Decline and Orkutization

As more working-class people like Raquel populated Orkut, wealthier Brazilians began to complain about having to share the online platform with a mass of new users whom they viewed as “backward” and “loud.”

But as the upper classes switched from Orkut to the more internationally renowned Facebook, the lower-income population followed. The same platform that had once felt exciting and socially important quickly began to feel abandoned.

In only a couple of years, from 2007 to 2009, Orkut went from being the coolest place anyone could be to becoming a sort of online ghost town. Google officially terminated the site in 2014.

The decline of Orkut was not only technological. It was also social, cultural, and class-based.

One thing remained: Brazilians still use the term “Orkutization” to describe the process by which people considered backward or possessing poor taste quickly populate a new social media platform, such as Twitter or Instagram.