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Death to Bullshit

325 points by spking 11y ago

Encosia 11y ago
Be sure to click the "Turn bullshit on?" link at the top-right for a chuckle.
- halotrope 11y ago
  Well he totally forgot to fluff the actual content. Instead of just framing it differently.
  - notahacker 11y ago
    I wish he'd at least spread it over six pages, with a link to the next page positioned less prominently than a [mocked-up] Google AdSense ad-unit with arrow.
    - halotrope 11y ago
      Yes. I think the chrome added by ads and "bullshit" can be mitigated by adblockers, reader modes and careful selection of content. The sometime abysmal STR of some articles is far worse. Usually you have to invest at least a little time into figuring out if something is legit or a complete waste of time.
- Retr0spectrum 11y ago
  And the feedback form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1QAbZ0qm1Q3SwT3Ane2ZLi7I_cjAWyrDc58IhDc_Zo0Q/viewform?c=0&w=1 https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1QAbZ0qm1Q3SwT3Ane2ZLi7I_cjA...
  - robert_tweed 11y ago
    The "are you sure you want to leave this page" alert is a nice touch.
- wnevets 11y ago
  best of the page.
- 0xcde4c3db 11y ago
  Also be sure to note the infinite-scrolling "you may also like" section, which starts with regular clickbait, then starts repeating "stories", then... gets worse.
- Houshalter 11y ago
  I thought that was bad, but I noticed adblock was blocking 67 things. I turned it off and it is truly awful.
  - FilterSweep 11y ago
    Sadly, 67 things is actually low for most Alexa Top 1000 trafficked websites.
Retr0spectrum 11y ago
Reminds me of this site: http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  That was great. Thanks for the link.
- snake117 11y ago
  Bless you for sharing. I bookmarked it for those off days when I need a good laugh.
- AndyKelley 11y ago
  My site[1] looks like the site this site is making fun of. I tried using bettermotherfuckingwebsite's CSS and it made it worse, so I stuck with no CSS. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ [1]: http://genesisdaw.org/ http://genesisdaw.org/
SandB0x 11y ago
Now this is cheap populism I can get behind!
xd1936 11y ago
This is great. Reminds me of Jon Stewart's speech that he gave on his last show. Video and transcription: http://leoherzog.com/jon-stewarts-incredible-bullsht-speech http://leoherzog.com/jon-stewarts-incredible-bullsht-speech
- kristianc 11y ago
  I like, unwittingly or not, the incredibly bullshitty framing of the title of that post.
mojuba 11y ago
Can't say how effective this campaign can be, but I'm glad QR codes are now officially included in the list of bullshit. Can't agree more.
- reinhardt 11y ago
  Are QR codes still a thing? Or were they ever a thing? Dunno, my brain seems to filter them out automatically, I rarely notice them.
  - eponeponepon 11y ago
    This seems apt: http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/ http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/
  - Canada 11y ago
    I just used one to board a plane. It worked well, that's no bullshit.
    - mojuba 11y ago
      I think it was probably an unjustified replacement for a simple bar code in your case. I check in using bar codes usually :)
      - Canada 11y ago
        I know you're joking, but if you were told to write a ticket system today, what would you choose? QR codes are an international standard, have plenty of good libraries to generate and process them, can store more information, have excellent error correction, and easily scan from odd angles. Other types of bar codes... not so much. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcode#Types_of_barcodes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcode#Types_of_barcodes
- jessaustin 11y ago
  I guess I haven't seen enough of them in the wild to get annoyed by them? The use case seems to be to refer someone who sees a poster or other printed work to a URL, and when I've seen QRs used for that it has seemed reasonable. Are you seeing them in some other, less reasonable context?
afarrell 11y ago
This page talks mostly about interface bullshit, but people are also tired of content bullshit. To paraphrase from Harry Frankfurt, this is content produced not to conceal truth, but without regard for for it whatsoever. If to lie is to murder truth, to bullshit is to manslaughter it. Producing bullshit is more profitable because it still attracts eyeballs (and therefore ad revenue), but is much less costly to produce. Thats why the presence of large amounts of ads, needless pagination, and interface bullshit are a reasonable indicator of content bullshit.
- Eupolemos 11y ago
  > If to lie is to murder truth, to bullshit is to manslaughter it. I believe "manslaughter" and "murder" should be switched around here. IIRC, Harry Frankfurt argued that bullshit was worse than lies, since it corroded this simple but for-society-to-function-in-the-long-run incredibly important distinction (or aspiration).
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    I like a quote by Steven Kaas: "Promoting less than maximally accurate beliefs is an act of sabotage. Don't do it to anyone unless you'd also slash their tires."
  - afarrell 11y ago
    The analogy I'm drawing here is to the intent, rather than the effect. Murder is intentional. Manslaughter is reckless.
shostack 11y ago
As much as I dislike some of the current trends (and I do digital media for a living mind you), I do have to point out that this stuff wouldn't be done if it didn't work. Ultimately this implies that there are enough people out there who engage with or...dare I say...want...the bullshit, that their collective voice outweighs those that do not simply by the fact that those are often the users who click ads, share things, and otherwise generate more value and revenue for the publishers than those that do not. While the arms race to fight this stuff is commendable (I myself run at least NoScript at home and it is beautiful), I can't help but think the only way to win is to not play. By that I mean coming up with revenue alternatives for publishers that not only generate more revenue than this approach, but also provide a direct incentive to not use these things. If such magical solution existed, they would switch of their own volition. Instead, they focus their efforts and dollars (and by extension the focus of an entire industry that has been built on those dollars) on adding more items to the list of bullshit.
- rayiner 11y ago
  The problem is that bullshit is a negative externality. It's cognitive pollution. Those who clutter the world with bullshit reap the rewards of nabbing the suckers who respond to it, but don't pay the costs of imposing those cognitive loads on everyone else. That leads to more bullshit than would be economically efficient. Take a simple example like billboards. If billboard advertisers had to pay every person whose life experience is degraded by seeing a billboard for a product they'd never buy, the equilibrium amount of billboard advertising would go way down.
  - noir_lord 11y ago
    That's an interesting concept, it makes the cumulative attention span of the people exposed something akin to tragedy of the commons.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      It's worse. In a typical tragedy of the commons scenario, common resource eventually get depleted and the responsible parties leave. Here, you can't really deplete the commons, you can only compete for the share in it. Which means there is no limit within the system for the negative feedback loop that occurs. Advertisers play a zero-sum game, committing more and more resources to one-up each other. They're wasting ever increasing amount of fuel, minerals and man hours on epsilon marginal benefit. Those are real, tangible costs for society.
deleted 11y ago
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jessaustin 11y ago
People's capacity for bullshit is rapidly diminishing Even though this proposition is in bold 20-pt type, no arguments were offered to support it. It isn't obviously true, and indeed there are reasons to suspect the converse. Dare I say it, but a bald emotionally-appealing assertion of this sort seems sort of like... bullshit?
- hiq 11y ago
  I recall only one person in dozens not having an ad blocker installed on his computer (how painful it was). Also many people pay for premium accounts on music streaming services instead of hearing ads once in a while. I think that, when given the choice (which is sometimes a few technical skills away), people would opt for less bullshit. Of course that's only a valid argument when bullshit is not the main product. I don't doubt websites such as buzzfeed and 9gag will keep on thriving.
