[forgottenpass]

It felt like every day I had a notification waiting to be opened about how badly we had fucked up.

It's interesting that the author phrases it this way, and dove tails nicely into a thought I've been having about interaction on the internet for a while. I don't say this specifically to the author, but generically, it's even something I'm working on being more aware of.

Social tools and other apps have turned notifications into a Pavlovian variable-interval reward loop. This makes negativity even harder to handle. But seeing the system laid bare makes it easier to make decisions about.

The notification loop sort of evolved that way with texts, but is also a purposeful tool of manipulation. We politely don't conceptualize it as "manipulation" because there is weight to that word, and we don't necessarily assume the app designer is acting in bad faith. But it's still manipulative.

Think of it like this: Who _needs_ to be able to interrupt you every waking moment of your life? Then why are you letting a single person more? Disable notifications, and just set a recurring calendar event to check email/twitter/whatever.