I really do not like the vibe from author. People are not dealing with some friction (shitty) app, because they have better things to do. Not because they are emotional or need a safe space.

The same way "touching" random people on public, is very rude behaviour. Sometimes it is unavoidable (in busy train), but you should be apologetic about that. Not see it as a virtue for challenging others!

And avoiding touch from random strangers, is not some sort of avoidance. There are germs, diseases (covid), parasites and all sort of nasty stuff. Europe just had resurgence of scabies!

Plus I am highly allergic to animal dander, I do not want to be "touched" by your dog, I will go into asthma attack, and can suffocate!

> But especially if you are rich, you can change the equation. You can pay people to keep others away from you. Keep “your space” protected.

You can protect your space as a normal citizen, I carry pepper spray and walking stick! Nobody on street is touching me, or my kids!

> One way that some people combat this feeling of loneliness is by increasingly talking to chatbots.

And talking to people is somehow different? Even before AI, many people were called NPCs for a good reasson. Say something wrong and they smash "cancel" button!

If nobody is talking to you, you are probably lame!

I dunno, other people constantly forcing their boring existence on me and insisting that I choose THEM over some machine feels more "narcissistic" from their side than "the idea of frictionlessness".

Have a hard time reaching customer service? That is because they added friction to finding the number on purpose. Have to wait in the phone line and go through a maze of electronic voices before being able to talk to a person? Friction. That tax form seems needlessly complicated? Friction.

Friction is an essential design component of any system and some of it's uses are also legitimate.

Sometimes you want the costly action to have a small cost on the user side as well, which will act as a filter for people who really need your help, for example.

Let's say for example you have a self-service platform for students and they should be able to change their name. Now you could do that frictionless, but a name change is not frictionless in the bureaucratic backend of the student office. That means representing it to the user as a simple frictionless process, when it isn't is a misrepresentation of reality. Then it is better to represent it as a thing they can request and have to wait for till it is done.

Ideally of course the student office would have systems where names can be changed 10 times a second with flawless forward- and backwards-compatibility, but that isn't the world we live in.