pudo 11y ago
Lovely. An anti-bullshit manifesto that talks about "experiences" and "the rise of" various things. I'm sold.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- chestnut-tree 11y ago
  It's true: a lot of bullshit could simply be eliminated with plain English. And the technology field (from development to design to UX) is overflowing with inflated writing and unnecessary jargon in articles, blog entries, design guides, and documentation. A specific example relating to UX: I always point people to this gov.uk design guide as an excellent example of clear writing that is easy to understand. It's not perfect, but it avoids being too wordy and I think it's a good example to emulate https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/user-centred-design/resources/patterns https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/user-centred-design/resour...
andyidsinga 11y ago
see also, the book, "On Bullshit" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit ) This book should have a spot on everyone's desk in hard copy. Use it as a coaster, walk around with it in the hallways, take it to meetings. No need to preach from it though - its very presence will be enough of a sign to others re: your tolerance levels of the amount of bullshit stinking up the current situation. EDIT: BTW, I do indeed have a copy of On Bullshit, but I use "The Elements Of Style" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style ) book in the exact same way as I suggested above for On Bullshit. I think they are two sides of the same coin :)
- russell 11y ago
  I bought it on your recommendation. It had better be good, otherwise I will come back to haunt you.
  - andyidsinga 11y ago
    its philosophy for sure :) BTW - what I found most enlightening in the book is how he articulates the difference between the "bull session" and bullshit.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  I tend to agree with Geoff Pullum: http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/25497 http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/2549... when it comes to Elements of Style.
  - andyidsinga 11y ago
    I once* wrote a whitepaper that was horrible. My boss at the time urged me to get a copy of elements of style, skim it, then try to fix the paper. Section II (looking at my copy in front of me), which discusses composition, was most useful as my paper was chock-full of techno babble, needless words and lacked consistent design from section to section and paragraph to paragraph. * (this is an exaggeration on the extreme low end :) )
bksenior 11y ago
It's funny. This page strikes me as the height of bullshit. It's basically a manifesto written by an individual interested in being another absolute arbiter of taste. It completely ignores the nuances, relativism and circumstance of how people internalize ideas, make decisions and generally connect. It even go as far as to say that it is the reason why being a great engineer or creator of things is am anti-pattern for NOT ultimately adding something worthwhile to society. There is no absolutism to quality of ideas or structure of communications. Their is genuine hard workin taking what you create and weaving into people days and narratives. This manifesto will one day embarrass it's creator with it's naivety when they are older and more experienced.
- Retr0spectrum 11y ago
  You use a lot of big words without actually saying anything.
  - lovemenot 11y ago
    I generally agreed with your parent, and think it worth repeating. So I'll take your comment at face value and attempt to paraphrase. Their problem with the article is that it makes the wrong assumption that everyone should be able agree on what does / does not count as bullshit. Including, recursively, the article itself. In the past and in places many of us prefer not to go now, there were "arbiters of taste" who were able to influence many people's thinking by representing themselves as "the truth" (you know - the one without the bullshit). We now live in a more open marketplace of ideas which, most likely, your parent is happy about. He / she would not like the article's author, nor anyone else, to resume such authority. They likely believe that though bullshit-everywhere might be true, it is still a price worth paying for diversity of ideas.
  - bksenior 11y ago
    tl;du The world is full of ideas and things being built everyday. Not respecting the "bullshit" effort of attempting to get an idea to standout with messaging, marketing or any other type of distribution reflects a naiveté and is in fact a practice of inflexible bullshit on what type of ideas are important.
tpeo 11y ago
I believe this submission vindicates, to some degree, the 'nostalgia' for pre-2012 internet that was so condemned in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9960730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9960730
tkiley 11y ago
One person's "bullshit" is another person's "positioning", and positioning is arguably one of the most important communications skills for founders. I sympathize with the author but I'm not really sure what to make of this.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Positioning is still bullshit, and just because something is an "important communications skills for founders", doesn't mean it's good, especially for ones on the receiving end. A lot of things that go as standard marketing practice would earn you a punch in the face if you did it to a friend and they found out. It's ironic how we turned lying to each other into respectable occupation.
andyidsinga 11y ago
in the list of BS items, have to disagree a little with inclusion of "captchas, QR codes" ..these seem useful. I must be missing some nuance re their bullshittyness - can anyone elaborate?
- good-citizen 11y ago
  i'm confused too. Why are captchas bad? captchas are absolutely neccessary to fight automatic signups by bots. Are you saying just let the bots win?
icanhackit 11y ago
Perhaps it's a solved problem. Must it be framed as a binary thing where there's either bullshit or no bullshit? What if there's a middle ground: those who find bullshit interfaces and/or bullshit content abhorrent use tools to improve it or completely avoid it, while those who aren't the wiser continue to go along with it? You want to argue that bullshit content is what's keeping people uninformed? I say no, it takes a certain innate sense to rise above the natural flow of misinformation. Some people can only be guided by rhetoric - they make their decisions based on consensus in their local network and too easily trust people who claim to stand for it. What we have is a war: between those who guide the senseless and those who exploit them. Take your pick.
mbesto 11y ago
All of this "bullshit" exists because it works. What's amazing is that the author pays his own bills as a result of such bullshit existing. The companies he's consulting to don't magically make money from nothing.[0] [0] - http://bradfrost.com/web/ http://bradfrost.com/web/
Animats 11y ago
Advertising in the US doesn't create demand. It just moves it around. America is spent out. The US personal savings rate is under 5%. Everything else gets spent, and the saved money gets spent later. There's no "pent-up demand" waiting to be unlocked by advertising. Advertising is thus a net lose for Americans. All that effort adds to cost. For some products, including movies, long distance phone service, and many prescription drugs, the advertising cost exceeds the manufacturing cost. This is an argument for a tax on advertising. Advertising expenses should not be deductible business expenses at all. Note that neither Amazon nor WalMart advertises much, compared to other large businesses. Target spends more on ads than WalMart does, although WalMart is much bigger.
- davemel37 11y ago
  >neither Amazon nor walmart advertises much... What? Amazon is googles largest advertiser and walmart outspends target almost 2:1 ... http://adage.com/article/digital/amazon-tops-list-google-s-25-biggest-search-advertisers/294922/ http://adage.com/article/digital/amazon-tops-list-google-s-2...
  - Animats 11y ago
    That's spending on Google ads, not total ad spend. The ad industry complains that WalMart doesn't spend enough on ads.[1] Amazon's ad spending went way up in 2013, but it didn't help; too much was related to their mobile devices, which flopped.[2][3] [1] http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/fix-walmart-s-woes-spend-tv-ads/229388/ http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/fix-walmart-s-woes-spe... [2] http://adage.com/article/agency-news/amazon-reviews-media-account/240617/ http://adage.com/article/agency-news/amazon-reviews-media-ac... [3] http://adage.com/article/digital/amazon-loses-126-million-marketing-expenses-rise-40/294316/ http://adage.com/article/digital/amazon-loses-126-million-ma...
