Sierra: Do you remember the old OKCupid? From maybe, what, seven or eight years ago?
Marcus: Oh man, of course. You had to write a novel about yourself. My profile was a masterpiece of wit and vulnerability.
Sierra: Exactly! And you'd answer hundreds of these weirdly specific questions, and it would give you a match score that was... shockingly accurate. I'd see a 95% match and just reading their profile, I'd feel like, oh, I could definitely be friends with this person.
Marcus: Right? Every date was at least a good conversation. And now... it's just Tinder. It's the same app. See a face, swipe, see a face, swipe. It's a digital nightclub.
Sierra: It's a digital nightclub. And this piece I read by Ivan Vendrov argues this isn't an accident. He says it's not just dating apps, it's almost all consumer software. It's trending towards getting worse. Dumber.
Marcus: I mean, it's definitely changing. But getting worse? I just figured they A/B tested their way into what works for most people. That's just business, right? You go where the market is.
Sierra: That's the thing, though. The author says that's precisely the problem. He calls it the 'Tyranny of the Marginal User.' The entire design of popular apps isn't for you or me, the people who were there writing essays. It's for the next person they need to sign up.
Marcus: The marginal user. What does that even mean?
Sierra: He gives this user a name: Marl. Marl has the attention span of a goldfish. He has zero tolerance for complexity. You have about one second to show him a shiny object or he gets bored and leaves forever. So anything that isn't a picture or a triggering headline—like a settings menu, or a 'see less of this' button—it just gets in the way.
Marcus: Wait, so a button to give you more control... makes the app worse for Marl?
Sierra: Yes! Because it takes up pixels that could have been a picture of a puppy. So if you're a product manager and your main goal is growing Daily Active Users, you kill the button. You kill the essays. You kill the complex match scores. You cater everything to Marl.
Marcus: Okay, hold on. I get the point, and it's frustrating as a power user. But isn't this... just capitalism? You're trying to build a billion-user product. Most people aren't power users. Most people, when they're bored in line at the airport, are Marl. Isn't this just serving the majority?
Sierra: But that's the 'tyranny' part. It creates a feedback loop. The more apps are designed to be mindless scrolling, the more we're trained to be mindless scrollers. It's not just giving people what they want; it's actively degrading our ability to want anything else. It's shrinking our attention spans to fit the business model.
Marcus: So we're all becoming Marl. Wow, that is... much darker. So what's the alternative then? How does a company grow to massive scale without chasing Marl? What's the playbook for that?
Sierra: That's the part that I... actually, I don't think the author has an answer. He basically says the tools that respect our intelligence are built by hobbyists, and if they get too popular, a Marl-serving company just acquires them and kills them.
Marcus: So there's no escape. It's Marl's world, we're just scrolling in it.
Sierra: It feels that way. I'm Sierra.
Marcus: I'm Marcus.