I didn't plan on posting about this again, but something happened to me Friday that really illustrates how impactful hostile UX can be.
Majority of people have come to accept hundreds and thousands of spam emails daily, and don't care if their unread count is in the 5 figures, but that has never been me. I obsessively unsubscribe from every newsletter that I get subscribed to without my consent after making a purchase. I hate seeing a count listed in the Spam folder link and block email addresses any time something pops up there.
I switched email providers about a year ago, and from the get go I have been using email aliases for every single service from addy.io. I am sick and tired of breaches opening my email address up to spam and phishers, and this is the only solution. 1 email address per service so if they decide to sell my info or get breached, I can just delete the alias and be done.
Every year in September, there's a music fest called Riot Fest. The Bouncing Souls, who I really love, have played it before but weren't on the lineup this year, even though their current tour mates were. This ended up being because they are one of the Riot Fest late night shows that happen at the local venues that weekend. Going to see a band starting at midnight isn't my idea of a good time, but I haven't seen them in 12 years and I really want to again. I decided to try and buy a ticket when they went live on Friday, but couldn't get one because the site kept saying that my cards were all declined (and they weren't, because no transaction attempts even showed).
I had reached out to the site about it and they looked into it and determined that Stripe, who they use for payment processing, blacklisted the addy.io domain tied to the alias I generated for that site. This is where the hostile UX comes into play.
I have chosen to use aliases for my own protection, as I mentioned above. Companies are deliberately blocking the tools that enable this to force people to provide their real email address. I refuse to do this, so I can't get a ticket. There's no alternative site to buy them from and you can't buy one through a phone call. The support rep told me to change my account email to a different one and try again, and that's completely unacceptable to me.
Why does the payment processor need my email address in the first place? Why do they only want "real" email addresses? It's all about the tracking data, nothing less and nothing more. We have gotten to the point of such a technological dystopia that I can't buy a fucking concert ticket without handing over my data to a payment processor working completely behind the scenes to do as they please with it.
Call me a luddite, I really don't give a shit. I have been so sick of what capitalism has done to the internet, and now it's even ruining my ability to see one of my favorite bands. How much worse is it going to get before people actually say "Enough!"? If the AI fascist slop takeover wasn't enough, nothing ever will be.
GenAI is trash. ChatGPT is trash. Copilot is trash. Every other GenAI product is trash. You suck and you should feel bad about it and the fact that you are stealing from me. You should apologize to the world and then self-destruct for the good of humanity.