turned from opportunities… into obstacles. What I am talking about is the enshitification of virtually everything that we interact with online and to some extent elsewhere.

It was Elliot Grove, founder of Raindance, who got me on to this. His article “Everything We Love Eventually Turns to Shit - Unless We Learn to Tell the Story First,” clicked instantly because he wasn’t just talking about tech platforms, which is where this term seems to have been born, he was talking about filmmaking, about Hollywood, and about creative lives like ours.

You’ve seen this everywhere:

·        Instagram filled with ads and recommended nonsense.

·        Organic reach throttled into nothing.

·        Facebook burying anything you post under a mountain of commercial content.

·        Amazon hiding real products under sponsored layers.

·        Google deliberately degrading search results so you click more ads.

·        YouTube forcing multiple ads into even short videos.

·        Feeds overrun with AI-generated sludge.

·        None of this is accidental.

·        None of it is incompetence.

·        These companies have run out of growth.

·        And when growth stops, extraction begins.

And before I go further here, let me explain what I mean by growth and extraction in this context.

Growth for a social media app means building something new. It means attracting new people, creating new value, and making the product genuinely better so more people want it.

Extraction is the opposite. It’s not about adding anything - it’s about squeezing more time, money, or attention out of the people who are already there. Reducing value. Adding friction. Limiting reach. And then selling access back to you.

So, when growth stops, companies stop building value - and they start pulling it out of their users instead.

And once you see that shift, everything else makes sense.

This is often called crapification. When it comes to creative work on social platforms, the promise of growth – follower numbers, reach, visibility, engagement – has largely stalled. These were the metrics creatives were once told to chase, but they’re delivering less and less. Which is why our time is better spent making work that actually matters.

Here’s the clean version of it, in plain language:

·        First they’re good.

·        Then they’re greedy.

·        Then they’re unbearable.

That’s the cycle.

If you’ve spent any time on modern social platforms, you’ve felt this.

·        They lure you in with community.

·        Then they demand your attention.

·        Then they make it nearly impossible to grow unless you pay.

·        And somewhere along the way, the creative work gets pushed aside.

The machine takes over.

MY OWN EXPERIENCE WITH THE ROT

I’ve tried to build followings on these platforms.

I’ve spent years on them.

I’ve experimented with what you’re “supposed” to do.

I’ve followed the advice.

And yes I’ve spent a fair amount of money trying to make it all work.

And for a long time, I assumed the problem was me. My ability to change. My understanding of the system.

But it isn’t.

The problem isn’t that we’re bad at social media.

The problem is that the social media apps don’t want us to succeed.

And hear me out on this! This isn’t paranoia talking. Or the ramblings of a disgruntled failure.

If social media wanted us to succeed, the evidence would be there. Organic reach wouldn’t keep collapsing every few years. Paid promotion wouldn’t be necessary just to be seen. The algorithm wouldn’t reward speed, sameness, and constant output over depth, originality, and thought. But that’s exactly what happens. Growth is deliberately restricted, then sold back to you. Quality is irrelevant compared to behaviour. And when creators genuinely start to succeed - when they build real audiences or a sense of independence - the rules quietly change. Monetisation shifts. Reach drops. Formats get deprioritised. Because real success makes you less dependent on the platform, and dependence is where the money is. If social media wanted us to succeed, it would make itself less necessary. Instead, it’s designed to keep us chasing.

That’s why I’ve all but given up on virtually all social media. With Instagram for example where I’ve spent the most amount of time and effort recently - The sheer volume of adverts and sponsored posts has turned it - and so many others like it - into what it now is: a marketing company disguised as a social network.

Like so many social networks that were once a great place to be and to promote our work the social part of Instagram has been hollowed out. What remains is a system optimised for exposure, targeting, and extraction, not for conversation or community. You’re not there to connect with people - you’re there to be profiled, segmented, and sold to. And once you see that clearly, it becomes very difficult to justify spending your creative energy trying to perform inside a space that was never built to value it.

