[Louis]

Who is this guy? pretty much summarized the past decade of dealing with WordPress clients who are constantly gaslit into buying the “current thing” when in reality their basic WP theme from 2014 was probably all they needed

https://lukeplant.me.uk/blog/posts/no-one-actually-wants-simplicity/

…literally why SlickStack was created, to fight FOMO disinformation and affiliate bro marketing tactics while enforcing and evangelizing simplicity best practices!

[Matthew]

I mean

The reason that modern web development is swamped with complexity is that no one really wants things to be simple. We just think we do, while our choices prove otherwise.

A lot of developers want simplicity in the same way that a lot of clients claim they want a fast website. You respond “OK, so we can remove some of these 17 Javascript trackers and other bloat that’s making your website horribly slow?” – no, apparently those are all critical business functionality.

In other words, they prioritise everything over speed. And then they wonder why using their website is like rowing a boat through a lake of molasses on a cold day using nothing but a small plastic spoon.

[Jack]

Pretty much WordPress in a nutshell for the past decade.

[Judy]

It’s true. FOMO works especially well on Americans. It’s a natural extension of their ego, pretending they believe in equality and sufficiency but secretly believing they are morally and rationally superior, and deserve more. The uber-individualist.

[Lisa]

It’s true. FOMO works especially well on Americans. It’s a natural extension of their ego, pretending they believe in equality and sufficiency but secretly believing they are morally and rationally superior, and deserve more. The uber-individualist.

Why are American consumers so easy to brainwash??

[Elizabeth]

wow.

[Beverly]

Another way to summarize Luke’s point is “why do people say they want things when they actually want the opposite” and yah, that’s an entire psychology book lol

[Dennis]

These are the same people who buy 25 books with titles like KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID and ORGANIZING YOUR TIME and s**t like that. They don’t mean any of it. Its a fake attempt at simplifying their lives by in fact complicating them. People who actually value simplicity are not buying books like that, and are not hiring people to simplify their websites because they are already “simple” I think, or they figure it out by themselves.

In other words, the clients who value simplicity, you don’t meet them often. Because they are not hiring people as much. They are more self-sufficient or simply choose to not pay money for things like websites or web developers.

[Billy]

[Lisa]

one of the comments in his page was interesting –>

This may be because of loss aversion, but it also seems like human psychology is just biased against removing things to improve stuff.

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2021/04/14/why-people-forget-that-less-is-often-more

[Joyce]

low IQ people don’t know what they want, they just consume and sheep

[Maria]

another relevant HN share

https://ploum.net/2023-08-01-splitting-the-web.html

[Pamela]

I kind of disagree with the “Splitting the Web” argument; the guy seems to be claiming that there are only two possibilities – either you choose to use (or create) enormous bloated web sites with a million trackers, or else you go with something incredibly primitive like Gemini. I don’t understand this. Why can’t you just use the features of the web in moderation – take all the good stuff, but skip all the bloated nonsense? Why do you have to choose one extreme side or the other? Being a moderate used to be considered a good thing! (and I think it still is)

[Jacqueline]

I kind of disagree with the “Splitting the Web” argument; the guy seems to be claiming that there are only two possibilities – either you choose to use (or create) enormous bloated web sites with a million trackers, or else you go with something incredibly primitive like Gemini.

true, some of the HN dudes are a bit extreme, preaching to their choir. who can be the more extreme minimalist, who is trying harder to appear to be not trying at all. a lot of those guys have well paying jobs (not freelancers) and then talk trash about WordPress and marketing stuff, as if the rest of the world is highly paid geeks who have time to browse Mastodon servers on weekdays and shouldn’t care about consumerism.

but his point about Adblock is true. pretty much a lot bias these days in tracking habits toward low IQ and low tech population… if you’re trying to make Adsense revenue these days you better not be targeting highly educated audience

[Jonathan]

Imagine the Elementor users reading this thread lmao

[Author]

Posts