    - davemel37 11y ago
      I don't have time to track down other articles, but if your point was that there are very valuable brands that don't advertise as much as others, you are right. However, advertising when you are a large brand serves a different function than when you are smaller. Large brands need to protect their position in the market, smaller brands need to drive sales. My guess about your original comment is that you were exposed to Target back to school commercials recently and so they appeared like a larger advertiser than amazon or walmart who focus less on back to school. The reality though is that advertising comes in many shapes and sizes, and is bought in many different ways. Limiting this to direct media buying is a little deceptive as some brands engage in PR and other strategies that serve the same goal as advertising, without paying a publisher for placement. It isn't an equal comparison to use direct ad buying as a barometer to prove that advertising just shifts demand and doesn't create it, when PR and other marketing strategies are arguably the same exact thing, just bought in a different way.
a3n 11y ago
On the flight/product plus insurance pattern, if it's difficult to cancel the insurance, I wonder what the effect of cancelling the entire product purchase would have on this problem. Just cut to the chase, pull back all your money, leaving a nice, obvious "fuck you" in the resulting vacuum. That is, assuming they haven't inserted the same bullshit cancellation for the purchase itself.
paulsutter 11y ago
Don't miss the "Turn on bullshit" link in the upper right corner.
russell 11y ago
Another piece of bullshit that I am running into with alarming frequency when I click on search results that leads to a local newspaper like the Des Moines Register is that it pops up with a request for a subscription. If I cancel the request, the story appears but with the text replaced by white rectangles. That's just rude. I'm from out of town, for god's sake, I just want to read one story. The New York Times or the San Jose Mercury are more respectful. They give you 10 stories a month.
segphault 11y ago
I couldn't help but notice that the blog associated with the site (linked at the bottom of the manifesto) is hosted on Tumblr and runs all of its offsite links through Tumblr redirects so that the clicks are all tracked. Surely that qualifies as exactly the sort of bullshit that this person is inveighing against.
cm2187 11y ago
On the slogan "Death to Bullshit!". General de Gaulle's comment on a similar slogan: "a vast programme".
davemel37 11y ago
This is by far the most ironic discussion in HN history! To be fair, i cant back up that statement with evidence...but wait, none of the comments here or for that matter content in this death to bs website are backed up by anything other than personal opinions and anecdotal theories. You would hope that a rallying cry of Death to BS would invoke a slight bias towards withholding BS and focusing on facts that make a difference. Do I agree that there is way too much noise online? Yes, but complaining about it is as noisy as things come!!!
qwtel 11y ago
> Now this is cheap populism I can get behind! This is the lowest ranked comment right now, but I think it is great, and I want to rephrase it in a way that maybe more people can appreciate it (and hopefully doesn't get me downvoted like crazy) So the reason I take offence at "advice" or a movement like this (not sure what it's supposed to be) is that it makes the speaker and everybody who associates with it look incredibly good, while it is barely bothering to offer any proof as to why it is actually good advice. I am aware that this sounds cynical and I beg you to resist the temptation to downvote and/or ignore this comment. Instead I'd invite you to ask yourself: Could this argument have something to it despite the fact that it's pretty uncomfortable? Going on, why does getting behind this make us look good? It shows that: * we are not ignorant of questionable business practices in our field * we don't prey on the (intellectually) weak in order to sustain our businesses * we value ideals like craft more than money (ignoring that most of these practices are not driven by greed at all but are the only way to ensure the survival of some companies, which brings me to the next point, that) * we are not afraid to "stick it to the man" (even though "the man" is probably a complete strawman and we don't have to fear any real retaliation for expressing this opinion) Now there is nothing wrong with advice that makes us look good per se, but is it also good advice? > People's capacity for bullshit is rapidly diminishing Again, this may sound good, but it could have been said at any point in time and be true, the question is: Is it diminishing faster then new ways of bullshitting arise? And maybe it is not diminishing at all. Take gambling for example. It is obviously "intentionally deceptive or insincere" in that it won't make you rich, it is in fact mathematically proven to make you lose money, yet people seem to have gambled for thousands of years and will probably go on to do so for thousands of years to come. The attempt of linking bullshit to Sturgeon's law is also pretty weak IMO. It's not like anybody set out to put something in the bottom 90%, it's what happens to, well, 90% of things, and it's not at all clear that it was BS that put it there. In other words: Naively looking at the top 10% and saying: "None of those is doing BS" does not mean the lack of BS got them there. All it says is that "In the top 10% you don't have to BS (because you can afford not to)", or even just "BS doesn't get you any further in the top 10% (and that's why nobody is doing it)". Finally, Buzzfeed is certainly in the top 10% of "lighthearted entertainment on the internet" and it is BS (and only BS) that got them there, because that's the kind of environment that "lighthearted entertainment on the internet" is like. No amount of shaming will change anything about that (but would still make us look good, so produce some quality content over there already!). tl,dr: Be aware of advice that sounds good. People will like to offer it even when it is not practical at all, or only under very specific circumstances, that may not apply to you.
interesting_att 11y ago
I was just thinking yesterday how inundated we are by ads these days. You see ads on television, the radio, the internet, billboards, public transportation, sports stadium/jerseys, magazines, guerrilla marketing, product-placements and celebrity endorsements, and not to mention PR (which is just advertising by other means). Talk about mental pollution!
- Killswitch 11y ago
  So I got my start in ad based websites. If it wasn't for ads, I would have never really gotten into what we do. I'd have done something away from the internet because I never grew up with a computer and wasn't fascinated by them as a young child. So because of that, I had always been in favor of ads. Not as in I'd plaster my site with ads, but if a site displayed ads, I would endure them because if I wanted the content that's the trade off. Otherwise I could find similar content somewhere else. Then The Verge's article about slow browsing came about, and the retorting articles about things and I realized ads have gone way to fucking far. 17 years I have been online. 17 years I had never installed an ad blocking plugin or anything. Last month I installed uBlock Origin and turned it into blacklist mode. I still feel sites who have ads in place that aren't intrusive and annoying deserve to be displayed, but sites like The Verge, or CNN or anything like that which blast you with 300 requests where 90% of them are ads. Or sites where ads become more important than the content; These sites get instant ad blocking enabled for them. It's time to take a step back.
  - stevesearer 11y ago
    Someone should make a list of websites that have both great content as well as good advertising practices and have it sorted by the topics: general interest, technology, cooking, etc...
    - jarek 11y ago
      Someone needs to invent and found something like a Pinterest but for text. Might not need that much VC founding and the scaling possibilities are endless, lots of content on the web to curate! Could call it a web directory.
rythie 11y ago
Unless we start paying for online content, this is going to not only continue, but get worse.
narrator 11y ago
