The Get Off My Lawn Phase of Life

I think I’m entering the “Get off my lawn” phase of life, and it is centering around complaints about web design and user experience. Here is my latest.

I use Pocket — a great tool for saving things on the web to look at later. I subscribe, and am happy to pay them a few bucks a month for the excellent service. I save the articles, and schedule time to go back and read them.

But they have this “feature” that, by default, displays a stripped down version of the article that allegedly makes reading easier. At the top, they have a “View Original” link so you can link to the original article.

I hit that link 100% of the time. Every time. I never, ever, ever want to view the stripped down version they provide. I always, always, always want to view the original. However, Pocket doesn’t allow me to turn this thing off — I have to click “View Original” every time. I’ve searched, and there isn’t a way to turn it off.

And so I reported it to them, and they smiled nicely, patted me on the head, and sent me on my way. In other words, they ignored me.

And I find this incredible. I mean, it can’t be that difficult to implement. And it seems blatantly, openly obvious to me that this should be an option. I’m aware that it is a little thing, a first world problem, whatever. But I just find it irritating and amazing that they don’t change it.

Oh well.