against the paved web (or, why we can't have nice things)
a ux-informed look at the next generation of persuasive technology, how ‘artificial serendipity’ disguises data exploitation, and what desire paths & queer activism reveal about this
I write this Substack free of charge, as part of the IRRATIONAL TECHNOLOGY educational initiative, and I don’t intend to change that. I am mid-strategy rethink for IRRATIONAL TECHNOLOGY, and I’m looking for freelance design work to help me launch the next phase of this initiative.
If my writing interests you, and you’d like some help with a design challenge that is similar to the things I tackle in my work, do get in touch.
Better get in before I make it big and start charging 10 grand for an hour of my time! /s
Social media as we know it today is designed for consuming, not for learning and exploring. This presents itself in a great variety of ways: screen layout on short-form video, the complete inability of any of the major platforms to allow you to put a link in your post, and the suppression of posts that say “link in bio”! All of this is designed to keep you on the platform, because this makes you consume more, making them more money. That’s the reason why you have so many posts saved about resources to check out or books to buy that you never actually do anything with.
When I came across people complaining about this issue, I looked for alternatives that could offer different modes of interaction, providing a more positive experience. In design circles, one antidote to this kind of consumption-focused digital experience is known as “serendipitous design,” which encourages a type of digital experience that facilitates natural discovery, allowing users to truly maximise their digital experience. This design philosophy is rooted in a critique of the idea that you should always seek a “flow state” and argues that this flow state can limit creativity.
As often happens when exploring alternative modes of online interaction, I quickly discovered how this design method is being manipulated to perpetuate existing technology systems under capitalism. This caused me to despair a bit, as it is a recurring pattern in alternative visions of the internet. Concepts like the fediverse and blockchain have also been appropriated by big tech.
What are we left with when any alternative way of interacting with the digital is appropriated by big tech? That is what this essay explores.
artificial serendipity
According to the research, the key components of serendipity are unexpectedness, location, memories, and a blend of familiar and unfamiliar elements. These factors work together to influence how likely someone is to experience serendipity through their combined information, context, insight, and activity. People will accept and act on push suggestions when the timing and context are correct, provided they aren't overwhelmed by too many suggestions.
So, picture the scene. It’s 2030. You are exploring a new city. As you go along, your phone pings with a recommendation for a cute local restaurant. You head along and have a lovely meal, thinking nothing of it. But what you don’t know is that the restaurant pays Google to show up more in recommendations, and who Google recommend the restaurant to is based on data that they buy from Meta, so that they can increase how successful their recommendations are, then charge local venues increasingly high prices.
This creates artificial serendipity - it replicates the emotions that create serendipity to enable the data economy to keep chugging along. The most dangerous aspect of this is that it is harder to spot. If you are doomscrolling for ages, it is pretty easy to recognise that you are being manipulated. But, if this data collection and advertising can fit into your life without much friction - you won’t recognise when it is happening.
Google Maps is the easiest example to take - but considering the concept of interoperability, where different platforms connect with one another, you can see how this philosophy of serendipitous discovery could simply serve to create more of the same. Threads, on its landing screen, is already talking about the future of the internet as the fediverse, which was originally proposed as an alternative to platform realism & platform hegemony. When I first encountered this screen, I felt a sense of despair, and also confusion: somehow, they will make this marketable & profitable but how? Now, in studying aritifically reproduced serendipity, we can see how. Making you, the user, think that you’re discovering cool things naturally, and not stuck on one platform but hopping between different ones for different uses. But, all of this is based on using your data to direct your behaviour, so that more money can be made.
This is only a quick example, but below you can see a prototype of a “serendepity engine”. I have deliberately left the examples blank - it’s important to note just how personalised this would be, and I’ve chosen a design theme that would draw me in, but the themes would be equally customisable (whatever creates serendipity for you would be different, on a visual level). If you’re a productivity bro, for example, it might look a bit more like Mercury OS , but the function would be the same on a back-end level.
You will have began to notice that this does not, on a technical level, sound that different to your current experience of the internet. That's because simply changing engagement/flow-based design without addressing the underlying structure will only lead to data exploitation in a different form. While it may feel like you have more control and autonomy over where you go and what you do, this is illusory—the emotions that create serendipity have been meticulously studied and artificially recreated.
Arguably, this interpretation of serendipity (which will likely become the dominant one, as it benefits the tech oligarchs), actually creates less serendipity. Partly this is because it blurs the line between “predicting” which restaurant you will choose and dictating it. The other reason for this is that it actually diverts you away from things you would naturally discover. In this case, you feel the artificially replicated emotions of serendipity when you visit this small local restaurant, but you miss discovering the place around the corner with the live band, or experiencing that crucial bonding moment of wandering aimlessly around a European city while wanting to throttle your indecisive family members.
The core issue is that people cannot control their own digital experiences—these experiences are controlled for them. A shift to "serendipitous" design wouldn't fix this problem, nor would most other prescriptive ideas about what the future of technology should look like. Instead, it would simply strengthen the ways digital technology already controls our lives, as demonstrated in the previous example. Serendipity in the digital under neoliberal capitalism would inevitably make big tech's control more subtle. Instead of "we make money by selling your data, so we need to keep you on our platform," it would become "we make money by using your data to create an illusion of serendipitous discovery."
desire paths
A desire path is a result of natural human choices, rather than careful planning, resulting from natural foot traffic.
