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Stuck

believermag.com

94 pointschesterfield18 comments

It was a long read but a good one. I had basically forgotten that I used to read magazines. Waiting for my favorite ones' next issue every month. This reminded me of those.

Also, I'm not a stutterer but I feel that stuttering seems like a neurological condition happening to a certain population of people. Neurological like within the nerves of the tongue maybe? This might be the reason why they find it hard to articulate words?

Clicks link. Starts to read article. Two seconds in a newsletter modal takes over. :(

The article's worth it. The interstitial sucks though, I agree.

I'm not trying to be judgmental but, you'll never get anywhere if you let small obstacles in life deter you from your goals. Losing interest in something because of a pop-up that can be easily side-stepped causes you to miss the opportunity to read what I consider to be a fairly well-written story about one person's struggle with stuttering.

I also detest modals, ads, auto-playing anythings, etc. but when you can get past it simply by clicking the X provided in the modal I count that as more of a minor annoyance than a hard boundary which I refuse to cross.

Presumably an author wants to be read at least as much as a reader wants to read a random article. If they present their piece in an obnoxious format, why bother?

I agree that an author wants their work to be read and enjoyed or used to inform. I disagree that clicking an X to close a pop-up is an example of an obnoxious format. In my case, I let things load and then look for the easy way around any annoyances. If there is no easy way then that to me qualifies as obnoxious and that will make me move on to the next item.

> you'll never get anywhere if you let small obstacles in life deter you from your goals

It is true that I decided not to read the article, but I don't think that is indicative of a larger life pattern. In fact, I have a lot of extremely large obstacles that I face every day that haven't stopped me yet.

Thanks for the courteous reply that I probably didn't deserve. I also hate when a site pops up a sign-in or any other pop-up when I try to read the content. If I am interested in reading the content I look for ways around the obstacle. In this case, clicking the X to close it was all I needed to do. To me, that is easy enough and by far less annoying than the obnoxious cookie pop-ups or email requests. After reading the article I can say that it was worth taking the time to click the X IMHO.

They don't let me find out, if I'm interested in reading it, before they annoy me.

Commas must've been on sale when you made that sentence since you have an extra. That only cost me a fraction of a second to parse though so I survived the experience only slightly out of phase. That extra comma is a lot like clicking the X supplied in the pop-up on that article in that it takes a short second to get past it.

Wow, this comment, is almost art.

I love this reply!

It is awesome.

Wow (1 word) , this comment (2 words) , is almost art. (3 words)

1, 2, 3

Wow (1 syllable) , this comment (3 syllables) , is almost art. (4 syllables)

1, 3, 4 (with the first two as a seed, each successive number is the sum of the previous two)

If you had continued with this progression then the text following the comma after "art" would need to be 4 words long with a total of 7 syllables to the next comma or period.

Great work.

Wow, this comment, is almost art, I definitely love it!

You have your work cut out for you.

> Losing interest in something because of a pop-up that can be easily side-stepped causes you to miss the opportunity

If that was a single pop up on a single site, I would agree with you. However, it's the hundredth, or the thousandth just today. So, cumulatively they present a big obstacle, and a hundred/thousand-first such obstacle? It will just make the person close the website and never come back.

>However, it's the hundredth, or the thousandth just today. So, cumulatively they present a big obstacle...

Okay. I think you have a valid point and this does get annoying over time but I find in my own usage that it is easy to spend a quick second scanning the page looking for an easy bypass and if, as in this case here, one is provided then I don't hold that against the author. I go ahead and read the content unless I find the content to be not worth the exercise to read.

In this case, all one needed to do was to click an X in the pop-up and they could read the interesting story laid out by the author. If you elect to just be annoyed you will need to make a click somewhere anyway to get off of the page so I don't think one extra click constitutes an insurmountable obstacle.

It's quite sad that these pop-ups have become ubiquitous. The blame for this has to lie with some of the people here on HN who work in the industry and who had an opportunity to steer website publishers away from stuff like this but instead chose to normalize it.

I read it in reader mode. The piece is beautifully written and deep. Though Im not exactly a stutterer myself I learned something new about myself here. Im surprised it didn’t get more attention on HN

I, too, learned something about myself reading this beautiful piece.

I've long forgotten there was a popup modal.

I wish page architects could comprehend the level of revulsion I feel when I get into an article and something like a popup distracts me. It doesn't make me want to sign up or pay. It makes me want to find another source. I prefer when a site just blocks an article entirely.

In this particular situation, you can click away the modal though (top right corner, pretty hidden on a big screen tbh).

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