7 ms·

I feel like a similar thing happens in "real life" sometimes, not just on websites. Back in high school, I used to volunteer at an animal shelter, and we had an

by saghm 3y ago

I feel like a similar thing happens in "real life" sometimes, not just on websites. Back in high school, I used to volunteer at an animal shelter, and we had an area out back where we'd walk the dogs or let them run around in one of a few fenced in areas throughout the day so they could go to the bathroom and get some exercise. The door leading out here was located in one of the rooms with dog kennels, so people coming to potentially adopt a dog would walk through this room a lot, and often they'd try to walk out back and watch or participate with the volunteers and staff taking some of the dogs out. We'd ask them politely to go back inside because they aren't allowed out there and point out the very large sign in large font on the door saying this, and every time they'd always act very surprised because they claimed not to have seen it. I'm sure some people were just feigning ignorance because it seemed easier, but the sheer number of people claiming it makes it believable that at least _some_ of them genuinely didn't notice; they saw a door, they wanted to go through, and they opened it without processing the words right in front of their face.

bagels 3y ago
There are so many signs that everyone encounters everyday that are of no consequence. Everyone develops the habit of not reading them.
- pixl97 3y ago
  Adblock for the brain. This is the problem with advertisements. The vie so hard for your attention they really are hard to ignore. But after they catch your attention you've realized that your attention has just been wasted. Soon you catch yourself just filtering out anything that could potentially be an ad.
breischl 3y ago
Definitely a thing. Just yesterday I was annoyed by my auto mechanic's credit card fee, and said they should've told me up front. She pointed out it was on a sign on the counter that I was looking at that moment, and had also been there when I dropped the car off the day before.
D-Coder 3y ago
NotAlwaysRight.com has tons of stories about people who ignored signs, closed doors, locked doors etc.
Sharlin 3y ago
All of us act, much of the time, on varying degrees of autopilot. It's unlikely that the automatic parts of the brain can read, although presumably they are quite capable of pattern-recognizing and processing learned symbolic language like traffic signs (and even that's by no means guaranteed – so many humans merrily ignore or miss changes in signage in traffic, having traveled the same route a thousand times before). The strength and type of stimulus required to "wake us up" – for the brain to realize there's something novel or unexpected that requires the activation of higher-level, analytic parts of the brain – probably varies a lot from person to person, but just a bunch of text is not always enough to do that unless accompanied by familiar semiotic language, which is of course the reason we use symbols and colors to make important messages more likely to be perceived and understood. The best wake-up signals are, of course, those that physically prevent you from doing something you intended to do – a locked door, for example.
- saghm 3y ago
  Unfortunately with up to a few dozen dogs needing to go outside multiple times a day and a half dozen volunteers that are only on shifts for a few hours at a time, there were just too many different people needing to go through that door too often for it to be worth locking it and distributing keys to everyone. Maybe having the door locked and the key hanging right next to it would be enough for people to disengage autopilot, but I'm not convinced that non-volunteers wouldn't just grab the key and open the door sometimes as well. Plus, some of the dogs could be quite strong, and the volunteers ranged from teenagers to retirees, so having both hands on the leash and being able to just push the door open was preferable in a lot of circumstances.
petsfed 3y ago
There are situations where its hard to understand how even the non-verbal warnings didn't latch though. There's "no unauthorized personnel", and then there's "Fire door, alarm will sound". In college, i worked at a university recreation center, and the desk I worked at was about 15 feet from a fire door. It sat somewhat between the weight room and the men's locker room, so virtually all male customers walked past this specific, well marked, fire door during their visit. And about 2-3 times a week, while I was working, somebody would finish up their workout and just push that door open and walk out. And every time, they'd look thunderstruck that the alarm did in fact sound. I eventually dropped all pretense of understanding that they were on autopilot, and began commenting as I deactivated and reactivated the alarm AGAIN "I thought universities required students be able to read". Only one person ever got short with me over that, and all I had to do was point at the letters that were bigger than their head, directly at eye level, 18 inches from their face, while they pushed the door open.
- QuantumYeti 3y ago
  Sounds like you were upset that you had a job looking at a door, and took it out on people.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    It’s totally reasonable to scold people for using emergency exits (especially alarmed ones) without an emergency need. It also doesn’t make you a bad person or stupid to subconsciously miss signage. But you should be okay with a bit of scolding in that case.
    - QuantumYeti 3y ago
      It's not reasonable to scold strangers, especially if you're just some random employee.
      - vermilingua 3y ago
        Yes, it absolutely is reasonable to scold strangers for things like this, especially if you’re an employee who sees it happening regularly.
josefresco 3y ago
> feigning ignorance We have our hourly rate printed on a sign in our conference room. The walls are very clean, with almost no other signage. Despite communicating my rate to a client (via email) and having two meetings in this room, this particular client was shocked when they received my final bill which (again) stated our rate. I believe in this case they were just unhappy and looking for an "emotional plea" way out of payment.
ben_w 3y ago
I once visited a sword shop, and only noticed the signs tiled every metre horizontally and vertically across the walls saying "do not touch" when the person I was with told me about them as my fingers hovered mere centimetres from one of the wall-mounted blades. I also didn't notice the moonwalking gorilla in the famous video clip despite being aware in advance that there would be one.
neon5077 3y ago
In the early days of the pandemic, the retail chain I worked for had a curbside delivery only policy. No customers in the store period, you had to call us and we'd bring your whatever out to you. No amount of signage on the door would stop people walking in. I stacked a bunch of boxes physically blocking the door and people still forced their way in. The only thing that worked was putting a strip of blue painter's tape across the doorway directly at eye level. I have long since stopped trying to make sense of other people's behavior.
- bagels 3y ago
  A bunch of stacked boxes are really ambiguous. Did someone stack them there on accident, or as a prank?
  - neon5077 3y ago
    No, that's not it at all. This was after multiple conversations with the same person explaining the situation. There was signs on the door, on the boxes, with giant type, highlighters, bright colors, the works. This was people explicitly ignoring any and all signals contrary to their desires. The confusing bit is that a strip of tape with no other context is what stopped them. Probably just that it was something so outside of the ordinary experience that it forced them to actually engage their brain for a moment.
- sandspar 3y ago
  I've spent a couple of years working in customer service. I was continually mystified by people's behavior. I would spend a large amount of time trying to comprehend why they did something and couldn't gain any purchase on a possible answer. Some people's behavior had an element of randomness in the sense of not adhering to a pattern.
geor9e 3y ago
Sounds like a UIUX problem. Sign makers get about half a second to convince a rushed person to pause, between the moment the sign enters their field of view and the moment they're already through the door. If the sign is anything more than a large red STOP symbol and anything more than the words NOT AN EXIT and/or AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, then I bet most people don't read it. I probably wouldn't, unless I was incredibly bored. Most signs are irrelevant to most readers and we are constantly inundated with them on every door and every hallway wall we walk down. If it was important it would follow internally recognized danger signage UIUX standards. Which usually just means a big symbol. Everything else is just another blurry bakesale announcement that flashed past our face.
jspash 3y ago
As an aside, I was intrigued by your use of quotes around "real life". I think we've collectively gone so far down the internet rabbit hole that real life, ie. not on the internet, is seen as the anomaly or unreal. Not the other way around.
mr_toad 3y ago
I have terrible trouble with signs when I’m walking. Unless they’re directly in my way I mostly ignore them. On the other hand if I’m sitting around, like at an airport I read all the signs no matter how irrelevant.

