Okay, so – where am I going with all of this? This is bad academic practice – I never set an evaluation regime at the start. We’re deep into ‘hypothesis after results known’ (HARK) territory at this point. Like I often recommend to students. we’re going to reframe this morbidity as a strength. The months to date have been ‘grounded theory’.

So this month’s update is – how am I going to judge success?

To go with the General Theory of Shit I have already posted, here is the Shittification Rating. As with much of this, we’re dealing with vibe based categorisation but that’s okay – a rating scale is only ever subjective anyway. We’ll start simple – five stars, ranging from ‘deep in the sewer’ to ‘floating so high I can’t even smell the shit’.

The Shittification Scale

One Star – Fully Enshittified

I wake up and pick up my phone, which is filled with big-tech telemetry. I log on to my social media feeds, which come at me unfiltered. I see twenty ads before an update from a real person. I try to check my work email, and need to authenticate with MFA before it shows me my calendar. I sit down at my computer and need to spend minutes navigating ads, AI pop-ups, and upsells in my interface. I’m accessing everything through an enforced VPN. Microsoft are strip-mining every click for their exclusive financial benefit. Google are scanning my personal files on Drive. My email is fed into Gemini. And I’m paying a thousand crowns a month for the privilege to rent the software that runs my hardware. My TV tells Samsung what I’m watching. My phone is constantly chirruping notifications, as is my desktop. Clippy is back and he’s invading my dreams. Visa and Mastercard decide what I can look at on the Internet. Every time I check YouTube I get ten minutes of unskippable ads. Netflix is adding twenty crowns a month, per month, to my bill, for ever decreasing amounts of content. Spotify has started to replace my curated playlists with AI assisted listening. These are two of twenty services to which I have to subscribe and they all get worse every day.

Maybe I flirted, or went deep, into the idea of a smart home. I can yell at my lightbulbs to make my curtains open. I can control a nuclear launch platform from my door handles. They often fail to work, often disconnect and need repaired, and every time I interact with them is a data wet-dream for some tech broker somewhere. But my life is perhaps half a percent more efficient because I don’t need to flick a switch.

I take 20d6 psychic damage every hour I’m awake.

This is an only slightly exaggerated version of the dystopia many people inhabit already.

Two Stars – Somewhat Enshittified

I’ve minimised my notifications. Got a decent ad-blocker. I’ve dug through my operating system’s menu options to switch off all optional telemetry and shitware. I have used ADB to switch off as much phone bloatware as possible. I’ve cut things down to maybe two streaming services. I see AI everywhere but I’m not using it much. I’ve gone limp to the way it has infested every area of my system from search to fucking notepad. I’m using a password manager now but I still have to regularly convince robots that I’m not a robot. I stare in mystified confusion whenever I’m asked for a passkey. What’s the fucking difference? I remain at the mercy of my tech but I’ve created safe(ish) buffer zones I can inhabit with minimal inconvenience. I’m down to 8d6 psychic damage an hour.

I’ve stripped down or consolidated all my smart tech. When I do use smart home tech, I self-host it and store the data in a secure vault guarded by robots.

I would say this is where I started, on two stars leaning towards three.

Three Stars – Enshittified but Saveable

I’ve moved off of Windows onto a privacy heavy Linux install but I’ve still left open a path of retreat – I haven’t yet thrown my cap over the wall. Windows is still installed and still an option on my dual-boot machine. My drives remain running a Windows-oriented file system. I feel sure I’m going to revert to what is convenient so I don’t want to block off the exit. Or perhaps at three stars I’ve simply gone beyond the easy fixes for the OS and hardened it against telemetry and unwelcome updates – maybe I’ve gone down the debloat route rather than then replacement route. Regardless of whic specific path I’ve taken, the OS is no longer such a big enemy.

I’ve got much of the Internet shit blocked at the hardware router level. I’ve abandoned Google search in favour of DuckDuckGo or another search engine that doesn’t prioritise AI slop summaries or paid placements. I’m using as much open source as I can without really changing the way I engage with technology.

I’m no longer paying to let Google use my files for training – I’ve invested in some ‘digital land’ where I can raise metaphorical virtual horses. I’m having to do a lot more manually, but I’m increasingly getting control of my online presence. I’m avoiding the tech Red Queen race – I’m not interested any more in what’s best, I’m prioritising working out what ‘enough’ means. I’m looking to repurpose old tech for new purposes. I’m more mindful around social media – task focused. I still have to use a lot of big-tech architecture though, and I’m still paying for things through Google Wallet or another such service. Big tech sets the channels through which my life flows but I’m actively rejecting micromanagement of that life.

