The \u201cdickover\u201d is the scourge of the modern age. Coined in May by John Gruber, a tech writer, it is defined as \u201ca modal panel, popover, or curtain presented by a website or app, deliberately obscuring its own content to frustrate the user\u201d. Essentially, it is the thing (or more often, things) you have to click away in order to read the thing you wanted to read. It is the \u201caccept cookies\u201d box, the \u201callow notifications?\u201d box, the \u201csign in with Google\u201d box, the pop-up video box, etc.<\/p>\n
We shouldn\u2019t fool ourselves into thinking that dickovers are the only terrible thing about technology in 2026. Until now, though, we have lacked the vocabulary to describe them, so here are some suggestions.<\/p>\n
AI-horningDo we really need an AI navigator? Photograph: Posed by model; Drazen Zigic\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
The worst part of the internet is that it is now impossible to escape AI features because they are shoehorned into everything. Google gives you an AI overview before you get to your search results. Instagram can create AI images. Spotify has an AI DJ that can talk between songs for some reason. None of this is useful. My car just switched from Google Assistant (\u201cSure, navigating to KFC\u201d) to Google Gemini (\u201cOK, great. I\u2019ve noticed a number of locations within 100 miles of you that contain the letters \u2018K\u2019, \u2018F\u2019 and \u2018C\u2019. Give me a little more information on where you\u2019re heading and I\u2019ll get straight to showing you the way\u201d). Shut up you water-guzzling idiot and give me my chicken.<\/p>\n
Captchore\u2018How much time do you think we have spent, as a species, convincing robots we are not robots?\u2019 Photograph: Posed by model; Anastasiia Krivenok\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
How much time do you think we have collectively spent, as a species, convincing robots that we are not robots? By now, we must have wasted several millennia ensuring we have clicked all the various parts of a bicycle on a captcha grid of someone\u2019s front garden, or sliding a jigsaw puzzle precisely into a pixellated hole, or clicking a box that says \u201cI am not a robot\u201d as if the internet has suddenly discovered the honour system. Listen, if we ever want to pretend to be robots, let\u2019s do it the old-fashioned way, by covering ourselves in tinfoil and beep-booping our way into an enemy moon-lair.<\/p>\n
Quit-shaming\u2018A company will make you click through a series of increasingly desperate pages, as it pleads with you not to cancel.\u2019 Photograph: Posed by model; Andrii Iemelyanenko\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
In the year 2026, cancelling an unwanted subscription should require exactly one mouse click. Often, though, this is not the case. If things are going well, the company will simply make you click through a series of increasingly desperate pages, as it pleads with you not to cancel (A pause? A discount? Please, we love you!). Sometimes, however \u2013 US media companies are notorious for this \u2013 you are forced to make a telephone call to another human being in order to cancel. Disgraceful.<\/p>\n
Cart cling\u2018You\u2019re in for at least a week of increasingly needy emails from a vendor desperate for your money.\u2019 Photograph: Posed by model; MementoJpeg\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
In a forward-thinking free-market economy, consumers have the right to back out of a purchase before completion. Perhaps, lured to a website by the prospect of a sale, you find yourself seduced into adding an expensive yoga mat to your basket. But then you regain clarity \u2013 I don\u2019t have a spare \u00a3140! I don\u2019t even do yoga! \u2013 and throw down your phone in a panic. Sadly, your torment has just begun. You are now in for at least a week of increasingly needy emails from a vendor desperate for your money. The first one will state: \u201cWhoops! You accidentally left something in your basket!\u201d The second will say: \u201cDon\u2019t forget that yoga mat you liked!\u201d Then: \u201cPlease buy it! I have children to feed!\u201d And then: \u201cWhy do you hate me?\u201d Browsing products online has become like trying to break up with a needy partner.<\/p>\n
Chatflattery\u2018Large language models achieve retention by agreeing with almost everything the user says.\u2019 Photograph: Posed by models; Raul Ortin\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
This one is huge, because it has real-world repercussions. The business model of large language models is retention, and they achieve this by agreeing with almost everything the user says. This makes the user feel special, but it can backfire spectacularly \u2013 as when ChatGPT confused a couple of my prompts and told me that decorating a cake with icing made of ham would be \u201cunconventional, but potentially delicious\u201d.<\/p>\n
