Fork me, I'm done

I've always been fond of contranyms, words that can mean their own opposites depending on context. My UX experience has taught me a similar one: Dysepiphany aka "Oh, riiight. This sucks."

I started mucking around with front-end code in the 90s. A big animation fan, I fell hard for Adobe Flash. Motion made things more connected, more clear, and more delightful — which put me in such esteemed company as Vitruvius, Dreyfuss, and Norman.

But it's time to acknowledge the 800-pound neon-gradient affordance in the room. The one that says "Flush me." Yep, it's all gone down the crapper.

It used to be fun to make stuff online. Hectic, sure, but also strange and wonderful if you had the patience to dig. Who knew digital would swallow the world? Once capitalism got its grubby mitts on everything, it all went to hell. We got enshittification in our peanut butter.

Flash got killed. ISPs throttled content. "Don't be a dick" somehow became a violation of free speech. And the porn. So. Much. Porn.

And as much as I hate to admit it, I'm aging out of the workforce. I used to dream of having my own office. Now I work in a corporate Habitrail — cheek-by-jowl with a sea of IT nerds, awash in vocal fry, the clack-a-lacka of mechanical keyboards, and the metronomic tok and tumult of endless ping-pong blood feuds.

Meetings? Meetings are hell. Mark Twain called golf "a good walk spoiled." As a lover of language and a heartfelt appreciator of deep conversation, I say this: Meetings are good words sharpened. Into invisible knives. Shoved in your ears. Over and over. Like a prison shiv. (You get me, I'll stop now.)

Yes, of course, I'm a hypocrite. I've worked in this field most of my career. I've made a decent living, worked in some posh environments, drunk my share of liquid lunches with my fellow douchebags. How many amazing, world-changing UIs do I have to show for it? Bupkiss. I've made minor improvements to mediocre interfaces for small batches of users. I've spent the most productive years of my life polishing virtual turds.

So I'm dropping the cloth and washing my hands.

Sure, the stuff I create from now on probably won't be world-shattering, either. But it will be mine. And I won't have to sit in any more meetings feeling my soul slowly slither out of my body like loose stool.

Yours in fetid failure,
the letter F.

Sorry for all the scatological talk in this post. They won't all be like this. I hope.