I agree, though I've unfortunately seen several tests that suggest that they work. The immediate "Give us your email" is much more effective than requests that wait for a certain number of pages, trigger after a certain scroll amount, or wait until you've been on the site for a significant amount of time.

Of the people who see the pop up, the conversion rate is highest for those who see it immediately. And there's not a significant effect on bounce rates.

I have no idea why! I would never simply give my email address to an immediate pop up modal.

They probably think they have to give their email to see the site.

We are power users, a lot of people have no idea what they're doing on the web.

Yes, I even think there's a large amount of users that, when shown a random popup "please enter your password to continue", would just enter the password they use for every service, making phishing quite trivial.

Definitely.

537 votes. That was the official difference between Bush and Gore in Florida, out of almost 6 million votes cast. Nearly 100,000 people voted for Nader.

These Nader supporters of course had every right to vote how they wanted, but the prevailing argument at the time by Nader was that there was essentially no difference between Gore and Bush and it was time to send a message to the "establishment."

However you feel about Bush, I think history makes it plain that 1) there was likely a huge difference between a Bush and a potential Gore presidency, and 2) while it may be nice to simply send a message with your vote, we should remember that 0.0000895% of the electorate of a single state can determine the outcome.

Right. I've engaged in a couple of such discussions on reddit. To say I'm unhappy with the two major candidates would be a huge understatement.

But no matter how strong our emotions are about such things, should be extremely clear-headed about what our vote means. And, the point I try to hammer home, that we each need to take full responsibility for the result of our vote.

If you want to vote to 'let the world burn', as quite a few Bernie supporters are talking, so be it.

If you want to vote to 'send a message', so be it.

If things go very badly after November, then you're not allowed to say "my vote didn't really matter" or "I had no choice but to vote the way I did."

Own your vote; make it, and accept responsibility for your portion of the outcome.

537 out of 100,000 Nader voters in 2000 changed the world, and not in a good way, in my strongly held opinion at least.

Indeed! We still don't understand the causes of anxiety and depression, and yet far too many doctors simply went along with the "chemical imbalance" narrative.

SSRIs and related medications can be wonderful tools, but that proves nothing re: causality and the best long term treatment. Sadly, this battle was lost a long time ago[1], but it's heartening that people are starting to revisit some of these debates.

[1] Here's an article from 1999 arguing essentially the same thing re: how little we understand about mental illness, and how prescribing doctors should be cautious about oversimplifying something so complex: http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/psychotherapy/psychotherapy-...

Your link seems to make a case for SSRIs causing learned helplessness. It's been 17 years since this article was written, and the profession is still working on fixing itself. "Hmm."

Thanks for the link!

Could you please give some examples? I understand the cultural criticism in the original post, but it seems extreme to me to wish ruin on someone because of their photography project.