shitter check

A self-aware or group-initiated pause to assess whether someone is currently acting like an asshole, either genuinely or performatively. Used in online discussions when someone's tone or behavior has crossed a line and peers call for a vibe check on their attitude.

Someone universally recognized as a terrible performer or insufferable presence, but whose awfulness is never directly addressed out loud — everyone knows it, nobody says it. The unspoken shitter exists in every group chat, workplace, and squad, acknowledged only through knowing glances.

A state of operating at a notably low or chaotic level — making bad decisions, producing poor work, or behaving insufferably. Entering shitter mode is usually involuntary, triggered by stress, fatigue, or just a terrible stretch of form, and recognized by everyone around you.

An enshittification check is a critical audit of a platform, product, or service to assess how far along the degradation cycle it has progressed — the deliberate process of measuring how much a once-useful digital experience has been hollowed out in the service of extracting value from its users and third parties. It borrows the community-validation format of 'X check' and applies it to Cory Doctorow's enshittification framework, inviting collective diagnosis: are the feeds worse? Is the algorithm more hostile? Is the free tier being strangled? Comes out positive far too often.

A prolonged period when a person, team, or situation is consistently performing badly or generating terrible output. Shitter szn implies the low quality is not a one-off but a recurring theme that has settled in for a while.