The same thing happened to a large extent in fact with Twitter, now X.

I had 18,000 legitimate followers. Real ones. I used software to block bots when that was still possible. But once Elon Musk bought the platform, third-party tools were cut off - likely because he didn’t want people seeing how many bots there truly were and a platform that was already failing really started to dive.

The rot had already set in though. He just finished the job.

Facebook? Same story. The volume of ads and garbage content that I get on Facebook, which I keep hold of as I occasionally utilize the groups feature, is eye watering.

Meta as a whole? Completely enshitified.

And it’s not just social media.

Once you see the pattern -once you know the name - you spot it everywhere.

Google is the obvious one.

Search used to feel clean. Now it’s ads, SEO sludge, and pages designed to keep you clicking.

Not because they forgot how to make search work, but because when growth stalls, the only way to increase revenue is to extract more from the same users.

But Google didn’t forget how to make search work - it made it worse on purpose. A whistle-blower described how the product became too good: people found what they needed and left. When growth slowed, the solution wasn’t innovation, it was extraction. In order to keep us on site and sell more ad space, the results were degraded so you’d search twice, click more, stay longer. More time on the platform meant more ads sold. Search didn’t decay by accident. It was redesigned to extract.

Amazon did it too.

I don’t pretend to fully understand the mechanics of what Amazon did behind the scenes, but the outcome is obvious. Search is flooded with near-identical products, reviews are questionable, and finding something genuinely good takes more effort than it used to. The platform feels less like a marketplace and more like a maze. From the outside, it follows the same pattern: start by helping sellers, then introduce pay-to-play visibility, then squeeze everyone involved with fees and sponsored placement. Whatever the internal logic, the end result is worse products, less trust, and more friction for everyone using it.

And the really worrying part is that this isn’t staying online. It’s leaking into the physical world.

HP perfected it years ago with printers. Cheap hardware up front, then locked-down ink, DRM chips in cartridges, firmware updates that punish you for stepping outside the system. Printers refusing to work because a cartridge is “unauthorised.” Ink that costs more than blood by volume. That business model worked so well it’s now being exported everywhere else. Cars, software, tools, platforms - all following the same logic. Sell you the thing, then charge you endlessly to keep it usable. Ownership quietly replaced with dependency.

We’re now living with subscription cars. Hardware you’ve already paid for, deliberately locked behind software. BMW experimented with monthly fees for heated seats. Mercedes-Benz has offered paid subscriptions for higher performance in cars that are already capable of it. Tesla ships vehicles with battery capacity and features locked, switchable on or off remotely.

The car can already do it. The hardware is there. The only thing stopping it is a decision - a line of code - unless you’re on the right plan.

And if you’re a creative, you don’t need to look at cars to see this. You’re already living inside it.

Software that used to be bought once is now rented forever. Adobe comes to mind but it’s out there with music tools, plug-ins, AND editing suites - stop paying and the tools you built your work with simply stop functioning. Files you created become harder to open. Work you made becomes locked behind a subscription you can’t pause, can’t downgrade, and can’t escape without losing access to your own output.

Creatives know this pattern well. Free hosting. Free storage. Free tools. Just enough to get you started. Enough to upload your work, share it, depend on it. And once your files, your projects, and your workflow live there - that’s when monetisation begins. The price doesn’t feel optional anymore, because walking away means losing access to the work you already made.

It’s the same logic everywhere. Products are no longer designed to work well - they’re designed to extract. To drip-feed functionality back to you over time. To turn ownership into a rental.

Everything is starting to behave like a printer. Expensive upfront, cheap to maintain, and permanently hungry for refills. A world where every tool assumes it has the right to charge you again. And again. And again.

And all of this matters for creative people more than most, because creativity depends on tools. Cameras. Laptops. Software. Instruments. Platforms. When those tools are locked down, throttled, or tied to subscriptions, the cost of making work quietly increases. Not just financially - but mentally.

You start thinking about friction.

About limits.About what will break, or stop working, or trigger another restriction.

