You have to wade past a ton shit you’d never purposely look at, get side tracked along the way, and still never see everything you originally set out to see. It’s a never ending loot box for content.
You have to wade past a ton shit you’d never purposely look at, get side tracked along the way, and still never see everything you originally set out to see. It’s a never ending loot box for content.
How the scrollbar works says nothing about what’s on the page. You could make similar claims about web pages in general — you never really know if you’ll get what you were looking for. If anything, having to click “next” to try again would make it more like a loot box. But still not much like a loot box, usually.
Everything is a lootbox if you find something to bet on.
The difference is the intention.
In general, a webpage has all the information it thinks you need. A forum allows the user to choose what content they want.
You find what you’re looking for, you get the laugh, rub one out, whatever, call it a day and go about your business.
Oh, no, no, no… there’s so much more attention to extract from the user… with a game.
Conversely, a scroll is designed to manipulate your dopamine by restricting your ability to choose and creating artificial scarcity. They deliberately inject not only ads and propaganda but content you’re not interested in so that you will have to continually chase the content. The “loot” is the content. The “loop” is their payoff.
In fact, behavioral science has identified the optimal range of hit to miss odds your brain calculates that keeps target seeking behavior at the highest level.
Ever notice the “not interested in this kind of content” buttons don’t work very well? Or are temporary at best? Hmm, wonder why that is. The illusion of choice, the restriction of choice, curated randomness… it’s all packaged in the infinite scroll.
Of course, cut out the creepy stuff and it still functions as a kind of interactive content experience which is why it’s pervaded every site. Too bad it’s a shit design that wastes your time.
I do not accept “infinite scroll” as shorthand for all that bullshit. I don’t like infinite scroll much myself, for other reasons, but this is the Fediverse. There are plenty of people around here looking at pages containing nothing but things in chronological order posted by people they chose to follow, and choosing to load more by scrolling down.