"Desire Paths" have exploded in popularity online over the past year, sparking widespread discussion across social media and providing an insight into a desire for a different way of existing. On TikTok, content creators have documented and shared thousands of these naturally-formed pathways worldwide. Similarly, the Reddit community dedicated to desire paths has grown into a hub of documentation and discussion, with members regularly sharing discoveries from their local communities. The remarkable popularity of these online communities, particularly the Reddit forum, provides compelling insights into human behaviour, demonstrating how our natural inclinations often are at odds with planned or predicted movement patterns, highlighting the disconnect between designed spaces and actual human usage.
The popularity of these desire paths on the very platforms that make them impossible is symbolic of a wider societal desire for a shift away from controlled digital experiences, towards a socially, co-created internet.
Some research suggest that the emergence of desire paths are influenced by social learning processes. People walk along a desire path because they can see that other people have done the same. Humans are inherently social creatures, so this is a form of collective creation and learning. Understanding desire paths this way can point us towards a truly collectively created digital future - one that describes and doesn’t prescribe.
Relating this to the digital, we can see the potential for a powerful shift, when people begin to recognise their own experiences, aspirations, and authentic desires reflected in the design of technology. These desires cannot be artificially manufactured or imposed from above - they must emerge organically through a process of collaborative creation, where communities actively participate in shaping the digital tools and spaces that serve their needs.
While implementing this in practice can feel like herding cats, there's a practical approach: observe how technology is used and appreciated, then incorporate the best aspects into new proposals. What is the (social) feature that is most used? Is there an example of a feature that was introduced that users used differently than you intended? Are your users “adapting” the product or service in certain ways? Most importantly - what is the driving desire behind this?
Focus on describing rather than prescribing user behaviour
Enable bottom-up technology development
Allow communities to co-create their digital experiences by designing flexible systems that can be shaped by user behaviour
queer activism
Queer activists are a relentless example of this idea of digital desire paths, throughout the history of the internet. Although often sidelined in conversations about technology, the queer community across the world is the best example of making technology work for your community - and one I think we could all learn from.
In “The Two Revolutions: A History of the Transgender Internet” we see many examples of queer-driven platform adaptation, such as early message boards, Tumblr communities, and Discord servers that were transformed by queer users. The queer community saw, and still sees, these platforms as a lifeline. This drives us to create these digital desire paths, creating our own norms and communication styles that differ from intended platform use. In doing this, the goal is to spread information, engage in mutual aid, community theorising, and allowing the faster creation of something vaugley resembling a community consensus on the direction of trans activism. The most interesting part of this is that social media is used to enhance existing communities and goals; through more democracy of access, and more speed, when compared to print media.
Queer digital communities stand as powerful examples of "bottom-up technology" in action, actively shaping and transforming digital spaces to meet their unique needs. Through organic evolution and collective innovation, these communities establish their own distinctive norms, communication patterns, and cultural practices that often diverge significantly from the original intended platform usage. This grassroots approach to digital interaction demonstrates how communities can authentically adapt and repurpose technology tools, creating spaces that genuinely serve their members rather than conforming to prescribed platform behaviors.
This creates a tension as platforms become commercialised - being primarily for queer people is often not “marketable,” so platforms are reluctant to embrace their queer users, even if they make up the majority of their users. In the rainbow-capitalism phase of the 2010s, a lot of activists thought that we were beginning to see the commercialisation of even queer spaces, both online and offline. But, in the recent turn to facism in the US & certain parts of Europe, this tendency is dying down, and companies are once again less keen on addmiting to their queer customer base. This is the case for social media platforms, as well as any number of other industries.
The pendulum swing from (attempted) corporate silencing of queer digital communities, and the corporate sanitisation of queer digital communities through rainbow capitalism has, however, left a lot of us with whiplash. This is part of what is contributing to a rise in print media in the queer community, particularly zines. With these zines, we can have more freedom over what we say, and how we say it. It’s not at risk of getting banned for “violating community guidelines” or getting facist bots in the comments section. This appeal is strong, but it only exists if you know it is there. For queer youth, especially those living in areas that are not particularly welcoming, the internet is still a lifeline.
Queer communities actively co-create their own digital desire paths that foster genuine connection - this is a necessity born from our fundamental need for survival through authentic community building. The motivation to reshape and adapt digital technology to serve our social needs stems directly from the critical role these connections play in our well-being. We have developed ways of bending platforms to our will, transforming spaces that weren't originally designed for us into vibrant hubs of support, information sharing, and community organising. Our very existence often depends on our ability to forge these meaningful digital connections and safe spaces.
This drive to create authentic digital spaces isn't unique to queer communities - I would argue that almost all communities harbour this same desire for genuine connection and community-driven spaces, if only they were given the flexibility and autonomy to shape their digital environments. The way queer communities have historically approached technology, often in direct opposition to market forces and platform intentions, offers valuable insights and a practical template for how other communities might reclaim their digital spaces.
The very very short version - if you want to know what people want the internet to look like, you could try bloody asking them.
NB: On a personal note, I do intend to make my queerness a central part of my design & writing practice this year. In December I read “The Two Revolutions: A History of the Transgender Internet” and this, combined with some extensive personal reflection on how heteronormativity really is fucking everywhere, even in the places & spaces you don’t expect it to be, has solidified that my queerness is a core part of who I am, and not something I am going to hide. As a person also living in a safe, centre-left country where I am entirely free to express myself - I also think it is important for me to be visible in this way. Up until now, I have skirted around my queerness in my proffesional life, but this has not done any good for my creativity, or for my mental health. So expect more of this going forward.
in an infosphere laden with doom, your writing always leaves me with feelings of radical hope and resourcefulness. i'm going to be thinking about your analysis for a while because it reminds me so much of the Situationists.
this was a completely new topic for me - thank you for writing!