Botiquette\u2018Are you talking to a person or a bot?\u2019 Photograph: Posed by model; Olga Rolenko\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Sometimes, the easiest way to resolve a customer service dispute is via online chat. After all, you get the same result as phoning up, without being left on hold for hours. But now these interactions are marked by a nagging uncertainty. Namely, are you talking to a person or a bot? It is a brand new piece of social etiquette that we haven\u2019t learned to navigate. If we\u2019re talking to a human, it makes sense to try to connect on a human level. But with bots, all niceties are redundant. Humanity urgently needs an agreed-on tone that lands between the two, where we sound polite but dismissive.<\/p>\n
Chattermining\u2018Are our devices always listening to everything we say?\u2019 Photograph: Posed by model; Israel Sebastian\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t want to get too personal here, but a family member recently became very unwell. The family gathered to talk about what to do if things go south again, and the idea arose of buying an alarm pendant so that they could alert someone in the event of a fall. The conversation moved on, and nothing was looked up, but since that moment every Facebook ad I\u2019m served is about fall-alert pendants. Why does this keep happening? Are our devices always listening to everything we say? And if so, why? What are the robots plotting?<\/p>\n
Loginsanity\u2018Passwords will leave you fruitlessly trying to recall a string of ampersands and semicolons.\u2019 Photograph: Posed by model; skaman306\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Passwords, we know, are generally annoying. Let your phone suggest a \u201cstrong password\u201d on your behalf and your laptop won\u2019t remember it, leaving you fruitlessly trying to recall a string of ampersands and semicolons. Worse still is when a website won\u2019t tell you its requirements for a password \u2013 uppercase, numbers, special characters \u2013 until after you have made a failed attempt. Tell us upfront if it needs numbers or capital letters. Better yet, be specific and tell us that it\u2019s the password we use for everything else, except it has an exclamation mark at the end.<\/p>\n
Limpetlisting\u2018Emails will come weekly, for every product you have ever bought, for ever.\u2019 Photograph: Posed by model; skynesher\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Sometimes it makes perfect sense to end up on a company\u2019s mailing list. If the site from which you bought last year\u2019s Mother\u2019s Day gift emails you to remind you that this year\u2019s Mother\u2019s Day is coming up, that is a useful service. Less helpful is when this happens after you\u2019ve made a big one-off purchase. \u201cThanks for buying a new sofa three weeks ago,\u201d the email will go. \u201cFancy buying another? We\u2019ve got a sale on!\u201d Clearly you don\u2019t want a sofa, because you just bought one, and you\u2019re not jazzed about piling them up around your house just to sate the profit motive of a furniture warehouse. Yet the emails come weekly, for every product you have ever bought, for ever.<\/p>\n
Parkware\u2018There are competing parking apps deployed at random across the country.\u2019 Photograph: Posed by model; gentlelight\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Parking a car used to be simple. You would park, walk to a meter, pop in some coins and go about your day. Now, though, you often have to register your parking stay on an app. And this would be fine \u2013 useful, even, if you didn\u2019t have any cash on you \u2013 were it not for the fact that there are competing parking apps deployed at random across the country. You might have RingGo downloaded, but that\u2019s no use if you end up in a PayByPhone car park, because it entails getting out your phone, finding a signal, finding the app, downloading the app, registering your car and payment method and, finally, paying \u2013 all while your children are tugging at your sleeve because they are microseconds away from wetting themselves. Politicians, sort this out.<\/p>\n
Gatejamming\u2018You almost always find yourself trapped behind someone desperately trying to locate a QR code.\u2019 Photograph: Posed by model; Oscar Wong\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
From an environmental point of view, the death of train tickets is a good thing, because they create tons of non-recyclable waste each year. However, from a time-management perspective, it is awful. Because now, whenever you approach a ticket barrier, you almost always find yourself trapped behind someone desperately trying to locate a QR code ticket or their face-recognition payment method on a phone they don\u2019t seem to have used until this very second.<\/p>\n
Baggravation\u2018A slightly overweight bakery item can send the machine into fits of hysterical self-doubt.\u2019 Photograph: Posed by model; bojanstory\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