And over time, that pressure changes the kind of work you make.

Because when everything you rely on is rented, conditional, and unstable, you don’t take creative risks - you minimise them.

·        You stop making bigger, more thoughtful work.

·        And you start making small, safe content designed to survive the algorithm.

And this is where it loops back to social media.

Platforms thrive on that fear. On that uncertainty. On the hope that maybe this post, maybe this video, maybe this take will be the one the algorithm rewards. A like. A share. A spike. A follower. Some ad revenue. Some proof that the gamble was worth it.

So instead of making work for yourself - work with depth, intention, and longevity - you start feeding the machine. Chasing signals. Tweaking formats. Repeating what already performed. Not because it’s your best work, but because it feels safer than disappearing.

That’s the real cost of this system.

It doesn’t just extract money.

It extracts ambition.

And once your tools, your platforms, and your visibility are all controlled by the same logic - locked in, throttled, and monetised - your ability to make things becomes conditional. Dependent on staying compliant, up to date, and endlessly producing.

That’s not innovation.That’s control.

And it’s the same logic everywhere. Lock you in, raise the friction, and extract for as long as you can tolerate it.

Enshitification isn’t a glitch. It’s a business model.

And that business model has a name.

Cory Doctorow calls it the printerification of everything.

·        You know the model.

·        Cheap printer.

·        Then expensive ink.

·        Then locked cartridges.

·        Then firmware updates that punish you for stepping outside the system.

Now look around. Cars with subscription-only heated seats. Phones that refuse to be repaired. Appliances that won’t work without an online account. Software that breaks the moment you stop paying.

Social media is exactly the same.

The platform is the printer. Your creative labour is the ink. And they want you buying refills forever.

And this part matters for creatives: Creators are not their customers - advertisers are.

THE TIME DRAIN

This is where things get personal. I am constantly working.

This isn’t me humble bragging - it’s the reality of my life and frankly – creatively – even though I recognize that being in demand especially in today’s climate is a great thing – creatively – it’s a bit of a drag!

Stunts, fights, choreography, coordination, safety, approvals - all complex work that demands enormous concentration, time commitment and energy and all of it takes me away from my own projects.

I’m writing a feature film. I’m developing several others. I’m running this podcast. And I’m trying to keep some time for my own life.

The simple truth is this:

·        If I spend my limited time making short-form “content,”

·        I am not making the bigger, more valuable work.

And over the years, I have wasted time trying.

But here’s the part that took me far too long to understand: these platforms don’t actually want us to grow.

Real growth is dangerous to them. If you grow properly - if you build a genuine audience, meaningful reach, or independence - you need the platform less. You stop chasing metrics. You stop posting desperately. You stop paying for boosts. And most importantly, you stop being predictable.

What the platforms want instead is dependency. They want you just visible enough to stay hopeful, but never secure enough to leave. Enough engagement to keep you posting. Enough reward to keep you gambling. But never enough control that you stop feeding the system.

That’s why growth is throttled. That’s why reach quietly drops. That’s why yesterday’s working strategy suddenly stops working. Not because you failed - but because if everyone grew freely, the machine would break.

When I moved to Instagram, I had around 3,350 followers.

Now, years later, after sincere effort, I’m sitting around 3,550.

That’s 200 followers in three years.

Not growth.

Not progress.

A drip-feed that I have come to believe is carefully regulated by the platform.

THE DECISION EVERY CREATIVE MUST MAKE

This year, instead of feeding the machine, put your energy where it actually does something.

1.      Make real work. A short film will outlive a thousand posts. A feature film will outlive even that.

2.      Build real relationships. One coffee with the right person beats a year of “engagement.”

3.      Maintain a proper website. A home base the algorithm can’t bury.

4.      Build an email list. Direct connection without interference.

5.      Go where humans are. Festivals. Screenings. Events. Workshops.

6.      Collaborate. We rise faster together.

7.      Word of mouth. Still undefeated. I’m telling you!

8.      Creative communities. Find people who care about the work, not the metrics.

9.      Contact decision-makers directly. Producers. Programmers. Reviewers.

None of this depends on algorithms. All of it builds real careers.

