‘Phantom Obligation’ ⇥ terrygodier.com

Terry Godier, in an article nominally about RSS readers, but applicable for any app that sends notifications of any kind:

An interface that shows you an unread count is making an argument: that reading is something to be counted, that progress is something to be measured, that your relationship to this content is one of obligation.

We should be more conscious of which arguments we’re immersing ourselves in, hour after hour, day after day.

This is the kind of essay that has gotten me to rethink my own habits. I am the kind of sicko who enables badges on most types of communication apps, and it is often unnecessary. I do not actually think of reading my feeds as a task list, so why do I enable features to create that implication? It is madness, and it is my own fault.