Cynical Software (Web)

We cannot tear down the entire stack. The threats are real. Hackers exist. Fraud exists. But we can choose a different philosophy. Here is a manifesto for earnest software:

Two reasons: metrics and abuse.

Metrics: Every click is a conversion. Every minute inside the app is engagement. Every canceled subscription is churn. Software evolved to optimize for business retention, not user happiness. If making it annoyingly hard to leave improves quarterly retention by 0.7%, cynical features ship by Friday.

Abuse: For every honest user, there are bots, fraudsters, and trolls. CAPTCHAs, rate limits, and aggressive “are you human?” checks are necessary — but they spill over. Soon, everyone is treated like a potential attacker. Trust becomes a bug. cynical software

Cynical software does not just waste your time. It erodes your sense of agency.

Think about the last time you tried to unsubscribe from a newsletter. You clicked “Unsubscribe” and were taken to a page that said, “We’re sad to see you go. To confirm, enter your email, then check your inbox for a confirmation link, then click a second link, then rate your reason for leaving 1-5 stars.”

By the fourth step, you didn’t feel angry. You felt tired. You felt stupid. You whispered, “Is it me? Am I the problem?” We cannot tear down the entire stack

That feeling—learned helplessness—is the goal. When users believe they cannot control their digital environment, they stop trying. They pay the subscription they forgot about. They leave the notifications on. They accept the default privacy settings.

Cynical software manufactures apathy.

The next frontier is terrifying. We are now building large language models and generative AI into everything. The business model for AI is currently: free beta, then paid subscription. We are already seeing the seeds

But imagine cynical AI.

We are already seeing the seeds. Some AI image generators generate watermarked results unless you pay. Some chatbots give vague, circular answers to force you to ask more questions (consuming more tokens, generating more revenue).

If we do not learn from the last twenty years of cynical UI patterns, we will build a generation of cynical AI that is even harder to escape because it will talk to us like a friend while picking our pockets.