TMP2: Apps

Welcome to my refreshed Monday Peeve! Unburden yourself of an annoyance and you’ll feel better afterward. Or not. Complain in my comments or crab in your own post. Doesn’t have to be on a Monday. You do you.

For a long time, I resisted downloading apps. This wasn’t so much of a philosophical aversion to them as my OCD in keeping my phone looking neat and organized. But slowly, they crept up on me. Oh, the convenience! Right? That’s how they get you. Convenient for who though? It is certainly convenient for merchants to pester us over apps. It is convenient for social media to ding your apps with notifications so you’ll feel compelled to go look (just for a sec!) to see what’s up (and view more ads in the process). Etc.

I downloaded the WordPress app a few years ago and, indeed, it seemed like a great way to view posts and compose them as well. But during my refresh I discovered a couple things. One, your post may appear on the app reader quite differently from the way it looks on your actual blog. This may not bother some people, but I spent (and continue to spend) a lot of time making sure my blog looks the way I want it, so I was pretty horrified to discover messed up line breaks, misaligned images, and screwy fonts. On the app, you can’t see a lot of this stuff.

Two, the app sometimes “forgets” some of your images in your media library, at least mine did (I had thousands of images). It’s not a matter of using the correct search term, since I could search and find the images in my library from a browser. I don’t want to sound nutty, but I think it’s deliberate ~ to get you to download more images and thus run out of library space faster. Then you’ll have to upgrade your plan. Welp, instead of that nonsense, I’ve deleted tons of images. Hah! (You can’t do that unless you’re willing painstakingly sort through all your posts to decided what you want to keep and discard, but I’ve made the time for that.)

Three, I wasn’t getting a sense of other bloggers’ blogs from the app because the “convenience” of reading gobs of posts quickly and dropping likes everywhere kept me from actually visiting their blogs. Since I want people to visit mine, it’s only fair that I visit theirs. This last week, I have been doing so and it’s a better experience. The “downside” is that I no longer have time to skim everything in my feed and plop likes on each item. Oh well. Quality over quantity, amirite?

I have deleted the Facebook and Twitter apps as well. This keeps me from mindlessly clicking on them every time I’m bored. It’s not a coincidence that I’ve been reading more books this year. I’m well on my way to my goal of 100 by December 31.

This isn’t to say all apps are bad. I find the weather app useful, as well as Google maps, email, news, and some others.

~*~

Image is mine, altered from the original on Pixabay.

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