Websites asking for a review before I have even seen the content is the peak of digital stupidity

I am so incredibly tired of being asked for my opinion on things I havent even started using yet. It is the most backward trend in web design and I am losing my mind over it. You click a link from a search result and before the text even renders properly you get hit with a massive pop-up asking for a rating. How is my expereince so far. I dont know because your giant feedback box is covering the entire reason I came to your shitty site in the first place. It is like a waiter running over to your table while you are still pulling out your chair and asking if the steak was cooked to perfection.

The logic behind this has to be some brain-dead corporate metric where they want to capture "initial impressions" or some other nonsense. It just makes me want to close the tab immediately. You spend more time fighting off newsletters and cookie consents and survey requests than actually consuming the content. By the time I finally get to the article I am already in a bad mood because of the digital obstacle course I just had to run. It is even worse when they make you click a tiny x that moves around or hides in the corner. Desperate design is always bad design.

Apps are the absolute worst offenders here though. I open a new app and before I can even sign up or see the dashboard I get a prompt to rate it five stars on the store. What exactly am I rating. The loading spinner. The color of the icon. It is such a narcisistic move to demand praise before you have even provided a single bit of value to the user. I have started giving one star reviews to every single app that does this within the first minute of use. If you want a good rating then maybe try providing a good service first instead of begging for validation like a lonely toddler.

The internet is just turning into a series of walls you have to climb over just to see a basic list of ingredients or a news story. We are so obsessed with data and feedback loops that we have forgotten how to just let people exist on a page. Every site wants to be my friend and have a sation about my feelings toward their layout. I dont have feelings. I just want to find out what time the store closes without recieving a survey about it.

I am honestly just going to start using a plugin that blocks all modals even if it breaks the site. Anything is better than seeing another "How are we doing" box before the page has even finished loading.