There’s no smart tech in my house. The only ‘smart’ device I own is a Roomba and that thing is dumb as fuck. I even keep a gun by the printer in case it starts getting uppity. Or if there is smart tech, it has become so seamlessly integrated into a home-lab setup that it’s practically invisible.

I think I hit this a couple of months into the project. 4d6 psychic damage an hour.

Four Stars – Mostly Deshittified

I think this is where I am now.

I’m comfortable in Linux to the point i have stopped planning for the retreat back into Windows. I’ve spent hours moving all my systems onto a coherent OS fleet – Linux is everywhere. I’m using ad-guard DNS in addition to my router, which is also set up to block telemetry at the hardware level. Much of it never gets in and out of my computers. The TV has been lobotomised, it yells into a void that will never answer. I’m no longer using any streaming service – I’ve dusted off the old MP3s and the old ripped DVDs. From now on I buy music and movies, I don’t simply rent it. And if I can’t buy it, I pirate it – if buying isn’t owning then piracy isn’t stealing.

I still have a massive Steam library that I technically don’t own but I’ve made my peace with that – I will regret this I know in the future but for now it is what it is. I’ve abandoned NFC payments through my phone to focus instead on a physical payment keyfob. I’ve even abandoned NFC entirely – I’ve gone for a phone that has limited telemetry and functionality to help me be more intentional – the phone is tiny, with a screen so small that I no longer want to do the things I want to do. I no longer sync my files with Drive or OneDrive, that’s all handled by a robust regimen of scripts that work through my online ranch. Almost all of my software is open source, and ideally local first, but there are still some holdouts. Discord, for example. NVidia graphics drivers. Proprietary codecs. It may never be possible to scour some of this from my life.

I’m still a prisoner of my context. I still need to be using Android because of online banking or digital ID requirements. I still have to use shitware for work – Microsoft Teams, say, or participating in comical levels of security theatre. I still see AI being forced into many of my workflows but it’s opt-out – I don’t have to use it if I’m willing to wrestle with the options. At least, I don’t have to use it yet. I spend more time managing my systems, but I own a lot more of them and the ones I rent do not permit lock-in. Visa and Mastercard still get to say what I can spend my money on though – the censorious instincts of a bunch of bankers has more say in my online life than I do. I’ve put clean air between me and the shit too – it’s almost all on a separate device that doesn’t get to talk to my real systems. I use Teams, reluctantly, on a browser, or on a tablet, on a separate network. I’m still doing tech support on my own infrastructure, because edge cases are still popping up all the time.

I am taking 1d6 psychic damage an hour.

Five Stars – Shit Free

This is the end goal, and I’m not sure I can get there.

I’m no longer using Android – I’ve found a solution to BankID that doesn’t need me to be on a verified Google Play Services application. Every part of my technical life is open-source. Big-tech has been banished from all my devices. I don’t have to pantomime security theatre at work because I have developed workarounds that simulate the minimum level of necessary functionality. It’s been months since I saw an ad. I’m not locked into any tech platform – I have avoided software ecosystems in favour of discrete tools that do one thing well. If Obsidian shittifies I can take the markdown file elsewhere. Encroaching enshittification costs me an hour, not my soul.

Google and Microsoft and Meta add additional crudware to the infrastructure of the Internet – mandatory age verification, enforced AI, more and more upsells and ads – but I don’t even notice because they have no power here. I can do everything I want to do, am encouraged to do nothing I don’t want to do. My technical stitching is robust and I no longer need to think about it because I’ve smoothed away all the rough edges. I can let out the long breath I’ve been holding. Technology has once again become an appliance rather than a weary perpetual negotiation of sovereignty.

I am taking maybe 1d6 psychic damage a day and that’s just because all of the shit still exists and sometimes there’s splash damage.

The Journey So Far

Before I did Project Unplug in 2022, I think I was at one star (except for the smart tech angle, I have never ever been a fan). That’s clear from how i was talking about things in my writing and status updates. At the end of it, the extreme approach brought me up to mid-way between two and three stars. I’d found an uneasy equilibrium but it turned out to be fragile – the psychopathic instinct to shove AI everywhere showed that it was a very situational arrangement where the power imbalance still existed. A week into Deshittification 2026 I’d say that I had moved into three star territory but there was so much snagging and so many compromises that it didn’t feel especially good. Time and gradual smoothing away at points of friction ensures that, at the start of May, I think I’m comfortably in the four-stars area.

