ReallyActuallyFrankenstein

I'm sure you intend this to highlight the alternative reading of the article, but just being frank and no offense, I actually don't see the difference. Most of the things you highlighted are things I explained why they are implicitly actually legitimizing Musk and his actions, some seem random, and none of them contradicts my theory.

But yes, there's are competing ways to interpret this. That's why I call it a "fluff piece" rather than a outright authoritarian sycophancy.

I mean, it's open to interpretation, but the reason I said that is because the author uncritically accepts a lot of Musk's and Trump's premises which legitimizes Musk's actions, while consistently avoiding any clear criticism.

E.g.:

Musk, the self-appointed Trumpian king of government efficiency, is also not only taking a hardline approach to trimming the federal bureaucracy.

Frames that Musk actually is seeking to "trim the federal bureaucracy" in the author's voice.

Of course, this all aligns perfectly with President Trump’s broader goal of cutting government spending, with Trump even suggesting that Musk should get more aggressive. That’s right — Musk’s plan to weed out slackers thus far somehow hasn’t been “extremely hardcore” enough for the president. So, in classic Musk fashion, he’s gone all-in, demanding rigorous reporting, cutting contracts, and looking to save a cool $1 trillion along the way.

Bold mine. This paragraph together has a lot of tells. The phrase "weed out slackers" implies there are real "slackers" that Musk is fairly "weeding out."

Musk's "demanding rigorous reporting" also legitimizes and normalizes Musk's harassment of these employees. The author's use of "classic Musk fashion" with this legitimized language implies the author also has a positive opinion of Musk.

"Looking to save a cool $1 trillion" is breezy casual language that could be argued to restate Musk's goal, but use of "save" is a positive connotation word, and subtly implies waste. "A cool" before money is meant to make the number more impressive.

Meanwhile, over at DOGE (the acronym for the Department of Government Efficiency), employees are reportedly working 120-hour weeks and sleeping in pods to keep up with the billionaire’s demands. Will this lead to a leaner, meaner federal workforce, or just mass resignations and bureaucratic chaos? Either way, I think we all know how Musk would answer his own What would you say you do here? question: He led the DOGE team in hacking through the federal government like a caffeine-fueled lumberjack at a piñata party.

The closing paragraph is meant to look neutral but again, this seems to lionize DOGE by making them look like hard workers (no need to verify or be skeptical of the 120 hour claim?), and frame it as Musk having a killer response to the Office Space question.

Read the article through the lens of a MAGA and maybe that will convey it better - this seems like hype, loosely coded for mainstream.

Freemium dark patterns are also enshittification. It's slight clickbait/ragebait, but not far off.

Office Space parodied these feckless "efficiency consultants" but of course neither Musk nor this fluff piece writer see the irony.

I guess the world has become so stupid, satire couldn't survive.

Is...is the car glued together?

The specific meaning in the sidebar is explicitly about differentiating it from other generic capitalist decay. It's specific to online platforms, and in that specificity, is narrowly tailored and more relevant to what we experience in the 2020s.

That's the beauty of words - you don't need to reuse the same word for vastly different phenomenon, and by allowing words to have specific meanings, you increase the deftness with which we articulate and discuss the world.

Well, I mean, I remember when Cory Doctorow first created the word, and it's always meant to me what the sidebar says. It captured specifically why online platforms start out very consumer-friendly to attract users, until the users and businesses are trapped by network effects, and they become the product being sold.

Maybe language changes, maybe it now means just "things getting worse" to some people. But I honestly think that's a tragedy, because if "enshittification" loses its specific meaning, it loses the power to specifically call attention to this phenomenon.

I mean, I agree with this and think it should be spread widely, but probably should be in politics or politicalmemes.

Enshittification is, from the sidebar, "The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits."

Just a reminder that, especially for Trump and those who staff his new media-manipulation-savvy regime (Fox News defectors), Friday night is when you take action or release things that you don't want people paying attention to. Friday night, we're all exhausted and/or distracted. By Monday there will be a new news cycle.

Installing loyalists in the top military positions is one of the things that is signal, not noise.

This seems like a standard hopium piece on the left. Take the first anecdote:

Last June, the popular UFC fighter Sean Strickland surprised onlookers when, immediately following a victory, he ducked into the audience and took a photo with a bystander: Donald Trump. “President Trump, you’re the man, bro,” Strickland declared in his post-match interview with Joe Rogan. “It is a damn travesty what they’re doing to you. I’ll be donating to you, my man. Let’s get it done.” Video of the moment rocketed across social media, serving as an early indicator of Trump’s enduring strength with his base, despite his recent felony convictions.

Strickland went viral last week for a very different reason: opposition to the president and his plan to take over Gaza. “Man if Trump keeps this bs up I’m about to start waving a Palestinian flag,” the fighter posted on X. “American cities are shitholes and you wanna go spend billions on this dumpster fire. Did we make a mistake?! This ain’t America first.” Strickland’s lament racked up 159,000 likes and 13.2 million views.

This isn't even buyer's remorse - Strickland couldn't even bring himself to make a statement rather than a question - but even assuming it is, the article fundamentally misunderstands MAGA believers' relationship with Trump. Sure, they will question random one-off decisions, but even outright contradicting their own interests will at best draw this - momentary mild annoyance. Meanwhile, if next week Trump says something that can be contorted to be a show of support for their own goals, even if wildly improbable and incoherent, they'll be back to fawning over him.

We see him as a toddler, or a middle-school bully who tears the legs off frogs for fun. Yes, that is true, but irrelevant. What this article writer doesn't get is that parents will usually do anything to protect their baby, or live in denial that their middle-schooler is a psychopath.

These complaints are in reality just cries for the warm blanket of propaganda to lull them back to sleep with some easy answer, and annoyance at the vertigo of momentarily seeing reality. The thesis that Trump's support will fall over time because of this is absurd.

The fastest way to dehumanize immigrants is to normalize not treating them like humans.

I was surprised to see Zuckerberg with higher unfavorable and lower favorable ratings. Musk is in my opinion clearly the most evil and hateful figure at the moment. But then when they break out the statistics by party, it makes sense and seems obvious.

Everyone on both sides politically dislikes Zuck, because Facebook is a hellhole. But Musk has the GOP. Averaged out, Musk gets a boost, benefitting from the politicization.

It seems like this is putting data behind the motive for Zuck more publicly supporting right wing efforts.