Iinserted this bit after the main recording:

Let’s talk about YouTube for a moment.

On the surface, YouTube still looks like the “serious” platform. Long-form. Craft. Skill. Knowledge. Real work. But underneath, the same pressures are at play.

The algorithm is constantly changing, which means creators are forced to react instead of develop a voice.

You’re not building a body of work. You’re responding to signals.

Ads now interrupt videos mid-thought, mid-sentence, mid-idea.That doesn’t just affect the viewer. It affects how creators structure their work. You start designing around interruption instead of flow.

Search, which used to give long-term value to useful or evergreen content, has been weakened. Videos don’t live on because they’re good. They live on if they keep people watching longer.

Subscriptions don’t guarantee reach anymore. So creators stop serving the audience they already have and start chasing strangers instead.

Short-form content is now baked into the system. Blind-looping clips. Endless scroll. Fast, disposable output rewarded over depth or thought.

Watch time matters more than usefulness. So videos get padded. Stretched. Diluted. Not because creators want to do that, but because the system rewards it.

And over time, monetisation pressure softens opinions, discourages risk, and nudges creators toward safer, less challenging work.

What starts as “optimising for the platform” ends with creators being reduced to performance metrics, not meaning, not craft, not voice.

Chasing YouTube’s algorithm doesn’t just change how your work performs. It changes what your work becomes.

And then there’s a change that makes the intent crystal clear.

THE REMOVAL OF DISLIKE AND NEGATIVE FEEDBACK

Dislikes weren’t harassment. They were signal.

They acted as a fast, collective warning system for scams, misinformation, and low-quality content. A shared sense of judgement.

When platforms removed public dislike counts, they didn’t do it to protect creators. They did it to protect brands, advertisers, and themselves.

Once negative feedback is hidden, bad content looks the same as good content. Trust collapses because users lose a shared sense of quality.

Creators lose honest feedback and are forced to guess what’s working. And public judgement gets replaced by algorithms, which do not serve human interests.

When a platform removes the ability to say “this is bad”, it’s a clear sign it no longer works for users or creators.

Blind-looping, hidden dislikes, broken search, unstable algorithms all point to the same thing.

These systems are not designed to support choice. They’re designed to remove it.

And the more creators chase them, the more their work gets shaped by control rather than intention.

Here’s where we all stand today.

If you see yourself as a creative person, you are at a crossroads:

·        Do you want to spend your time feeding the machine?

Or…

·        Do you want to spend that time making the work that truly matters?

Because audience-building on social media is now virtually impossible. These platforms are marketing companies - not creative spaces. Only a tiny number of people ever find success on them. For the rest of us? It’s a sinkhole of time, energy, and hope.

If we look at YouTube for example, the odds are brutal. The platform has around 2.7 billion monthly users, but only a tiny fraction of them make any meaningful money. Even using very generous estimates, it’s thought that only about 3,300 people worldwide earn more than £1,000 a year from YouTube. That’s roughly one person in eight hundred thousand.

Of course, most people on YouTube don’t upload videos at all. Of those who do though, many upload sporadically. Of those who upload regularly, only some even qualify for monetisation. And of the people who are monetised, the vast number make less than £50 a year - often much less. Well under 1% of the 3.5ish million users who are monetised.

A much smaller fraction reaches £1,000. Fewer again ever hit £10,000. And only a tiny, tiny number make anything close to £50,000 a year.

At every stage, most people drop away. By the time you get to what anyone would reasonably call a sustainable income, you’re looking at a handful of people inside an already microscopic group.

