[HN Gopher] Goblin's Law of Whimsy
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Goblin's Law of Whimsy
Author : herbertl
Score : 26 points
Date : 2022-10-09 03:19 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.goblinapp.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.goblinapp.com)
| meheleventyone wrote:
| This kinda feels like there needs to be some self-reflection.
| From the article:
|
| > For me, the whimsy trend all began with Flow Club. Their
| tagline is "Feel good getting work done" - that is so against
| modern hustle culture and American workplace vibes that it's
| almost jolting.
|
| To me this sounds more like a coping mechanism as are all the
| other productivity err.. "enhancements" mentioned. If only we
| made work more _jazz hands_ it'd be better rather than improving
| the material conditions it's conducted under.
|
| Similar to gamification it's taking the wrong lessons.
| morelisp wrote:
| "Feel good getting work done" is the overwhelmingly dominant
| modern hustle culture vibe. But why self-reflect when your flow
| group will applaud instead?
|
| > When you refresh the page, your Hype Goblin has a new message
| for you.
|
| I want off.
| xracy wrote:
| We at Strex Corp believe that you should be at your most
| productive, and smiling helps that. Please smile while you
| work. And come on down to the company picnic so we can be
| more productive.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| Would you rather the opposite?
|
| The "irreverent" attitude is a hallmark of (US) west-coast
| (dare I say, Silicon Valley) post-hippie culture, which
| rose in reaction to the more straight-laced East Coast work
| culture.
|
| The pendulum swings.
| morelisp wrote:
| Just hear me out: flexible, relaxed office standards but
| also no mandatory fun.
|
| (But I guess there's literally only two cities in the
| world.)
| klondike_klive wrote:
| Here's the nap room - don't be seen using it.
| twic wrote:
| > Their tagline is "Feel good getting work done" - that is so
| against modern hustle culture and American workplace vibes that
| it's almost jolting.
|
| No, this is perfectly resonant with modern American workplace
| vibes. Being against modern American workplace vibes would be
| Slack Off And Steal Office Supplies Club.
| wwilim wrote:
| I just did a powerpoint about how we should avoid integration
| hell in a project by releasing early. The timeline only had
| "now", "God only knows when" and "much earlier than God only
| knows when". There was an architecture diagram with devil emojis
| bouncing on each arrow. I also had two consecutive slides which
| were fullscreen memes of Beelzeboss going on and on how every
| service Jack Black makes needs CI/CD, a dashboard, Correlation
| IDs, auth, and it all takes time
| nicbou wrote:
| I'm fine with boring-looking internet. Usually, websites are
| means to an end. The content or the functionality is what
| matters. I end up reading a lot of websites with Pocket or
| Firefox's reader mode.
|
| Perhaps it's because a lot of the whimsy feels insincere, or
| comes at the wrong moment. Perhaps it's because I value self-
| effacing tools. Either way, I'm okay with boring pages.
| throw10920 wrote:
| You got it, boring internet is good. Branding, goofiness
| distract from the substance. If I go to Slack I want to get
| work done, and I'd rather that the devs focus their efforts on
| improving performance and not adding _more_ tiny distractions
| to my day. If I want fun, I 'll go to Reddit, which does "fun"
| way better than Slack ever will.
|
| After the Slack devs finish making their product as performant
| as a 90's chat app, _then_ they can start adding in silly
| things. Until then, the "whimsy" just makes me more frustrated
| at their trash product.
| Zababa wrote:
| One thing that I don't really like is when people take care of
| the whimsical before taking care of the basics, good design, good
| UX, properly-tested software, good docs and good support.
|
| For example, on this page, the links, the first quote and the
| image captions don't respect the minimum contrast rules for
| accessibility. Lots of images don't have an alternative text.
| Image captions are right-aligned, which could be a style thing,
| but looks weird. On the good side of things, the performance is
| good, 95 according to Lighthouse.
|
| The article seems to agree with me, as Henry, the vacuum, is
| better on a technical level than the vacuum it replaced. When
| people are using a website, they are trying to do something. I
| get frustrated by tools that get in my way.
|
| I also think that different people have different degrees of
| tolerance/liking of whimsical. Flow Club or the Hype Goblin don't
| resonate with me at all, they alienate me.
|
| My personal preference is simple and clean-looking design, like
| for example https://www.gov.uk/. It's not cold, but it also
| doesn't try to pretend that it's a good friend when we don't even
| know each other.
|
| One company that, to me, does it well, is Beeminder. I think the
| way I would put it is that through all their documentation,
| branding and interactions, I feel like they have a genuine intent
| of building a win/win relationship with me. Nobody is trying to
| abuse the situation for their own gain, there are clear rules
| that we both respect, they get some value thanks to me, and I get
| some value thanks to them. It feels like being in the prisoner's
| dilemma with someone and knowing they'll cooperate.
