Comment by gherkinnn
Yes, nasty salesmen are as old as time and possibly predate humans, but that is not what enshittification means.
From Wikipedia[0]:
> Enshittification, also known as crapification and platform decay, is a process in which two-sided online products and services decline in quality over time. Initially, vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers, and finally degrade their services to users and business customers to maximize short-term profits for shareholders.
Basically a middleman fucking over both sides of the deal, typically in the context of online services. The term was popularised in 2022 [1].
Remove "online services" (anchoring the term firmly in the present) and I still can't think of wide ranging examples in the past. I will admit that this might be because I haven't been around for very long.
Large companies buying up smaller brands with high quality products is one that has become popular in the 21st century. People have a strong attraction to brand names and while the user will eventually leave the large corporation more than makes their money back on the purchase. With this increase in capital they move to the next high quality company and consume it. Companies like Coca-cola do this with countless products.