What is ‘deshitification’ in website copywriting?
The literal opposite of ‘enshitification’, it’s my sweary way of saying the internet needs de-f**king.
Everywhere you look, things are getting worse. Yes, that is a slightly apocalyptic statement, but bear with me.
Whether it's endless streaming ads on Amazon Prime or wankers at the gym having full-volume video calls, it takes the cheeriest of souls to truly believe that things today are on the up and up.
Which means things are getting shitter.
My bread and butter has been website copy for a decade. And the enshitification of websites is a real thing.
Here are eight things that have crept in over the last decade that you may not have noticed:
Hideous over-optimisation for SEO purposes.
Impenetrable preamble before recipes. Who set the rule that they must all be preceded by 12,000 words of ‘story’ and some bullshit about the writer’s grandma?
Blog strategies that ran out of steam three years ago – so the last-dated post makes it look like everyone at the company died in 2023.
Desperate explainer text everywhere screaming “Quote me!” to AI.
Chatbots that literally nobody in the world ever asked for.
The clear limitation of the English language when it comes to substitute words for ‘solutions’. So everybody just uses ‘solutions’ 127 times on their site.
Cookie-cutter AI-generated websites that look identical.
Frequently asked questions that nobody ever asked (OK, guilty as charged).
Basically, websites stopped being built for people visiting looking for stuff and started being built for search engines, with originality staved off at every turn by boring brand guidelines and approval committees.
S-h-i-t.
How deshitification reverses enshitification
I've had a lot of success with the word ‘deshitification,’ if I'm being honest. Reaching out to people on LinkedIn, it lands.
Here’s why: I think everybody secretly knows that most B2B websites are horrible and grey.
Sure, we have to be mindful of day-to-day constraints like that £35k you spent on a brand development specialist – but my goal is to push things.
Not a lot. But a little further than your consultant stipulates in their foot-thick book of guidelines.
This is especially relevant given today's glut of AI-generated B2B copy. For many marketing departments, the default setting now seems to be:
Hand all web work over to a member of the marketing team.
Get them to feed “brand” into your in-house AI.
Ask Claude or Gemini to create new content with the guardrails in place.
Check. A bit.
Hit ‘publish’.
I’m not knocking this – it’s quick and practical, and my back-of-an-envelope calculations reveal this has saved the industry £1,262,892,928.65 in copywriting fees.
But it’s taken originality and human sparkle out of the picture, too.
And that’s bad.
Accepting the AI reality
I'm no AI hater. It helps me do all kinds of things quickly, from assessing the nutritional value of salted cashew nuts to pointing out that the headline I was playing with is straight out of the 1995 corporate playbook (tough crowd!).
It forces me to rethink my work so I never settle for basic.
With AI on or AI off, my goal when working on web copy remains the same: deshitification.
Decoding hero statements so they drive home the benefits
Removing corporate waffle that sounds like David Brent
Making sure adjectives are really, really, really needed
Ditching generic CTAs
Fixing headlines that say nothing
Checking things link to where they’re supposed to
Killing confusing lines on contact forms
Once that’s been taken care of, possibilities to do nice things emerge, such as adding a distinctive voice and giving people clear next steps. You know: a bit of bollocks. Yes, even in B2B copywriting.
So deshitification is a process. It’s like peeling layers off an onion to find the core underneath – and then, er, giving it new clothes that aren’t straight out of Oxfam.
As I like to say to new LinkedIn contacts:
You aren't looking for a copywriter right now. I'm not looking for work right now. But one day you'll wake up and think, "Man, who do I call to deshitify this copy?" And on that very day, I may be free. So please connect – and file me under "Deshitification" ;)
Written by Mike Peake, actual human being UK website copywriter + freelance copywriting services (emails, ads, brochures, etc.).
T: +44 (0)208 133 4306
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