My way to avoid bullshit is to only read a very highly curated twitter feed. Anybody who mentions a "big" news story gets booted. Like if it's on the front page of the New York times, you get booted. I'll find out about it just by looking at the random media device blaring mainstream bullshit from every airport and doctors office waitimg room, so quit thinking you're the new Paul Revere by retweeting. I value niche information very specific to things I am trying to accomplish.
nickledave 11y ago
Worth reading the follow-up post: http://bradfrost.com/blog/post/living-with-bullshit/ http://bradfrost.com/blog/post/living-with-bullshit/ He's not against ads. He's against shitty ads that piss off customers. Anybody know if there actually are any studies that show that these ads (1) help businesses attract clients and (2) do so without alienating more clients than they attract? Or are they all just for businesses that don't care about keeping customers anyways (e.g. weight loss fads)
- prawn 11y ago
  Good ads generally require more effort and investment. On some occasions, companies will try to look cheap and affordable with shoddy ads, but generally shoddy ads come from tightarse clients trying to DIY or hiring average designers, etc. Or because that's what's been tested to be more effective with their audience. Companies often take the cheap approach because they're cautious about the return they're going to get, don't know any better, are cheap themselves and don't appreciate design.
halotrope 11y ago
Well actually I like the "bullshit" on pages (that being of course, an exaggeration) because it makes it far easier to filter pages that have content with a low signal to noise ratio. I think content consisting of only bullshit with low substance is the far worse disease and it seems to spread just as quick.
blattenshitser 11y ago
Yeah let's get rid of trackers and unnecessary bullshit. After, of course, I load my Google tracker and accompanying LOBSTER font. <link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Lobster' http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Lobster' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Lobster font is probably for the "Turn on bullshit?" page mode. I recommend testing it, it makes the site look properly modern.
ris 11y ago
I find it hugely ironic that the author hosts the site's blog on tumblr, the king of user-signup-driving no-we're-not-going-to-give-you-an-rss-feed-we-want-you-to-join-our-service-to-subscribe.
- eqyiel 11y ago
  I don't disagree with you but you may be interested to know that tumblr blogs do have RSS feeds: http://blog.deathtobullshit.com/rss http://blog.deathtobullshit.com/rss
  - ris 11y ago
    ! Thankyou!
ilaksh 11y ago
War propaganda is very prevalent in US media.
jordanpg 11y ago
This isn't just about advertising. It's equally about bad or distracting design. But ultimately it's about concentration. I believe, for the most part, that multitasking is a myth. When I am reading something difficult, or that I would like to remember in detail later, I need to focus on it exclusively and read it without interruption. That means ad blockers, print view, etc. > As the landslide of bullshit surges down the mountain, people will increasingly gravitate toward genuinely useful, well-crafted products, services, and experiences that respect them and their time This sounds like wishful thinking to me. Marketing and design are surely down to a psychological science by now.
- themartorana 11y ago
  True story. Although the consumer isn't helping at all. https://blog.applovin.com/data-desk-6-whatever-it-would-cost-to-eliminate-mobile-ads-consumers-dont-want-to-pay-it/ https://blog.applovin.com/data-desk-6-whatever-it-would-cost...
- themodelplumber 11y ago
  > Marketing and design are surely down to a psychological science by now. Really? I just read an article about how Apple is intentionally avoiding a traditional social media presence as a part of its marketing strategy. So does the science work like, "if you are rich enough to buy out several independent nations, do not use social media for marketing?" Or what? And as a designer myself, I have to say "science" applied to design has a bad reputation among designers [1]. I put the word in quotes because true science is an interest of mine. And if one day in the future the application of science to design is solidified, hopefully this means fractal design software will rise from its current "American Idol without Simon Cowell" state of chaos to become part of the Adobe Creative Nebula, or whatever it's called by then. Because right now, the golden mean and fractals are just a couple of the millions of tools in a very intuitive toolbox, and they seem most likely to underwhelm when used alone as part of some grand demonstration of science meeting design. So: If there's a science to all of this, by all means elucidate. [1] http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html
nkurz 11y ago
As a couple other posters mentioned, be sure to try out the understated "Turn bullshit on?" link on the upper right of the page. It really sells the point. I sort of hoped that after clicking "I am a racist" to dismiss the "Like us on Facebook" page, that the popup chiding my brazen admission would have hijacked the OK button to post my admission to all logged in social media sites. But unfortunately Brad seems to be to honorable for that, even after people doubly-confirm that they want the bullshit. And counter-to-reality, the pulsing read "Turn this bullshit off" link works as advertised.
deleted 11y ago
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superuser2 11y ago
The vast majority of working adults in the US are employed in the making and selling of things people don't need. A world without bullshit is total, utter economic collapse. It's the end of capitalism. It's hundreds of millions of people with nothing to do all day and no way to sustain themselves, an inevitable civil war with the landlord class, and a revolution that manages to install a government's that quite possibly worse. Every piece of bullshit you see is how a great many people pay their mortgages and feed their children. Casting them out to the street is unlikely to make things better.
- tacoman 11y ago
  This is so obviously true, I can't help but think I'm missing something. It's certainly not limited to the US. It's a world wide phenomenon and exists everywhere people aren't living a subsistence existence. Everyone's bullshit is someone else's reason for existence. The product I work on is completely superfluous to my life, but over a million people pay for it including some of my coworkers.
- viraptor 11y ago
  That's assuming people have been so brainwashed they need to be told what they want / should find fun. And I'm sure that's not true. For example, sure there's lots of advertisements of snowboarding, but if any/all of them disappeared, it doesn't mean I would stop wanting to do it. But of course, I don't need it. I'm still spending my money on gear / clothing / transport / accommodation / food / services that are related to snowboarding, because I want to do it. People wanted things before bullshit all around us existed (or existed only in a limited and local scale). Civilisation existed before the first advertisement agency was created.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  >A world without bullshit is ... the end of capitalism. Finally! I get rid of two things I hate in one go! >It's hundreds of millions of people with nothing to do all day and no way to sustain themselves, an inevitable civil war with the landlord class, and a revolution that manages to install a government's that quite possibly worse. Why do you find it easier to imagine the end of civilization than the end of capitalism? http://strikemag.org/capitalist-realism-by-mark-fisher/ http://strikemag.org/capitalist-realism-by-mark-fisher/
stabilo 11y ago
Here's one he omitted: "We take security seriously..."
majani 11y ago
On Opera Mini, the bullshit button doesn't work...
webXL 11y ago
It sounds like the author resents having to compete for attention with "bullshit", but I'm not sure if there's a realistic alternative. You're going to throw out the baby with the bath water I'm afraid. As for advertising, paying for entertainment and information with some time and attention is not really bullshit. It's a voluntary exchange, and both sides would not engage if they did not have some inclination that they would be better off than without the exchange. There are other things you can exchange for entertainment and information, and you can completely opt out.
tripzilch 11y ago
Bullshit makes the flowers grow, and that's beautiful!