by saghm 3y ago

bagels 3y ago

There are so many signs that everyone encounters everyday that are of no consequence. Everyone develops the habit of not reading them.

pixl97 3y ago
Adblock for the brain. This is the problem with advertisements. The vie so hard for your attention they really are hard to ignore. But after they catch your attention you've realized that your attention has just been wasted. Soon you catch yourself just filtering out anything that could potentially be an ad.

breischl 3y ago

Definitely a thing. Just yesterday I was annoyed by my auto mechanic's credit card fee, and said they should've told me up front. She pointed out it was on a sign on the counter that I was looking at that moment, and had also been there when I dropped the car off the day before.

D-Coder 3y ago

NotAlwaysRight.com has tons of stories about people who ignored signs, closed doors, locked doors etc.

Sharlin 3y ago

All of us act, much of the time, on varying degrees of autopilot. It's unlikely that the automatic parts of the brain can read, although presumably they are quite capable of pattern-recognizing and processing learned symbolic language like traffic signs (and even that's by no means guaranteed – so many humans merrily ignore or miss changes in signage in traffic, having traveled the same route a thousand times before). The strength and type of stimulus required to "wake us up" – for the brain to realize there's something novel or unexpected that requires the activation of higher-level, analytic parts of the brain – probably varies a lot from person to person, but just a bunch of text is not always enough to do that unless accompanied by familiar semiotic language, which is of course the reason we use symbols and colors to make important messages more likely to be perceived and understood. The best wake-up signals are, of course, those that physically prevent you from doing something you intended to do – a locked door, for example.

