It doesn’t come across insulting at all. It comes across as naive.

Like, it literally has a Wikipedia page and doesn’t mention anything else.

I mean, literally isn’t used to mean just figuratively. It’s actually an exaggeration to mean that the concept is so strong that it literally triggered the figurative comparison for real. Context is key there. And context is important. That’s the great thing about that though is you rarely need extra information to show which definition you mean. If I said it’s so hot outside that I’m literally on fire, you don’t need to question the meaning.

But here? Let’s be honest. The word usage has exploded on Lemmy. They wanted so badly to use the term in the cool way. No one would have used the word that way before. No one uses its ‘literal’ definition now really. Because it’s generally not how humans in society have discussions. No one describes the enshitification of something as a clinical description. If it were used as a joke? Sure. But now it’s either someone so divorced from reality that they don’t even know how to communicate or it’s just folks who heard the word, thought it was cool, but didn’t really understand it. That’s all that is. I can’t believe folks are trying to defend the “evolution” of language on one hand by describing a loss of accuracy and clarity in language, but then on the ither hand defending it from some weird historical perspective. It’s honestly entertaining to see people come at this and argue with entirely contradictory points of view. “Words change meaning and this is it’s new meaning” vs “that’s been its meaning forever”. Like, let’s try to at least coordinate the defense of the person who wanted to sound cool. No one says “enshittified” in place of “it’ll go to shit” or “get fucked”. But instead you expect me to believe this is some ole-timey bastard saying, “sir, it will be enshittified.” Come on buddy. It’s weird you even thought all those words you spoke would sound insulting. Like you actually had a good point or something. See? That last bit there. That’s what something insulting sounds like.