Death to Bullshit

325 points by spking 11y ago

Encosia 11y ago

Be sure to click the "Turn bullshit on?" link at the top-right for a chuckle.

halotrope 11y ago
Well he totally forgot to fluff the actual content. Instead of just framing it differently.
- notahacker 11y ago
  I wish he'd at least spread it over six pages, with a link to the next page positioned less prominently than a [mocked-up] Google AdSense ad-unit with arrow.
  - halotrope 11y ago
    Yes. I think the chrome added by ads and "bullshit" can be mitigated by adblockers, reader modes and careful selection of content. The sometime abysmal STR of some articles is far worse. Usually you have to invest at least a little time into figuring out if something is legit or a complete waste of time.
Retr0spectrum 11y ago
And the feedback form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1QAbZ0qm1Q3SwT3Ane2ZLi7I_cjAWyrDc58IhDc_Zo0Q/viewform?c=0&w=1 https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1QAbZ0qm1Q3SwT3Ane2ZLi7I_cjA...
- robert_tweed 11y ago
  The "are you sure you want to leave this page" alert is a nice touch.
wnevets 11y ago
best of the page.
0xcde4c3db 11y ago
Also be sure to note the infinite-scrolling "you may also like" section, which starts with regular clickbait, then starts repeating "stories", then... gets worse.
Houshalter 11y ago
I thought that was bad, but I noticed adblock was blocking 67 things. I turned it off and it is truly awful.
- FilterSweep 11y ago
  Sadly, 67 things is actually low for most Alexa Top 1000 trafficked websites.

Retr0spectrum 11y ago

Reminds me of this site: http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/

nickpsecurity 11y ago
That was great. Thanks for the link.
snake117 11y ago
Bless you for sharing. I bookmarked it for those off days when I need a good laugh.
AndyKelley 11y ago
My site[1] looks like the site this site is making fun of. I tried using bettermotherfuckingwebsite's CSS and it made it worse, so I stuck with no CSS. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ [1]: http://genesisdaw.org/ http://genesisdaw.org/

SandB0x 11y ago

Now this is cheap populism I can get behind!

xd1936 11y ago

This is great. Reminds me of Jon Stewart's speech that he gave on his last show. Video and transcription: http://leoherzog.com/jon-stewarts-incredible-bullsht-speech http://leoherzog.com/jon-stewarts-incredible-bullsht-speech

kristianc 11y ago
I like, unwittingly or not, the incredibly bullshitty framing of the title of that post.

mojuba 11y ago

Can't say how effective this campaign can be, but I'm glad QR codes are now officially included in the list of bullshit. Can't agree more.

reinhardt 11y ago
Are QR codes still a thing? Or were they ever a thing? Dunno, my brain seems to filter them out automatically, I rarely notice them.
- eponeponepon 11y ago
  This seems apt: http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/ http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/
- Canada 11y ago
  I just used one to board a plane. It worked well, that's no bullshit.
  - mojuba 11y ago
    I think it was probably an unjustified replacement for a simple bar code in your case. I check in using bar codes usually :)
    - Canada 11y ago
      I know you're joking, but if you were told to write a ticket system today, what would you choose? QR codes are an international standard, have plenty of good libraries to generate and process them, can store more information, have excellent error correction, and easily scan from odd angles. Other types of bar codes... not so much. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcode#Types_of_barcodes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcode#Types_of_barcodes
jessaustin 11y ago
I guess I haven't seen enough of them in the wild to get annoyed by them? The use case seems to be to refer someone who sees a poster or other printed work to a URL, and when I've seen QRs used for that it has seemed reasonable. Are you seeing them in some other, less reasonable context?

afarrell 11y ago

This page talks mostly about interface bullshit, but people are also tired of content bullshit. To paraphrase from Harry Frankfurt, this is content produced not to conceal truth, but without regard for for it whatsoever. If to lie is to murder truth, to bullshit is to manslaughter it. Producing bullshit is more profitable because it still attracts eyeballs (and therefore ad revenue), but is much less costly to produce. Thats why the presence of large amounts of ads, needless pagination, and interface bullshit are a reasonable indicator of content bullshit.

Eupolemos 11y ago
> If to lie is to murder truth, to bullshit is to manslaughter it. I believe "manslaughter" and "murder" should be switched around here. IIRC, Harry Frankfurt argued that bullshit was worse than lies, since it corroded this simple but for-society-to-function-in-the-long-run incredibly important distinction (or aspiration).
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  I like a quote by Steven Kaas: "Promoting less than maximally accurate beliefs is an act of sabotage. Don't do it to anyone unless you'd also slash their tires."
- afarrell 11y ago
  The analogy I'm drawing here is to the intent, rather than the effect. Murder is intentional. Manslaughter is reckless.

shostack 11y ago

As much as I dislike some of the current trends (and I do digital media for a living mind you), I do have to point out that this stuff wouldn't be done if it didn't work. Ultimately this implies that there are enough people out there who engage with or...dare I say...want...the bullshit, that their collective voice outweighs those that do not simply by the fact that those are often the users who click ads, share things, and otherwise generate more value and revenue for the publishers than those that do not. While the arms race to fight this stuff is commendable (I myself run at least NoScript at home and it is beautiful), I can't help but think the only way to win is to not play. By that I mean coming up with revenue alternatives for publishers that not only generate more revenue than this approach, but also provide a direct incentive to not use these things. If such magical solution existed, they would switch of their own volition. Instead, they focus their efforts and dollars (and by extension the focus of an entire industry that has been built on those dollars) on adding more items to the list of bullshit.

rayiner 11y ago
The problem is that bullshit is a negative externality. It's cognitive pollution. Those who clutter the world with bullshit reap the rewards of nabbing the suckers who respond to it, but don't pay the costs of imposing those cognitive loads on everyone else. That leads to more bullshit than would be economically efficient. Take a simple example like billboards. If billboard advertisers had to pay every person whose life experience is degraded by seeing a billboard for a product they'd never buy, the equilibrium amount of billboard advertising would go way down.
- noir_lord 11y ago
  That's an interesting concept, it makes the cumulative attention span of the people exposed something akin to tragedy of the commons.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    It's worse. In a typical tragedy of the commons scenario, common resource eventually get depleted and the responsible parties leave. Here, you can't really deplete the commons, you can only compete for the share in it. Which means there is no limit within the system for the negative feedback loop that occurs. Advertisers play a zero-sum game, committing more and more resources to one-up each other. They're wasting ever increasing amount of fuel, minerals and man hours on epsilon marginal benefit. Those are real, tangible costs for society.

deleted 11y ago

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jessaustin 11y ago

People's capacity for bullshit is rapidly diminishing Even though this proposition is in bold 20-pt type, no arguments were offered to support it. It isn't obviously true, and indeed there are reasons to suspect the converse. Dare I say it, but a bald emotionally-appealing assertion of this sort seems sort of like... bullshit?

