These are great analogies: infinite scroll as a "slot machine". The Pinterest homepage is "like opening a can of digital Pringles". But the comparison should a

These are great analogies: infinite scroll as a "slot machine". The Pinterest homepage is "like opening a can of digital Pringles". But the comparison should also raise the question: are slot machines and Pringles (and everything like them) good for people? Some of these UX patterns are thus a High Fructose Corn Syrup of design. Shovel them into any interface to make it seem more urgent, important, and novel... but it's a false sheen that's ultimately unhealthy for the audience. I'm not just picking on Pinterest and its ilk. The kind of 'top stories' ranking used by HN is also an 'attention sugar' offender. The dynamic-but-decaying ranking creates an often-false sense of urgency; mixing unlike stories (including a trickle of duplicates and mislabeled material) in close and semirandom proximity heightens the sense of novelty. It makes reading even stories that are trivial, redundant or quickly superceded by corrections seem more important than it really is. Perhaps we need to categorize interface patterns by a sort of 'attentional glycemic index', and limit intake of the worst variants.