Fighting Big Tech with comedy instead of catastrophe

The Norwegian Consumer Council is fighting for consumer fairness and sustainability, tackling product death, very literally

‘The Life of Death and the Ensh*ttificator’ by the Norwegian Consumer Council is the latest instalment of its anti-tech campaign. The first drew millions of views and thousands of comments, prompting a lobbying campaign spanning 14 countries.

'The Life of Death and the Ensh*ttificator', created with NewsLab, is effective advertising then, wisely sticking to a proven trope this time, reviving the ridiculous villain first introduced in its previous campaign: a grotesque salesman whose sole purpose is making digital products progressively worse for consumers while extracting more profit from them.

The sequel introduces an even more unlikely companion: Death.

The campaign makes viewers dwell on the pitfalls on platform degradation by depicting it as the work of absurd cartoonish villains who detail their plot to make features disappear, rendering products moribund… or, well, dead.

Customers, the ad argues, become trapped inside ecosystems increasingly designed for shareholders rather than consumers.

The resulting film is unusual for what’s essentially a public policy communication, feeling more like an offbeat satire from Charlie Brooker.

Slow demise

The term "enshittification" was coined by writer Cory Doctorow to describe how digital platforms often begin by serving users to reel them in, before slowly prioritising commercial interests.

The Norwegian Consumer Council's decision to transform a dense regulatory issue into something meme-worthy and shareable, helps the campaign sit alongside other rare examples of successful issue-led satire, such as New Zealand's Covid humour campaigns, Greenpeace's parody work, or Patagonia's attacks on overconsumption.

The advertising industry often talks about "purpose done properly". This is what that looks like.