hiq 11y ago
I recall only one person in dozens not having an ad blocker installed on his computer (how painful it was). Also many people pay for premium accounts on music streaming services instead of hearing ads once in a while. I think that, when given the choice (which is sometimes a few technical skills away), people would opt for less bullshit. Of course that's only a valid argument when bullshit is not the main product. I don't doubt websites such as buzzfeed and 9gag will keep on thriving.

pudo 11y ago

Lovely. An anti-bullshit manifesto that talks about "experiences" and "the rise of" various things. I'm sold.

deleted 11y ago
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chestnut-tree 11y ago
It's true: a lot of bullshit could simply be eliminated with plain English. And the technology field (from development to design to UX) is overflowing with inflated writing and unnecessary jargon in articles, blog entries, design guides, and documentation. A specific example relating to UX: I always point people to this gov.uk design guide as an excellent example of clear writing that is easy to understand. It's not perfect, but it avoids being too wordy and I think it's a good example to emulate https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/user-centred-design/resources/patterns https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/user-centred-design/resour...

andyidsinga 11y ago

see also, the book, "On Bullshit" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit ) This book should have a spot on everyone's desk in hard copy. Use it as a coaster, walk around with it in the hallways, take it to meetings. No need to preach from it though - its very presence will be enough of a sign to others re: your tolerance levels of the amount of bullshit stinking up the current situation. EDIT: BTW, I do indeed have a copy of On Bullshit, but I use "The Elements Of Style" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style ) book in the exact same way as I suggested above for On Bullshit. I think they are two sides of the same coin :)

russell 11y ago
I bought it on your recommendation. It had better be good, otherwise I will come back to haunt you.
- andyidsinga 11y ago
  its philosophy for sure :) BTW - what I found most enlightening in the book is how he articulates the difference between the "bull session" and bullshit.
GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
I tend to agree with Geoff Pullum: http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/25497 http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/2549... when it comes to Elements of Style.
- andyidsinga 11y ago
  I once* wrote a whitepaper that was horrible. My boss at the time urged me to get a copy of elements of style, skim it, then try to fix the paper. Section II (looking at my copy in front of me), which discusses composition, was most useful as my paper was chock-full of techno babble, needless words and lacked consistent design from section to section and paragraph to paragraph. * (this is an exaggeration on the extreme low end :) )

bksenior 11y ago

It's funny. This page strikes me as the height of bullshit. It's basically a manifesto written by an individual interested in being another absolute arbiter of taste. It completely ignores the nuances, relativism and circumstance of how people internalize ideas, make decisions and generally connect. It even go as far as to say that it is the reason why being a great engineer or creator of things is am anti-pattern for NOT ultimately adding something worthwhile to society. There is no absolutism to quality of ideas or structure of communications. Their is genuine hard workin taking what you create and weaving into people days and narratives. This manifesto will one day embarrass it's creator with it's naivety when they are older and more experienced.

Retr0spectrum 11y ago
You use a lot of big words without actually saying anything.
- lovemenot 11y ago
  I generally agreed with your parent, and think it worth repeating. So I'll take your comment at face value and attempt to paraphrase. Their problem with the article is that it makes the wrong assumption that everyone should be able agree on what does / does not count as bullshit. Including, recursively, the article itself. In the past and in places many of us prefer not to go now, there were "arbiters of taste" who were able to influence many people's thinking by representing themselves as "the truth" (you know - the one without the bullshit). We now live in a more open marketplace of ideas which, most likely, your parent is happy about. He / she would not like the article's author, nor anyone else, to resume such authority. They likely believe that though bullshit-everywhere might be true, it is still a price worth paying for diversity of ideas.
- bksenior 11y ago
  tl;du The world is full of ideas and things being built everyday. Not respecting the "bullshit" effort of attempting to get an idea to standout with messaging, marketing or any other type of distribution reflects a naiveté and is in fact a practice of inflexible bullshit on what type of ideas are important.

tpeo 11y ago

I believe this submission vindicates, to some degree, the 'nostalgia' for pre-2012 internet that was so condemned in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9960730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9960730

tkiley 11y ago

One person's "bullshit" is another person's "positioning", and positioning is arguably one of the most important communications skills for founders. I sympathize with the author but I'm not really sure what to make of this.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Positioning is still bullshit, and just because something is an "important communications skills for founders", doesn't mean it's good, especially for ones on the receiving end. A lot of things that go as standard marketing practice would earn you a punch in the face if you did it to a friend and they found out. It's ironic how we turned lying to each other into respectable occupation.

andyidsinga 11y ago

in the list of BS items, have to disagree a little with inclusion of "captchas, QR codes" ..these seem useful. I must be missing some nuance re their bullshittyness - can anyone elaborate?

good-citizen 11y ago
i'm confused too. Why are captchas bad? captchas are absolutely neccessary to fight automatic signups by bots. Are you saying just let the bots win?

icanhackit 11y ago

Perhaps it's a solved problem. Must it be framed as a binary thing where there's either bullshit or no bullshit? What if there's a middle ground: those who find bullshit interfaces and/or bullshit content abhorrent use tools to improve it or completely avoid it, while those who aren't the wiser continue to go along with it? You want to argue that bullshit content is what's keeping people uninformed? I say no, it takes a certain innate sense to rise above the natural flow of misinformation. Some people can only be guided by rhetoric - they make their decisions based on consensus in their local network and too easily trust people who claim to stand for it. What we have is a war: between those who guide the senseless and those who exploit them. Take your pick.

mbesto 11y ago

All of this "bullshit" exists because it works. What's amazing is that the author pays his own bills as a result of such bullshit existing. The companies he's consulting to don't magically make money from nothing.[0] [0] - http://bradfrost.com/web/ http://bradfrost.com/web/

Animats 11y ago

Advertising in the US doesn't create demand. It just moves it around. America is spent out. The US personal savings rate is under 5%. Everything else gets spent, and the saved money gets spent later. There's no "pent-up demand" waiting to be unlocked by advertising. Advertising is thus a net lose for Americans. All that effort adds to cost. For some products, including movies, long distance phone service, and many prescription drugs, the advertising cost exceeds the manufacturing cost. This is an argument for a tax on advertising. Advertising expenses should not be deductible business expenses at all. Note that neither Amazon nor WalMart advertises much, compared to other large businesses. Target spends more on ads than WalMart does, although WalMart is much bigger.