Five stars though may be functionally impossible to reach at the moment, unless:

1) There exists some kind of digital identity that isn’t locked to a mobile-first regime. And also doesn’t require me to carry my ‘papers’ everywhere. There’s a new government backed digital ID system coming for Sweden but it’ll still need an approved mobile OS and I don’t really think replacing bankers with civil-servant mandarins will be much of an improvement.
2) Someone invents a global payment system that doesn’t go through Visa or Mastercard or Paypal. One that ideally lets me use a kind of ‘digital cash’. Not crypto, that’s ruled over by the verifiably insane. But perhaps the ‘digital euro’ might be a contender. There are steps towards it, but they’re slow and only partial.
3) My employer drops its pantomime of security theatre, or I move to another employer that hasn’t gone into that ridiculous preformative playground.

The key observation here is that these are fundamentally ‘bigger than me’ problems. I can’t – as an individual – move the needle on any of these. The one that’s most achievable is ‘leave my job’ but even that needs there to be somewhere to go, and it relies on a lack of security theatre being an intentional and permanent stance of the new employer. Otherwise I’ve just delayed the impact Microsoft Teams has on me. However, leaving my job is not necessarily a deal-breaker.

I think what I can do is get myself ‘five star ready’ – pay attention to what’s on the horizon, aggressively evaluate opportunities for shedding the last few shitstains, and making myself structurally inconvenient to the point that people don’t expect me to be plugged in. I could get rid of Swish today, for example, if people wouldn’t react to a wad of rolled up notes with visceral horror. But there are potentials. As I say a digital euro is potentially coming. Microsoft is becoming a pariah tech state, and EU countries are increasingly talking about de-americanisation of their critical infrastructure. Maybe I can minimise how often, and where, I need to ID myself. Those though are glacial changes that can’t operate at a timescale I set for them.

So, if I can get myself to – let’s say, four and a half stars – by the end of 2026 I will consider this project a success. Alas, each fraction of a star gets harder and harder to get the closer we get to five. It’s like an inverse gravity where the density is repulsive rather than attractive. But whereas I knew a month into it that Project Unplug was going to fail,. I think Deshittify 2026 is on a success trajectory. 4.5 stars is perhaps a category of its own – total effective containment. Five stars is the philosophically pure version that exists only in Plato’s realm of the ideal.

Current self-evaluation rating – 4.1 stars. Next steps – full Linux coherence across all appropriate platforms. Consistency of file access . 1d4 psychic damage an hour at that point. Actually stop paying for Google and Spotify (Pauline needs to be onboard for that). Investigate FIDO2 as a security theatre minimisation tool. 1d3 psychic damage. Fully degoogle, demicrosoft, demeta. 1d2 psychic damage. De-Amazon (not even sure how I can do that one in Sweden, given how averse the high-street is to long-tail choice and how shopper-unfriendly the various web stores are). But if I did – down to 1 point of psychic damage an hour.

The rest – that’s a task of years.

The Scale

One thing that this scale captures is the cognitive tax of being alive and a person in society. But also the more i look at it the more I notice it’s a sliding scale of something else. One star is emotionally exhausting but technologically effortless. There’s a reason we all stepped into this quicksand. There’s a reason once Apple gets its hooks into you it’s impossible to escape. Seamlessness is powerfully seductive. But technologically effortless is also structurally oppressive. You serve at the pleasure of the platforms.

Five stars requires a long process of technological friction. You need to write scripts to stitch things together. There are platform inconsistencies to consider. You’re generally not having to deal with anything as deal-breaking as an incompatibility (open protocols thrive in open source software) but you do need to do translation here and there. And I can understand why people wouldn’t be as willing to spend a year on this project as I am. This is effortful and the reward is abstract – autonomy. If you just use computers for accomplishing specific goals, this is a nonsense endeavour. What do you care if Windows 11 is gradually shittifying if you just need to check your email every so often?

So the scale is actually ‘convenience’ versus ‘sovereignty’. It’s ‘oppression’ versus ‘liberation’. Shit is the dominating metaphor, but this is all in the end about your right to make decisions about your life without faceless corporations overruling your wishes.

4.1 stars, with 4.5 achievable by the end of the year. I can probably make my peace with that [1].

[1] But don’t be surprised if my 2028 personal project is something like ‘become a wild-eyed digital survivalist living in a fortified bunker surrounded by guns and cans of my own potable urine’.