|
| I'm not affiliated with them, just a happy client.
| dwohnitmok wrote:
| It's tricky. Too much of this and it comes off as inauthentic and
| a company "trying too hard." Anecdotally I feel like this is a
| complaint that comes up from time to time on HN, but I can't find
| any examples at the moment. This is especially the case if all
| companies in the industry start doing this. See for example how
| many company products now have emojis splashed everywhere.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Slack does it, when you clear out your unreads.
| All clear. Everything's sorted! Let's
| start something new. You're all read.
| Here's a pony. There! Caught up. Set your
| mind to something new. All done. The
| future is yours. Done and done. All
| done. The world is your oyster.
|
| etc.
|
| Salesforce is _not_ a small company, and not one known for
| whimsy.
| mkaic wrote:
| I think this is actually a fascinating difference between the
| cultures surrounding Slack and Discord. Both use this
| language--in fact, Discord uses it much more liberally,
| sprinkling all sorts of silly things around the UI--but
| because Discord is _meant_ to be casual, it doesn 't come
| across as cringey like it does in Slack.
|
| There's lots of little details about Discord that make this
| work, too, from the layperson-readable changelogs written
| with an informal, friendly tone, to the Discord YouTube
| channel, which from what I can tell is basically just Discord
| paying some young people to do whatever they want to
| transparently market the product to Gen Z in a genuine, non-
| patronizing way.
|
| I'm of the opinion that Discord has a much better user
| experience than Slack, and the only reasons I don't campaign
| to switch my lab over to it are:
|
| a.) Slack has entrenchment/status-quo advantage, and
|
| b.) Slack says it's "for professionals" while Discord targets
| "normal people", and heaven forbid we not use the product
| with "professional" stamped on it in our highly
| "professional" workspace!
|
| TL;DR: I wish Discord would launch a marketing campaign
| targeted at middle managers saying "professionals use Discord
| too", I'm pretty sick of Slack at this point.
| insightcheck wrote:
| Slack also lets users easily make a group chat. In my
| experience, backed up by [1], Discord requires you to
| "Friend" members of the group chat before it lets you
| create the chat (requiring the user to send out a friend
| request, then wait for an acceptance, before starting the
| chat).
|
| You could argue that group conversations are best suited
| for new channels, but I've personally had a lot of value
| from quick group chats in my experience.
|
| [1] https://support.discord.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/223657667-Grou...
| dmonitor wrote:
| Discord also has threads, which are incredibly useful.
| Basically a short-lived subchannel that people can join.
| They fill a similar role to group chats.
| tehnub wrote:
| Discord doesn't have threads* though, does it? To me
| that's one of the most important features of Slack. I've
| tried following discussions in Discord, and it's
| infuriating; there doesn't seem to be a way to look at a
| message's replies -- you can only follow threads
| "backwards".
|
| * https://slack.com/help/articles/115000769927-Use-
| threads-to-...
| twic wrote:
| Discord has a feature called threads, but it works
| differently to any other feature called threads anywhere
| else. You can pick an existing comment, create a thread
| starting at that comment, give that thread a name, and it
| works like a mini-channel - people can post comments in
| the thread, and they appear there, and not in the channel
| (there is no option to also post a message to the
| channel). Threads appear in the sidebar under their
| parent channels, and there's some UI to show that a
| comment has a thread hanging off it. After some period of
| inactivity, threads are archived, and no longer appear,
| but you can find them somehow.
|
| We use them now and then on the gang group chat, but they
| don't feel as comfortable as Slack threads. I'm not sure
| why.
|
| It's a bit weird that you name threads, rather than just
| replying to a root comment.
|
| Discord also now has a thing called "forums", which is
| basically a highly mutated channel that works like a
| bulletin board. People make posts rather than comments,
| and there is a reply chain off each post. The structure
| is fundamentally the same as comments and threads, but
| it's laid out very differently.
| LawTalkingGuy wrote:
| Slack is an acquisition, right? Did the whimsy come before or
| after?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Before.
|
| We'll have to see how it lasts.
|
| I use Slack, but that's because everyone else uses it.
|
| I'm not especially happy with it. It's pretty buggy.
|
| https://twitter.com/iamdevloper/status/926458505355235328
| dwohnitmok wrote:
| I'm not sure if you were trying to provide an example, but if
| you were, I was trying to find an example where someone
| complains about the whimsy in a product, but it looks like
| you kind of elicited one in a reply to your comment, so ha
| yeah I guess that counts.
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