This is a rant and not worth reading unless you are really bored. There are references to marketing and web design that somehow float in my head, lonely and in need of fresh air.
[ 5 minute read ]
The march of digital obfuscation
This post refers to an article 'We'll make it home together', on France 24
France 24 - https://www.france24.com/en/
'We'll make it home together' -
Web Documentaries on France 24 - https://webdoc.france24.com
The march of digital obfuscation goes on. There is an 'article' on France 24 https://www.france24.com/en/ that just plain abuses my sensibilities. Aarrgh! The story starts safely enough with a picture / thumbnail of what might be considered to be the front cover of a book about women deported from France to Ravensbrück, Germany. Yet, when I clicked on it, and expected to be able read it, I was disappointed. This is cognitive dissonance at the very first moment when the PACKAGING is revealed. Nobody in marketing wants that! Slightly confused, I worked on the mouse wheel, as one does as a automatic response to nothing happening on screen. You know, the website has loaded but the cookies banner has not yet, or the website designer has included time delays in the code for smooth transitions (waste of time).
Ah, okay, it's working now, And then, more cognitive dissonance; instead of the page scrolling down, text moves up over the flash image. This action acts on some code to take away the time delay before the static flash image is replaced by other images; in effect a slideshow of images that then transitions into video. Meanwhile the text that scrolled up to cover it obscures the moving images so they cannot be seen. Cognitive dissonance through frustration at not being able to see something. I am missing out, I think. Surely, any marketer would use that to get people to buy something without thinking too much, yet this article is free and we are missing out on something for the sake of something else. This is a zugswang position in chess, or perhaps a knight fork. You can have one or the other, not both. Disappointment and a feeling of not being in control. A marketer's worst nightmare to make the customer recognise this in themselves. NO SALE!
There is an introduction, and then, by continuing to scroll, a series of chapter links; yes links! that scroll up. More delay and more action needed. This is interaction for the sake of it. What is the point of writing about kidnapped women during the second World War if it is not to help people to understand their plight, or make money? Either let us read it or reward us somehow. I am so out of touch with reality that I cannot fathom why people might feel rewarded if they have to continually click, click (as Ssniperwolf says at the end of her YouTude videos). Click, click, click, to be able to read something. Why not pause for a round of Bingo, while we are at it?
Right! The screen has links to chapters. These could have been static icons on the first page as an aside or, I think, in website making terms, an article within the web page. As I scroll, each chapter link replaces the next, completely obscuring the previously shown button. It stops at chapter five. Now, surely, I can begin to read the story. No. More cognitive dissonance and wasted time. I have to scroll back up to get to Chapter One, and click the link to start reading Chapter One (Part One). Once that is loaded, there is a link to chapter two, and chapter two has a link to chapter three, and so on. The website creator calls these chapters 'parts'.
Each one of these 'parts' is a separate web page. Now, even though I have a web site but don't really bother with Search Engine Optimisation for Google indexing, I am aware that 'stickability' was once a metric that Google used. The longer a person spends on a web page determines how interesting it is deemed to be. So include a diversion such as a video that plays really, really really, slowly. Obviously Google is aware of that tactic. So, stickability is not so useful as a metric. So, it seems there is no reason to have web pages that take a long time to read or absorb or something (a guess). Yet, my new web site analytics measures bounce rate AND stickability, and entry points, and stuff such as the operating system used by the viewers and other stuff. I don't really care.
But let's not get bogged down in that. France 24 is the host website and the piece about Ravensbrück is a subdomain of France 24, titled 'webdoc', as in https://webdoc.france24.com (Web documentaries on France 24)
Overall, I am disappointed that an interesting story is ruined by splitting it into five short parts when it could have conveyed important information in a far more accessible way, for the sake of hitting analytics metrics to impress Google's algorithms.
Something is going wrong when the fuss of a web site means that, for me, it can only be a taster, I won't continue with it, and I will seek information on the subject elsewhere. Except I am wrong. The whole purpose of existence in the modern world is not to communicate, or be good at it; it is to show that you can be considered worthy in that we have impressed some computer code that ranks our work as relevant. Surely, it is only relevant to narcissism.
In reality, I will get an idea that I know something about French women locked up in concentration camps, but because I am used to getting thrill after thrill I will never seek to actually learn anything by looking for relevant information. I blame MTV for that. They are the ones who put ticker-tape style messages across the bottom of our TV screens, when we were watching music videos in the 1980's.
What would I do differently? If having multiple pages is important to be highly ranked, I would have all the links to the parts on the same page, and all the links to all the parts on every page as an article to the side of the page. As someone who wants to go back in text to check for relevancy or as new ideas come into my head, I might want to go back to a part/chapter with a link and not as backward steps. The bounce and entry metrics would show this more accurately to the webmaster and adjustments could be made by them to suit - as in why did the viewers go back? Did I leave something out?
My last thought? A classic case of worshipping digital technology as being greater than analogue humans or God(s).