Even the very best software fails to understand ADHD & OCD, today, along with many other neuro-divergent traits that exist but aren’t directly in scope for this particular topic.
I’m thinking about what happened to me at around 01h30, this morning, when I turned on my PC to quickly check the weather before retiring.
My PC runs Linux, has an SSD, and boots in eleven seconds from a cold start so I actually shut it down to save electricity whenever possible. I had forgotten to check the weather forecast. What should have happened was this: I press the power-button, I open Firefox which navigates to about:blank (the only remaining safe-haven on the web) and I click a bookmark that takes me to a Norwegian weather service that presents a delightfully details and entirely unanimated forecast page – no fear of surprises – then, I shut down.
Eleven seconds after pressing the power-button, KDE Plasma 6.2 popped up a nag for donations.
Now, I understand that KDE is a rather excellent, free and open-source software and I think they deserve all the support that they can get but – right then – trying to understand what the new and unusual and unexpected popup was, why something that doesn’t usually happen (and shouldn’t be happening on my machine) was showing, and whether it meant something was broken, and deal with all the emotions of the disruption of my expectations was something I strongly resented at 01h30 in the morning.
If I ever was to donate (and, I would, but I’m unemployed at the moment so I can’t afford it) I can also assure you it wouldn’t be a part of the check-the-weather-because-I-forgot workflow and I wouldn’t be doing it at 01h30 in the morning unless I was drunk.
All they earned was resentment.
There is a reason why the things in my kitchen always go into their places and the knives are always sharp. There is a reason why the stuff in my bathroom goes into particular places and my wardrobe is organised “just so”: I understand the cost of surprises. I do not spend that cost on things that do not warrant it but reserve that energy for things that do.
Mozilla did this in Firefox, some years back: pushing a modal, full-window popup in my face just to let me know there was a new features for picking a colour scheme! (It didn’t go away when one mashed escape, either.)
Microsoft – not purveyors of the very best software – do this constantly. Every website that uses a timer or mouse-leave events to dim the page and show a light-box nag does this. Indeed, much of my ire towards KDE is because this surprise-nag behaviour is something I associate with abusive patterns employed by very worst – KDE should know better.
These vendors either fail to understand that surprises carry a cost – for me and many others – or they underestimate that cost, or they simply disrespect the impact it might have.
All they earn is resentment.
OCD comes into this story: I obsessively had to understand what KDE’s novel donation popup was – it resembled a notification and I’ve turned as many of those off as possible so any that yet appear must be vitally important, I thought.
When it became clear that nothing was on fire, my reaction was one of rage that yet another thing had judged it fair to abuse my attention – as is today’s norm. Confusion, then rage and revulsion, were felt long before I’d actually figured out that this was just a nag for donations by a project I normally praise.
It’s a great “new feature” in KDE Plasma 6.2. It is supposed to show up once a year[1] and I know myself: I know I’ll either forget about it soon enough to re-ride this wave of negative emotions and unpleasant surprise this time, next year, or – worse! – I’ll dwell on it and stressfully, likely sub-consciously, anticipate KDE-Nag-Month towards next December. [2]
No. The popup must be extirpated and, blessed-be-FOSS, it can be. (I read some of the discussions on the merge-request pertaining to the popup and they thought about that. I respect that.)
The nag engendered uncharitable sentiment but, with regards to the likelihood of my donating to KDE, my banishing of it is independent. I would love to feel financially free enough to splash cash about. I am not so sure that KDE would be top of the list[3] but they would certainly be on the list, quite high up, and being flush to fund others and indulge in generosity is pretty much my number-1 motivation to earn money at all after food, shelter and healthcare are covered.
Perhaps I, alone, get enraged by software that disrupts my expectations of what will appear, interrupts my intended task, fritters away my attention, surprises me often nastily, and curses me to revisit and re-navigate the exceedingly well-charted, choppy straights of outrage.
The prevalence of this sort of annoyance, particularly in today’s software, certainly suggests that these patterns do earn positive utility value for the vendors. Do the majority not mind? Do they favour rating the apps they open, run an OS because they actually want to upgrade to the next version that wouldn’t even run on their hardware, move to close a browser-tab because they actually want to sign up for a newsletter, or open their browser because they had a whim to pick a new colour scheme?
Are the majority of people inured to interruption?
Somewhere, it was also mentioned that it is only supposed to be presented to users who do not visit KDE sites and aren’t likely to have seen their other outreach campaigns. Exactly how do they get that data, I wonder. ↩︎
Writing this rant, here, is me trying to flush out my resentment so I don’t dwell on it any longer. I’m sorry. ↩︎
They certainly wouldn’t be above Signal, my masto. instance, Codeberg, a whole queue of indie game developers, several musicians and a handful of writers … ↩︎
Yes and no. They are there because they work, but at the same time more seasoned people filter out anything that looks like an “ad”.
In the early 2000s, the abuse of bright colors in ads, and in particular of red color, lead to a lot of people becoming “red blind”. As in, putting a red “log in” button on a website, had people stumble around looking for it, because they were trained to ignore anything red in a browser.
Nowadays ads use other patterns, but I’ve found it helpful to train oneself by playing ad-supported games on a smartphone: when the ad comes, usually in 30 seconds blocks, put the phone down and count back from 30. After enough repetitions, it becomes easier to ignore sudden interruptions.
In aviation they call it startle training, but the same strategies work for all kind of stressors.
That’s very interesting. I wonder what such studies/ideas would say about folks who do anything they can to never see an advert.
No immunity + no exposure = …great as long as you keep it that way.
I’d say… nowadays few people can avoid “all” exposure, so they’re going to end up doubly stressed: from the marginal cases + from keeping them marginal. Depending on each person, the minima for “immunity vs. exposure” will vary, finding them will require some trial and error. Since it’s an evolving system, revisits will be required over time.
Thank you for the answer!
I guess the KDE team just triggered my “see red” response. I saw an unfamiliar notification and immediately went on the offensive because of how often attention-stealing and attention abuses in general are exploited by bad actors.
I know the concept of startle-training very well. It has, in fact, been part of my training for certain volunteer roles that were carried out in stressful, objectively dangerous and high-risk scenarios but those were all In Real Life. They were all for a cause in which I believed – I volunteered to be there.
It is precisely so I have patience and resilience to handle those In Real Life scenarios that I so jealously guard my attention when I don’t judge that frittering it away on silly annoyances is warranted.
Makes sense.
BTW, kudos for using Gentoo (probably the most OCD distro). I’m afraid you’ll get more of these triggers though, since there is a monetary incentive to introduce them… at least until we figure out a generic way to make FLOSS financially viable.