Software [updated]: Cynical

The user-hostile cynic does not stop at business metrics. She designs interfaces to be intentionally deceptive. These are known as —"a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things, such as buying overpriced insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills." Dark patterns represent design in the interest of someone other than the user, intended to coerce or trick the user into behaviors that benefit that non-user at the user's expense.

Research in behavioral psychology shows that unpredictable rewards (the "slot machine" model of pulling to refresh) create dopamine loops. But chronic dopamine loops lead to anhedonia—the inability to feel pleasure from normal, predictable sources. A walk in the park cannot compete with the algorithmic chaos of TikTok.

The shift began with the attention economy. When software became free (ad-supported) or subscription-based (recurring revenue), the alignment broke. Now, Adobe wants you to pay every month, so it makes canceling your subscription a nine-click labyrinth through a "retention survey." Now, Facebook wants you to keep scrolling, so it hides the "turn off notifications" button inside four nested menus.

Startups funded by venture capital face immense pressure to achieve exponential growth. Once a user base stabilizes, the company can no longer grow by acquiring new users. Instead, it must financialize its existing users. This transition is what writer Cory Doctorow famously termed the "enshittification" of platforms. The Metrics Obsession cynical software

When you find a piece of software that is boring —that does one thing, does it well, doesn't track you, and charges a flat fee—overpay for it. Buy the $5 ticket for the weather app. Donate to the open-source maintainers. Cynical software thrives on the ad economy. The subscription economy. The "free then hook" economy. Strip it of oxygen by rewarding boring utility.

Every morning, you wake up and reach for your phone. You swipe through a half-dozen notifications. You tap an icon, and the software opens. It greets you.

In distributed systems, one slow dependency can trigger a cascading failure across the entire application stack. Cynical software isolates external calls behind a pattern. The user-hostile cynic does not stop at business metrics

The network is inherently unreliable. Cynical software wraps every external interaction in aggressive timeouts and backoff strategies.

It never ends. The churn isn't innovation; it’s fashion.

To understand how cynical we have become, we must remember what software used to look like. In the 1990s and early 2000s, most commercial software was naive . Microsoft Word 97 wanted you to write documents. WinAmp wanted you to play MP3s. Photoshop 7 wanted you to retouch photos. The shift began with the attention economy

“Lower your expectations. We have.”

You try to export your data. The software says, “An unknown error occurred. Please try again later.” You try again. Same error. You contact support. Support says, “We do not support bulk exports for your plan.” The software knew exactly why it failed. It lied to you. It chose obscurity over honesty.

Users must constantly be on high alert to avoid accidental subscriptions, data leaks, or unwanted downloads.

Cynical software manufactures apathy.