Summary

Gruber coins the term 'dickover' to describe modal panels, popovers, and curtains that websites deliberately present to obscure their own content and force unwanted interactions on users. He catalogs the many forms these take — cookie consent dialogs, newsletter signups, app install prompts — and argues they are a scourge of modern web design. He distinguishes dickovers (modal, full-content-blocking) from the lesser offense of 'dickbars' (partial, non-modal obstructions), and from legitimate modal blockers like paywalls. The piece serves as both a definitional manifesto and a passionate rebuke of the design pattern, arguing that a webpage's fundamental job is simply to show you its content.

Key Insight

The web's most pervasive design sin is websites that deliberately hide their own content behind unnecessary modal interruptions, and it deserves a name that stings as much as the practice itself.

Spicy Quotes (click to share)

• 8

  A dickover is a modal panel, popover, or curtain presented by a website or app, deliberately obscuring its own content to frustrate the user with an unwanted, unnecessary, mandatory interaction.

• 7

  You can hardly go anywhere on the web without getting dicked over by a dickover.

• 6

  If you visit a website you should ... see the website.

• 8

  A webpage should show the webpage. An email should show the email. I should not have to explain this.

• 8

  It's a goddamn privilege for anyone to bestow your article, story, or product page with their attention.

• 7

  The gall, to deliberately interrupt them while they are in the middle of actively reading, to present them with a dickover.

• 7

  If dickovers are design felonies, dickbars are misdemeanors.

• 7

  I want to use dickover because it stings, and it's fun to sting people who are doing something dickheaded.

Tone

satirical