This is tying ever more byzantine verbal knots trying to argue you didn't create a strawman to argue against (you did), and adding to that, sinking to personal

This is tying ever more byzantine verbal knots trying to argue you didn't create a strawman to argue against (you did), and adding to that, sinking to personal abuse hoping it improves the quality of the argument (it doesn't). There are multiple interpretations of "Add this to the list of dark patterns". The asinine paraphrase of this to "a new dark pattern", especially coupled to the absurdly rigid thinking of the explanation offered, is not merely one of many interpretations; it is the least likely, because the general case of Hobson's choice and its related dilemmas have been recognised for centuries. Ergo, we can trivially reject that interpretation. The author might instead merely be suggesting this is their first personal recognition of such a pattern, or they could be imagining a list of specific instances of major tech companies deploying such a pattern, or offering simply a figure of speech to say "this is a dark pattern", and several other variations besides. Tip: the world is not a fucking Lisp machine. In light of which, the cheap crack about "reading comprehension" looks even more sophomoric. What's more, none of that invalidates the actual point, viz. it is one.