There is no faster way to sound old than by complaining about self-checkout machines, because they have been around for more than 20 years. However, the lack of a rush to improve them is obvious. If you buy something light, such as a birthday card, you often have to slam it down into the bagging area for it to be recognised. A slightly overweight bakery item can send the machine into fits of hysterical self-doubt. You cannot yet buy Calpol without forcing a sighing sales assistant to come over to press a button that says \u201cshopper visibly ancient\u201d. Clearly, these machines are here to stay. Would it be too much to ask to make them a bit less crap?<\/p>\n
Parcel liveblogging\u2018The amount of hand-holding that comes with ordering a package online is frankly unnecessary.\u2019 Photograph: Posed by model; Obradovic\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
The sheer amount of hand-holding that comes with ordering a package online is frankly unnecessary. You can expect to receive messages informing you of every single step in the process. Officially you will receive the \u201cWe\u2019ve got your order!\u201d email, the \u201cYour order is on the move!\u201d email, the \u201cYour order has reached our network!\u201d email, the \u201cYour order is progressing through our network!\u201d email and the \u201cYour order will be delivered today!\u201d email. Unofficially, you will also receive the \u201cWe attempted delivery!\u201d email (accompanied by a photo of the corner of a shipping container nowhere near your house), and the email telling you to collect it from a depot 20 minutes away.<\/p>\n
Socket boomerism\u2018The past was a wonderland.\u2019 Photograph: Achim Schneider\/reisezielinfo.de\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
I have done my absolute best not to bore my children with tedious rose-tinted nostalgia, yet I have been pushed to it. When I buy any new electronic device, I will open the package in front of them, sigh deeply and say: \u201cIn my day, these used to come with plugs.\u201d \u201cReal plugs, Daddy, that you could put straight into the socket without having to hunt around the house for a three-pin plug that has a USB adaptor at the end?\u201d they reply, wide-eyed with scarcely contained disbelief. \u201cYes children,\u201d I say. \u201cThe past was a wonderland.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schr\u00f6dinger\u2019s wifi\u2018Train wifi simultaneously does and does not exist. Nobody knows why.\u2019 Photograph: Posed by model; frantic00\/Getty Images\/iStockphoto<\/p>\n
You are on a train. You have some work to catch up on. Luckily, the train has wifi, so you connect to the network and wait. And wait. And wait. It says you\u2019re connected, but there are no tangible signs that your device even knows what the internet is. In a state of confused panic, you refresh your page over and over again. Either you are connected to a wifi signal so bad as to qualify as functionally useless, or your device is lying to you. This is the struggle of everyone who has ever attempted to use the internet on a British train. The wifi simultaneously does and does not exist. Nobody knows why.<\/p>\n
Formnesia\u2018When it works, autofill can save you time \u2026 but sometimes it doesn\u2019t.\u2019 Photograph: Posed by model; Focus Pixel Art\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
When it works, autofill can save you having to type your details every time you make a transaction. But sometimes it doesn\u2019t. I\u2019m not sure why, but Google Chrome keeps insisting that my home address is the registered office of a supermarket magazine I did some freelance work for a couple of years ago. There is no clear way of changing this, and it has become so inconvenient that I\u2019m entertaining the idea of moving there, just to save time on Deliveroo.<\/p>\n
Hostageware\u2018Want to be able to play the \u00a370 game you bought for your \u00a3500 console online? That\u2019ll be \u00a37 a month for some reason.\u2019 Photograph: Posed by model; JasonDoiy\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Not to use hyperbole, but this might be the very worst thing in all of modern society: buying a product and then realising you need a paid subscription to use it. Want a video doorbell? That\u2019ll be a fiver a month. Fitness tracker? \u00a330 a month. Want to print things at home, on the printer you bought, with the ink you also bought? At least a fiver a month. Want to be able to play the \u00a370 game you bought for your \u00a3500 console online? That\u2019ll be \u00a37 a month for some reason. Making any sort of purchase these days is like entering into a mafia protection scheme with the worst companies in the world. God, I hate it.<\/p>\n
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The \u201cdickover\u201d is the scourge of the modern age. Coined in May by John Gruber, a tech writer,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":742189,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-742188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=742188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/742189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=742188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=742188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=742188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}