Watching a grown man become slowly more enraged and infuriated over a relatively minor annoyance is always funny. But one Australian has turned it into an art form with ‘I Don’t Want Your F***ing App’.
I Don’t Want Your F***ing App is dedicated entirely to finding mobile websites that stop everything to throw up a dialogue that tries to blackmail you into cluttering your phone. It includes a screenshot of these messages, which are almost invariably a demand phrased as a request, and one designer going slowly insane in the blurb underneath. It’s getting to the point where every third word is profanity, and at this rate the text will probably be incoherent slurs of rage by June.
As funny as it is, though, the Tumblr actually has a pretty good point. Companies spend millions developing, testing, and refining their mobile website so that it works on phones, and then do their level best to keep people from actually using them in favor of an app that they clearly don’t want and frankly in many cases isn’t as good as the website.
Why, for example, would you download LinkedIn’s app, especially after the app was revealed to have some serious privacy holes? Why would you trust Quora with access to your phone when the website essentially tries to blackmail you into using the app? Any remotely savvy smartphone user knows that forcible app installation probably means they want something out of you, and it’s also likely something you don’t want to fork over.
So, in its own way, this Tumblr is a public service, provoking discussion of design and privacy. Or at least that’s how you should justify it to your boss if you get caught reading it at work.