Friction

The loop these three describe is pretty clear: we reach for tools that smooth away discomfort, erode our ability to sit with discomfort, and then make us reach again. Frictionlessness is just like American individualism with a UX layer on top.

Jürgen Geuter’s Friction and not being touched:

In tech circles friction is seen as bad, everything needs to be frictionless. Every interaction with anything needs to be smooth and uninterrupted. Which usually means the path to you parting with your money/attention needs to be as seamless as possible.

Friction-maxxing by The Cut:

Friction-maxxing is not simply a matter of reducing your screen time, or whatever. It’s the process of building up tolerance for “inconvenience” (which is usually not inconvenience at all but just the vagaries of being a person living with other people in spaces that are impossible to completely control) — and then reaching even toward enjoyment.

Mandy Brown’s Automation conformity:

…anxiety in fact has meaning, and that our aim cannot be to eliminate it but to work with it, and through it, to use it to propel our creativity and vigor for life. And yet, anxiety is often deeply, even intolerably, unpleasant, and the effort to embrace it can test us beyond our abilities. We are wont, then, to look for an escape hatch, an easy path to relief; but those paths always come with a cost.