You know the feeling. You open your favorite app to do the exact same thing you did yesterday, only to discover the button you’ve clicked a thousand times has vanished. Or worse, it’s been buried under three new menus, a paywall, and a pop-up asking for feedback on a feature you never wanted.
You didn’t ask for this. You didn’t need this. But here it is, eating your battery and your patience.
We used to think software updates were about fixing bugs. Today, they are the bugs. There’s a word for this in German: Verschlimmbesserung. It literally means “worsening by improving.” It’s the perfect description of an industry that has confused movement with progress.
An update isn’t a gift from the developer; it’s an invoice to the user.
You’ve probably noticed this happening everywhere. The comment sections of the internet are filled with the ghosts of frustrated users. Some call it “enshitification.” Others use the older, clunkier term “misfeature.” But whatever you call it, the result is the same: the language of improvement is being used to push changes you experience as degradation.
But here is the real twist, the part that should actually make you angry. The greatest loss in modern software isn’t the misfeature. It’s the death of the “hit bug.”
A hit bug is the opposite of a misfeature. It’s an accidental mistake, a glitch that turns out to genuinely improve the software. It’s serendipity. It’s a developer breaking a rule and accidentally giving users exactly what they didn’t know they needed.
But serendipity doesn’t scale. Serendipity can’t be monetized. In an extractive business model where every pixel must justify its ROI, accidental brilliance is systematically selected against. The update cycle that keeps software commercially alive is the exact same cycle that destroys the soul of the tool.
When value is only extracted, software doesn’t evolve. It is crushed in a press until only the faintest essence of what you loved remains.
The squeezings are bottled, packaged as “Version 2.0,” and sold back to you as an upgrade. The tool you trusted becomes a shell of itself, optimized not for your workflow, but for their quarterly earnings.
Look at the rare exceptions. Companies like Valve can continue largely unshittificated precisely because they are private. They don’t have to feed the insatiable maw of public markets demanding endless, visible change. They don’t have to Verschlimmbesserung their product to justify their stock price.
When you use software, you are no longer a user. You are a resource to be mined. The next time your screen flashes “Updating… Do not turn off your computer,” remember what is actually happening.
They aren’t upgrading your software. They are downgrading your trust to upgrade their bottom line.
FAQ
Q: Isn't this just a necessary part of technological progress?
A: No. Progress implies forward motion that benefits the user. What we're experiencing is lateral motion designed to benefit the developer's wallet. If it were truly progress, you wouldn't need to relearn how to export a file every three months.
Q: What's the practical implication for everyday users?
A: Stop auto-updating. Delay updates as long as possible. Treat your software like a tool, not a subscription to someone's science experiment. If a version works for you, freeze it.
Q: What's the contrarian take?
A: The "hit bug" is a myth. Users hate all change, even accidental improvements. The only way to survive as a software company is to force feed changes until users accept them, because a stagnant app is a dead app in the eyes of investors.