Tangential, but the "setting up your account" shenanigans reminds me of one of the more amusing patterns, not necessarily always so dark: the "doing important t

Tangential, but the "setting up your account" shenanigans reminds me of one of the more amusing patterns, not necessarily always so dark: the "doing important things" delay. Usually a website that makes you wait a while with a progress bar and status messages in the vein of "reticulating splines", as if Hard Work is happening when the operation is almost certainly done in a near instant. If you've ever searched for someone on the web and found yourself on one of those websites that launders public records as some sort of sophisticated and proprietary PI service, you've probably seen one of these. I say not so dark because it's just theatrics a lot of the time, with no real stakes for the user, but it is funny. Less experienced users might view the appearance of Hard Work as justifying payment, though, so it's still a tad shady.