saghm 3y ago
Unfortunately with up to a few dozen dogs needing to go outside multiple times a day and a half dozen volunteers that are only on shifts for a few hours at a time, there were just too many different people needing to go through that door too often for it to be worth locking it and distributing keys to everyone. Maybe having the door locked and the key hanging right next to it would be enough for people to disengage autopilot, but I'm not convinced that non-volunteers wouldn't just grab the key and open the door sometimes as well. Plus, some of the dogs could be quite strong, and the volunteers ranged from teenagers to retirees, so having both hands on the leash and being able to just push the door open was preferable in a lot of circumstances.

petsfed 3y ago

There are situations where its hard to understand how even the non-verbal warnings didn't latch though. There's "no unauthorized personnel", and then there's "Fire door, alarm will sound". In college, i worked at a university recreation center, and the desk I worked at was about 15 feet from a fire door. It sat somewhat between the weight room and the men's locker room, so virtually all male customers walked past this specific, well marked, fire door during their visit. And about 2-3 times a week, while I was working, somebody would finish up their workout and just push that door open and walk out. And every time, they'd look thunderstruck that the alarm did in fact sound. I eventually dropped all pretense of understanding that they were on autopilot, and began commenting as I deactivated and reactivated the alarm AGAIN "I thought universities required students be able to read". Only one person ever got short with me over that, and all I had to do was point at the letters that were bigger than their head, directly at eye level, 18 inches from their face, while they pushed the door open.

QuantumYeti 3y ago
Sounds like you were upset that you had a job looking at a door, and took it out on people.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  It’s totally reasonable to scold people for using emergency exits (especially alarmed ones) without an emergency need. It also doesn’t make you a bad person or stupid to subconsciously miss signage. But you should be okay with a bit of scolding in that case.
  - QuantumYeti 3y ago
    It's not reasonable to scold strangers, especially if you're just some random employee.
    - vermilingua 3y ago
      Yes, it absolutely is reasonable to scold strangers for things like this, especially if you’re an employee who sees it happening regularly.

josefresco 3y ago

> feigning ignorance We have our hourly rate printed on a sign in our conference room. The walls are very clean, with almost no other signage. Despite communicating my rate to a client (via email) and having two meetings in this room, this particular client was shocked when they received my final bill which (again) stated our rate. I believe in this case they were just unhappy and looking for an "emotional plea" way out of payment.

ben_w 3y ago

I once visited a sword shop, and only noticed the signs tiled every metre horizontally and vertically across the walls saying "do not touch" when the person I was with told me about them as my fingers hovered mere centimetres from one of the wall-mounted blades. I also didn't notice the moonwalking gorilla in the famous video clip despite being aware in advance that there would be one.

neon5077 3y ago

In the early days of the pandemic, the retail chain I worked for had a curbside delivery only policy. No customers in the store period, you had to call us and we'd bring your whatever out to you. No amount of signage on the door would stop people walking in. I stacked a bunch of boxes physically blocking the door and people still forced their way in. The only thing that worked was putting a strip of blue painter's tape across the doorway directly at eye level. I have long since stopped trying to make sense of other people's behavior.

bagels 3y ago
A bunch of stacked boxes are really ambiguous. Did someone stack them there on accident, or as a prank?
- neon5077 3y ago
  No, that's not it at all. This was after multiple conversations with the same person explaining the situation. There was signs on the door, on the boxes, with giant type, highlighters, bright colors, the works. This was people explicitly ignoring any and all signals contrary to their desires. The confusing bit is that a strip of tape with no other context is what stopped them. Probably just that it was something so outside of the ordinary experience that it forced them to actually engage their brain for a moment.
sandspar 3y ago
I've spent a couple of years working in customer service. I was continually mystified by people's behavior. I would spend a large amount of time trying to comprehend why they did something and couldn't gain any purchase on a possible answer. Some people's behavior had an element of randomness in the sense of not adhering to a pattern.

geor9e 3y ago

Sounds like a UIUX problem. Sign makers get about half a second to convince a rushed person to pause, between the moment the sign enters their field of view and the moment they're already through the door. If the sign is anything more than a large red STOP symbol and anything more than the words NOT AN EXIT and/or AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, then I bet most people don't read it. I probably wouldn't, unless I was incredibly bored. Most signs are irrelevant to most readers and we are constantly inundated with them on every door and every hallway wall we walk down. If it was important it would follow internally recognized danger signage UIUX standards. Which usually just means a big symbol. Everything else is just another blurry bakesale announcement that flashed past our face.

jspash 3y ago

As an aside, I was intrigued by your use of quotes around "real life". I think we've collectively gone so far down the internet rabbit hole that real life, ie. not on the internet, is seen as the anomaly or unreal. Not the other way around.

mr_toad 3y ago

I have terrible trouble with signs when I’m walking. Unless they’re directly in my way I mostly ignore them. On the other hand if I’m sitting around, like at an airport I read all the signs no matter how irrelevant.