rant – Nullrouted Space

2022-06-23

The New Vergecast Logo Sucks

So it’s cool that the Vergecast is getting a new two-a-week episode format, that’s actually great but man what the hell is up with that new logo? What is that blue background? I think its the worst shade of blue I’ve ever seen and blue is my favourite colour! It looks like its trying to bore a hole into my brain with it garish brightness.

What is that font? It looks atrocious, what did you do to that poor “g”? It looks like a “o” taking a shit. The “t” looks like it had its arms cut off. Just horrid. Let’s the talk about that “The” just hanging out above. Like somebody forgot about the fact that the podcast is actually called “The Vergecast” and quickly fingerpainted it on in yellow.

I can’t even enjoy the cool Vergecast references sitting in the middle because of all the other crap distracting me. Ugh.

2021-01-282021-01-28

Account Walls

Screenshot from a blog post page on Medium showing a nag to read the rest of the post with a free account.

I am going to start calling this kind of nag from a website a account wall. This particular example is from a post on Medium which I cannot read without signing up for a Medium account. Why? Well as it always is its for “””engagement””” reasons, signing up for an account makes you more likely to “””engage””” with the service. It means they can possibly ~~send~~ spam you notifications and try to upsell you some subscription service.

Folks, please stop using Medium for your blog posts, go sign up for a WordPress.com account instead so your readers don’t get barraged with Medium’s incessant attempts to increase “””engagement”””.

2019-12-01

Your long Twitter thread should be a blog post

Every once in a while someone on my various timelines shares a link to an interesting thread of posts on Twitter and every time I click on it, its all like “hmm, this is interesting…ugh I sure wish this was posted literally anywhere else with a better reading experience” and then I stop reading because for a site designed to maximize “engagement” Twitter sure isn’t a pleasant place to actually engage with.

Twitter really isn’t a good way disperse large amounts of interesting information, its threaded design is meant for conversation and not blog post sized self-reply threads. Arguably, it isn’t very good for actual discussion either but I digress.

So this is a plea from me to you, potential long Twitter thread poster, please consider collecting those thoughts and posting it on your blog. If you do not have a blog, please consider getting one. I like WordPress but there are other options like Write.as or Medium. I have a lot of reservations about Medium but again I digress. If you really do not want to use a blog for whatever reason I have seen people use a service called TwitLonger to post long posts that are not suitable for threading.

So in conclusion I reiterate – Your long Twitter thread should be a blog post.