davemel37 11y ago
>neither Amazon nor walmart advertises much... What? Amazon is googles largest advertiser and walmart outspends target almost 2:1 ... http://adage.com/article/digital/amazon-tops-list-google-s-25-biggest-search-advertisers/294922/ http://adage.com/article/digital/amazon-tops-list-google-s-2...
- Animats 11y ago
  That's spending on Google ads, not total ad spend. The ad industry complains that WalMart doesn't spend enough on ads.[1] Amazon's ad spending went way up in 2013, but it didn't help; too much was related to their mobile devices, which flopped.[2][3] [1] http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/fix-walmart-s-woes-spend-tv-ads/229388/ http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/fix-walmart-s-woes-spe... [2] http://adage.com/article/agency-news/amazon-reviews-media-account/240617/ http://adage.com/article/agency-news/amazon-reviews-media-ac... [3] http://adage.com/article/digital/amazon-loses-126-million-marketing-expenses-rise-40/294316/ http://adage.com/article/digital/amazon-loses-126-million-ma...
  - davemel37 11y ago
    I don't have time to track down other articles, but if your point was that there are very valuable brands that don't advertise as much as others, you are right. However, advertising when you are a large brand serves a different function than when you are smaller. Large brands need to protect their position in the market, smaller brands need to drive sales. My guess about your original comment is that you were exposed to Target back to school commercials recently and so they appeared like a larger advertiser than amazon or walmart who focus less on back to school. The reality though is that advertising comes in many shapes and sizes, and is bought in many different ways. Limiting this to direct media buying is a little deceptive as some brands engage in PR and other strategies that serve the same goal as advertising, without paying a publisher for placement. It isn't an equal comparison to use direct ad buying as a barometer to prove that advertising just shifts demand and doesn't create it, when PR and other marketing strategies are arguably the same exact thing, just bought in a different way.

a3n 11y ago

On the flight/product plus insurance pattern, if it's difficult to cancel the insurance, I wonder what the effect of cancelling the entire product purchase would have on this problem. Just cut to the chase, pull back all your money, leaving a nice, obvious "fuck you" in the resulting vacuum. That is, assuming they haven't inserted the same bullshit cancellation for the purchase itself.

paulsutter 11y ago

Don't miss the "Turn on bullshit" link in the upper right corner.

russell 11y ago

Another piece of bullshit that I am running into with alarming frequency when I click on search results that leads to a local newspaper like the Des Moines Register is that it pops up with a request for a subscription. If I cancel the request, the story appears but with the text replaced by white rectangles. That's just rude. I'm from out of town, for god's sake, I just want to read one story. The New York Times or the San Jose Mercury are more respectful. They give you 10 stories a month.

segphault 11y ago

I couldn't help but notice that the blog associated with the site (linked at the bottom of the manifesto) is hosted on Tumblr and runs all of its offsite links through Tumblr redirects so that the clicks are all tracked. Surely that qualifies as exactly the sort of bullshit that this person is inveighing against.

cm2187 11y ago

On the slogan "Death to Bullshit!". General de Gaulle's comment on a similar slogan: "a vast programme".

davemel37 11y ago

This is by far the most ironic discussion in HN history! To be fair, i cant back up that statement with evidence...but wait, none of the comments here or for that matter content in this death to bs website are backed up by anything other than personal opinions and anecdotal theories. You would hope that a rallying cry of Death to BS would invoke a slight bias towards withholding BS and focusing on facts that make a difference. Do I agree that there is way too much noise online? Yes, but complaining about it is as noisy as things come!!!

qwtel 11y ago

> Now this is cheap populism I can get behind! This is the lowest ranked comment right now, but I think it is great, and I want to rephrase it in a way that maybe more people can appreciate it (and hopefully doesn't get me downvoted like crazy) So the reason I take offence at "advice" or a movement like this (not sure what it's supposed to be) is that it makes the speaker and everybody who associates with it look incredibly good, while it is barely bothering to offer any proof as to why it is actually good advice. I am aware that this sounds cynical and I beg you to resist the temptation to downvote and/or ignore this comment. Instead I'd invite you to ask yourself: Could this argument have something to it despite the fact that it's pretty uncomfortable? Going on, why does getting behind this make us look good? It shows that: * we are not ignorant of questionable business practices in our field * we don't prey on the (intellectually) weak in order to sustain our businesses * we value ideals like craft more than money (ignoring that most of these practices are not driven by greed at all but are the only way to ensure the survival of some companies, which brings me to the next point, that) * we are not afraid to "stick it to the man" (even though "the man" is probably a complete strawman and we don't have to fear any real retaliation for expressing this opinion) Now there is nothing wrong with advice that makes us look good per se, but is it also good advice? > People's capacity for bullshit is rapidly diminishing Again, this may sound good, but it could have been said at any point in time and be true, the question is: Is it diminishing faster then new ways of bullshitting arise? And maybe it is not diminishing at all. Take gambling for example. It is obviously "intentionally deceptive or insincere" in that it won't make you rich, it is in fact mathematically proven to make you lose money, yet people seem to have gambled for thousands of years and will probably go on to do so for thousands of years to come. The attempt of linking bullshit to Sturgeon's law is also pretty weak IMO. It's not like anybody set out to put something in the bottom 90%, it's what happens to, well, 90% of things, and it's not at all clear that it was BS that put it there. In other words: Naively looking at the top 10% and saying: "None of those is doing BS" does not mean the lack of BS got them there. All it says is that "In the top 10% you don't have to BS (because you can afford not to)", or even just "BS doesn't get you any further in the top 10% (and that's why nobody is doing it)". Finally, Buzzfeed is certainly in the top 10% of "lighthearted entertainment on the internet" and it is BS (and only BS) that got them there, because that's the kind of environment that "lighthearted entertainment on the internet" is like. No amount of shaming will change anything about that (but would still make us look good, so produce some quality content over there already!). tl,dr: Be aware of advice that sounds good. People will like to offer it even when it is not practical at all, or only under very specific circumstances, that may not apply to you.

interesting_att 11y ago

I was just thinking yesterday how inundated we are by ads these days. You see ads on television, the radio, the internet, billboards, public transportation, sports stadium/jerseys, magazines, guerrilla marketing, product-placements and celebrity endorsements, and not to mention PR (which is just advertising by other means). Talk about mental pollution!

Killswitch 11y ago
So I got my start in ad based websites. If it wasn't for ads, I would have never really gotten into what we do. I'd have done something away from the internet because I never grew up with a computer and wasn't fascinated by them as a young child. So because of that, I had always been in favor of ads. Not as in I'd plaster my site with ads, but if a site displayed ads, I would endure them because if I wanted the content that's the trade off. Otherwise I could find similar content somewhere else. Then The Verge's article about slow browsing came about, and the retorting articles about things and I realized ads have gone way to fucking far. 17 years I have been online. 17 years I had never installed an ad blocking plugin or anything. Last month I installed uBlock Origin and turned it into blacklist mode. I still feel sites who have ads in place that aren't intrusive and annoying deserve to be displayed, but sites like The Verge, or CNN or anything like that which blast you with 300 requests where 90% of them are ads. Or sites where ads become more important than the content; These sites get instant ad blocking enabled for them. It's time to take a step back.
- stevesearer 11y ago
  Someone should make a list of websites that have both great content as well as good advertising practices and have it sorted by the topics: general interest, technology, cooking, etc...
  - jarek 11y ago
    Someone needs to invent and found something like a Pinterest but for text. Might not need that much VC founding and the scaling possibilities are endless, lots of content on the web to curate! Could call it a web directory.

rythie 11y ago

Unless we start paying for online content, this is going to not only continue, but get worse.

