How tech-savvy author Cory Doctorow got scammed
The American Dialect Society’s 2023 word of the year? Enshittification. And our guest on this edition of Chicago Public Square Podcasts, Cory Doctorow, is the guy who coined it. Hear him define it—and his harrowing explanation of how he, one of the world’s most tech-savvy authors and journalists, got scammed out of $8,000 before he could figure out what was going on. Also: The one “ironclad” rule you should follow to avoid a similar fate. And then, in this—our first conversation since this podcast from 2019—you’ll learn, among many other things, why he thinks Amazon embodies enshittification and why so many major publishers refused to consider one of his books. Listen here, or on Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, Amazon’s Alexa-powered speakers or Apple Podcasts. Or if you prefer to read your podcasts, check out the transcript below. And if you’re a completist, here’s the original, mostly unedited, behind-the-scenes raw audio and video from the recording of this podcast via Zoom on YouTube. ■ Enjoying these podcasts? Help keep them coming by joining The Legion of Chicago Public Squarians.■ And consider subscribing—free—to the daily Chicago Public Square email newsletter. Now, here’s a roughly edited transcript of the interview, recorded March 7, 2024: [00:00:00] Charlie Meyerson: The American Dialect Society’s 2023 Word of the Year? Enshittification. And our guest is the guy who coined it: [00:00:10] Cory Doctorow: What I think is going on is that this bad idea, right?—“Let’s make things worse for our customers and our suppliers and better for ourselves”—is omnipresent in every firm. [00:00:21] CM: Cory Doctorow’s a science fiction author, activist, and oh, I’d say a very active journalist with an email newsletter he publishes daily. His new book is The Bezzle, a high-tech thriller whose protagonist is … an accountant. More on that to come. I’m Charlie Meyerson with ChicagoPublicSquare.com, which, yes, is also an email newsletter. And this is a Chicago Public Square Podcast. Cory, it’s great to see you again. What’s new since the last time you and I recorded a podcast—almost exactly five years ago this month, back in 2019? [00:00:55] CD: Well, there was a pandemic, and you know, lucky for me the way that I cope with anxiety and stress is by writing. And so I wrote nine books, which are all coming out in a string, which has left me pretty busy—but in a good way. My friend Joey Dilla says, when life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla. So that’s definitely where I’m at now. [00:01:18] CM: You have a daily email newsletter, you have a podcast, and you’re on this nationwide book tour now, although you’re home now in California. When do you rest, huh? [00:01:27] CD: Well, when I rest, I think about how terrible everything is, and so I try to do as little of that as possible. I mean, my family and I go off and do things from time to time. But, yeah, I have always written as a way of processing the world, and the world needs a lot of processing, so I’m doing a lot of writing. [00:01:48] CM: Did your, uh, restlessness contribute to an unfortunate happening that I think shocked a lot of readers on February 5, 2024, when it was the most-tapped item in Chicago Public Square? And I’m gonna quote you here, “I was robbed $8,000-plus worth of fraud before I figured out what happened, and then he tried to do it again a week later.” What happened? [00:02:11] CD: Yeah, that was while I was taking a rest as it happened. So for Christmas break, my wife and I, and then my daughter and my parents joined us, went to one of my favorite places in the world, New Orleans. So, we landed and needed cash. So I went to an ATM in the French Quarter, was like a, a chase ATM, and the whole transaction ran and then it threw an error and said, we can’t give you your money. I was like, Ugh, what a pain. And later on, we were walking through town and we passed a credit union’s ATM branc
