What Tech Writers Should Learn From the War on Friction
When everything gets easier, meaning gets harder
In 2019, a product team set a goal to increase “time in app” by 2.3%. That wasn’t a random target—it meant about $40 million in projected revenue. When someone asked what users would get from spending more time, the room fell silent.
Then someone said, “That’s not really the question we’re optimizing for.”
That moment—quiet, uneasy, revealing—says a lot about the systems we all help build. Whether we write UX copy, design onboarding flows, or document APIs, we’re part of a larger machine that rewards efficiency, engagement, and retention.
But this blog post (from A Z McCay) reminds us: sometimes what makes an experience seamless also makes it shallow.
The Myth of “Dopamine Culture”
In recent years, dopamine culture became shorthand for our compulsive relationship with screens. It’s an easy story: platforms manipulate our brains; users become addicts. This blog post argues this framing misses the real point.
Tech teams weren’t optimizing for pleasure or even attention—they were optimizing to remove hesitation.
Every delay, every “Are you sure?” prompt, every pause that might make someone reflect was systematically designed out. Inside companies, this was called reducing cognitive overhead (aka cognitive load) or meeting users where they are.
In plain English: removing friction.
The result? Not addiction, but a world where we no longer have to choose—where choosing itself becomes obsolete.
Significance-as-a-Service
When you pick up your phone, what are you really reaching for? Beyond the scroll and the pings, you’re reaching for significance — the hope of being seen, recognized, or remembered.
Platforms understand this better than we do. They’ve turned “being seen” into a subscription model. Every like, comment, and message is a tiny receipt proving you still exist in someone’s feed. The system creates scarcity (loneliness, FOMO) and then sells the illusion of connection back to us.
The author of the post calls this Significance-as-a-Service. And it’s the same logic that drives much of our digital design work — optimize for perceived connection, not necessarily for meaningful one.
The Next Wave: Synthetic Presence
If the first generation of engagement design made hesitation impossible, the next will make absence impossible.
Soon, AI agents will respond on your behalf — sending polite acknowledgments, scheduling follow-ups, even reacting in chats when you’re away. Product teams call this “auto-presence.” Metrics like “Response Half-Life” will measure how quickly you (or your AI stand-in) reply.
The risk is subtle but real: when software fills in for our social presence, we risk forgetting how to be present at all. We’ll appear more connected while feeling less capable of connection.
Minimum Viable Intimacy
Behind the scenes, designers are already experimenting with Minimum Viable Intimacy — features that preassemble micro-communities around shared life events (new jobs, relocations, parenting milestones). If the humans don’t show up, automation backfills the social gap.
In this world, loneliness becomes a service category. Platforms promise not just convenience but companionship — delivered automatically, billed monthly, and refunding outages in credits.
Why Friction Matters for Tech Writers
As content professionals, we’re trained to remove ambiguity, smooth rough edges, and streamline user journeys. But this challenges us to reconsider whether friction is always the enemy.
Friction can be a moral and cognitive checkpoint — it’s the moment users pause to decide, Does this matter? Do I mean this?
When we remove every pause, we risk stripping away the space where meaning and consent live.
In documentation, UX writing, and interface design, that might mean:
Preserving small moments that invite reflection (“Are you sure you want to delete this project?”).
Designing clarity that empowers agency, not compliance.
Questioning engagement metrics that equate “more use” with “better experience.”
Good content doesn’t just make things easier—it helps people decide what’s worth doing.
Reintroducing Friction—On Purpose
The blog post ends with a hard question: Which parts of your life will you allow to be effortless, and which will you keep hard on purpose?
For tech writers and content designers, the same question applies to our work. We need to help our teams define where friction is valuable—where the pause between click and action protects something human.
Reintroducing friction might mean slowing a process just enough for comprehension, empathy, or choice to happen. It’s not anti-automation; it’s pro-awareness.
The future won’t just automate tasks—it will automate presence. If we don’t design with care, our words will help build systems that replace conversation with simulation.
Our craft has always been about helping humans understand technology. The next era will ask us to do something harder: help technology remember what it means to be human. 🤠