narrator 11y ago

My way to avoid bullshit is to only read a very highly curated twitter feed. Anybody who mentions a "big" news story gets booted. Like if it's on the front page of the New York times, you get booted. I'll find out about it just by looking at the random media device blaring mainstream bullshit from every airport and doctors office waitimg room, so quit thinking you're the new Paul Revere by retweeting. I value niche information very specific to things I am trying to accomplish.

nickledave 11y ago

Worth reading the follow-up post: http://bradfrost.com/blog/post/living-with-bullshit/ http://bradfrost.com/blog/post/living-with-bullshit/ He's not against ads. He's against shitty ads that piss off customers. Anybody know if there actually are any studies that show that these ads (1) help businesses attract clients and (2) do so without alienating more clients than they attract? Or are they all just for businesses that don't care about keeping customers anyways (e.g. weight loss fads)

prawn 11y ago
Good ads generally require more effort and investment. On some occasions, companies will try to look cheap and affordable with shoddy ads, but generally shoddy ads come from tightarse clients trying to DIY or hiring average designers, etc. Or because that's what's been tested to be more effective with their audience. Companies often take the cheap approach because they're cautious about the return they're going to get, don't know any better, are cheap themselves and don't appreciate design.

halotrope 11y ago

Well actually I like the "bullshit" on pages (that being of course, an exaggeration) because it makes it far easier to filter pages that have content with a low signal to noise ratio. I think content consisting of only bullshit with low substance is the far worse disease and it seems to spread just as quick.

blattenshitser 11y ago

Yeah let's get rid of trackers and unnecessary bullshit. After, of course, I load my Google tracker and accompanying LOBSTER font. <link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Lobster' http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Lobster' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Lobster font is probably for the "Turn on bullshit?" page mode. I recommend testing it, it makes the site look properly modern.

ris 11y ago

I find it hugely ironic that the author hosts the site's blog on tumblr, the king of user-signup-driving no-we're-not-going-to-give-you-an-rss-feed-we-want-you-to-join-our-service-to-subscribe.

eqyiel 11y ago
I don't disagree with you but you may be interested to know that tumblr blogs do have RSS feeds: http://blog.deathtobullshit.com/rss http://blog.deathtobullshit.com/rss
- ris 11y ago
  ! Thankyou!

ilaksh 11y ago

War propaganda is very prevalent in US media.

jordanpg 11y ago

This isn't just about advertising. It's equally about bad or distracting design. But ultimately it's about concentration. I believe, for the most part, that multitasking is a myth. When I am reading something difficult, or that I would like to remember in detail later, I need to focus on it exclusively and read it without interruption. That means ad blockers, print view, etc. > As the landslide of bullshit surges down the mountain, people will increasingly gravitate toward genuinely useful, well-crafted products, services, and experiences that respect them and their time This sounds like wishful thinking to me. Marketing and design are surely down to a psychological science by now.

themartorana 11y ago
True story. Although the consumer isn't helping at all. https://blog.applovin.com/data-desk-6-whatever-it-would-cost-to-eliminate-mobile-ads-consumers-dont-want-to-pay-it/ https://blog.applovin.com/data-desk-6-whatever-it-would-cost...
themodelplumber 11y ago
> Marketing and design are surely down to a psychological science by now. Really? I just read an article about how Apple is intentionally avoiding a traditional social media presence as a part of its marketing strategy. So does the science work like, "if you are rich enough to buy out several independent nations, do not use social media for marketing?" Or what? And as a designer myself, I have to say "science" applied to design has a bad reputation among designers [1]. I put the word in quotes because true science is an interest of mine. And if one day in the future the application of science to design is solidified, hopefully this means fractal design software will rise from its current "American Idol without Simon Cowell" state of chaos to become part of the Adobe Creative Nebula, or whatever it's called by then. Because right now, the golden mean and fractals are just a couple of the millions of tools in a very intuitive toolbox, and they seem most likely to underwhelm when used alone as part of some grand demonstration of science meeting design. So: If there's a science to all of this, by all means elucidate. [1] http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html

nkurz 11y ago

As a couple other posters mentioned, be sure to try out the understated "Turn bullshit on?" link on the upper right of the page. It really sells the point. I sort of hoped that after clicking "I am a racist" to dismiss the "Like us on Facebook" page, that the popup chiding my brazen admission would have hijacked the OK button to post my admission to all logged in social media sites. But unfortunately Brad seems to be to honorable for that, even after people doubly-confirm that they want the bullshit. And counter-to-reality, the pulsing read "Turn this bullshit off" link works as advertised.

deleted 11y ago

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superuser2 11y ago

The vast majority of working adults in the US are employed in the making and selling of things people don't need. A world without bullshit is total, utter economic collapse. It's the end of capitalism. It's hundreds of millions of people with nothing to do all day and no way to sustain themselves, an inevitable civil war with the landlord class, and a revolution that manages to install a government's that quite possibly worse. Every piece of bullshit you see is how a great many people pay their mortgages and feed their children. Casting them out to the street is unlikely to make things better.

tacoman 11y ago
This is so obviously true, I can't help but think I'm missing something. It's certainly not limited to the US. It's a world wide phenomenon and exists everywhere people aren't living a subsistence existence. Everyone's bullshit is someone else's reason for existence. The product I work on is completely superfluous to my life, but over a million people pay for it including some of my coworkers.
viraptor 11y ago
That's assuming people have been so brainwashed they need to be told what they want / should find fun. And I'm sure that's not true. For example, sure there's lots of advertisements of snowboarding, but if any/all of them disappeared, it doesn't mean I would stop wanting to do it. But of course, I don't need it. I'm still spending my money on gear / clothing / transport / accommodation / food / services that are related to snowboarding, because I want to do it. People wanted things before bullshit all around us existed (or existed only in a limited and local scale). Civilisation existed before the first advertisement agency was created.
eli_gottlieb 11y ago
>A world without bullshit is ... the end of capitalism. Finally! I get rid of two things I hate in one go! >It's hundreds of millions of people with nothing to do all day and no way to sustain themselves, an inevitable civil war with the landlord class, and a revolution that manages to install a government's that quite possibly worse. Why do you find it easier to imagine the end of civilization than the end of capitalism? http://strikemag.org/capitalist-realism-by-mark-fisher/ http://strikemag.org/capitalist-realism-by-mark-fisher/

stabilo 11y ago

Here's one he omitted: "We take security seriously..."

majani 11y ago

On Opera Mini, the bullshit button doesn't work...

webXL 11y ago

It sounds like the author resents having to compete for attention with "bullshit", but I'm not sure if there's a realistic alternative. You're going to throw out the baby with the bath water I'm afraid. As for advertising, paying for entertainment and information with some time and attention is not really bullshit. It's a voluntary exchange, and both sides would not engage if they did not have some inclination that they would be better off than without the exchange. There are other things you can exchange for entertainment and information, and you can completely opt out.

tripzilch 11y ago

Bullshit makes the flowers grow, and that's beautiful!