Depending on whom you believe, we are living in the age of great digital decline, and the ‘enshittification of the internet’ has come about thanks to increased spam, an influx of AI-generated content and algorithms that prioritise engagement over user benefit.

Everywhere you scroll, from Spotify to Amazon, X to Instagram, surfing the internet feels more like surviving the internet.

However, like many of the best words, enshittification has evolved into a whole new (and all-encompassing) meaning, transforming into a term that broadly represents the belief that everything is just a bit shit right now. See also: the enshittification of everything.

Elsewhere on the list, honourable mentions went to “rawdogging” (“a personal endurance test that lends itself to social media exposure”) and “right to disconnect” (“a law which grants employees the right not to work or be contacted during non-work hours”).

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Here are some other words from the Word of the Year shortlist:

• Brainrot (used to describe internet content deemed to be of low quality or value)
• Sigma (slang that refers to a person who is independent and self-sufficient and who prefers to be alone)
• Skibidi (no inherent meaning. It can be used as an adjective to mean cool, bad or dumb, depending on context)
• Fairy porn (a genre of romance books featuring magical creatures or mystical words, often sexually descriptive and explicit).

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Find more of the author’s work here. Email him at thomas.mitchell@smh.com.au or follow him on Instagram at @thomasalexandermitchell and on Twitter @_thmitchell.