So, with those figures in mind, when you say you can beat the odds, what you’re really saying is that you believe you’re statistically exceptional in a system designed to produce very few winners. Some people are. Most aren’t. There are just enough people making money from the platform to sell the illusion of opportunity, while the vast majority are set up to lose. That’s all I’m trying to lay out for you here today. You need to understand the odds and weigh your time, your effort, and the likely return clearly in your own head. And if you’re already doing that, and you know in your gut it’s a lose-lose, then you’re ready to move on. But if all you’re really chasing is a few likes, ask yourself how much more satisfying it would be to have a more substantial piece of work you believe in, one that represents your vision, your hopes, and your skills, and that you can stand behind and show with pride instead.

·        We’re not here to make perfect Reels.

·        We’re here to make meaningful art.

·        Art takes time.

·        Art takes depth.

·        Art takes honesty.

And social media demands the opposite.

THE PERSONAL REALITY

This is what hits me every day: I could pour my energy into chasing algorithms - or I could pour it into my own creative work. Long term. Involved. High quality. Work. Work that stands the test of time.

I could try to keep up with trends - or I could make something meaningful that lasts.

I’ve saved this for last. 

AI didn’t create this problem. But it’s about to speed it up dramatically.

·        AI allows platforms to flood feeds with infinite junk.

·        Replace human output with automated sludge.

·        Bury real creators under synthetic noise.

But AI isn’t the problem. The incentives driving platforms using AI are. And here’s the good news. The only work that will matter is work that is unmistakably human.

And that means real creativity is about to matter more than ever - if you stop feeding the machine long enough to make it.

And all of that brings me right back to Elliot Grove’s final thought in his article: “Everything we love eventually turns to shit - unless we learn to tell the story first.” 

·        Tell the story first.

·        Tell your story first.

·        Make the work that matters.

·        Make the work that lasts.

·        Stop feeding the machine.

As we head into this new year, I want you to take today’s message with you.

Think carefully about where your attention is going, and what you’re getting back for it. Ask yourself whether you’re creating the work you want to be known for, or whether you’re just feeding systems that aren’t serving you.

Make this the year you choose depth over noise. Purpose over pressure. Craft over “content.” Strip back the distractions, set your priorities out, and put your energy into the work that actually moves your life forward.

If you apply what we’ve talked about today - genuinely apply it - you won’t just have a more productive year. You’ll have a more meaningful one. And that’s the real win.

Thanks for tuning in today and listening to my thoughts and opinions and ramblings in an effort to better yourself and prepare for what comes next. If you’ve found value in the show, please take a moment to share it to some friends and to rate it on whichever podcast app you use. It really does help me reach more creative people who might benefit from it.

Take that ahead with you into the next 12 months and make them matter. Take control of your own destiny. Keep on shootin’ and join me next time on FILM PRO PRODUCTIVITY AND SUCCESS!

• The music you can hear right now is Adventures by A Himitsu

• You can view the show notes for this episode on the official website filmproproductivity.com

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References:

Cory Doctorow Doctorow, C. (2023). The Enshittification of TikTok.Pluralistic.nethttps://pluralistic.net

Doctorow, C. (2023). How Platforms Die: The Enshittification Lifecycle.Wired / Pluralistic essays

Elliot Grove Grove, E. (2023). Everything We Love Eventually Turns to Shit – Unless We Learn to Tell the Story First.Raindance.org

Douglas Rushkoff Rushkoff, D. (2019). Team Human.W. W. Norton & Company

Rushkoff, D. (2022). Survival of the Richest.W. W. Norton & Company

James Bridle Bridle, J. (2018). New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future.Verso Books

Jaron Lanier Lanier, J. (2018). Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now.Henry Holt and Company

Ursula Franklin Franklin, U. (1999). The Real World of Technology.House of Anansi Press

David Lynch Lynch, D. (2006). Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity.TarcherPerigee

John Cassavetes Cassavetes, J. (various interviews and writings on independent filmmaking and artistic integrity)

Additional Context Coverage on platform monetisation, algorithmic control, and creator economy extraction from:Wired, The Guardian, The Atlantic, MIT Technology Review

Thanks: A Himitsu

Music: Adventures by A Himitsu

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