Hyperlinks have always been a tremendously bad idea. They obfuscate the reference to the material so that the user clicking has no idea where they are going unless they pay close attention and hover over the link. This has enabled thousands of successful phish attempts and so much more. The entire concept is just so fucking broken. What’s worse is that because of this obfuscation people like Google and Medium of created completely un-fucking-necessary URLs that push the boundaries of the maximum length for a URL. WHO THE FUCK DECIDED THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA?! It never was a good idea. It permanently ruined the Web all by itself. Now no one has any fucking clue what that bookmark is really pointing to, and you certainly cannot list that shit in a paper as a documentation reference. No, it took these mother fuckers to ruin was started out as a sort of cute thing, and turned it into a fucking nightmare.
So what is better? URLs that humans can read, that are short, and yes, that are unique. If there is one thing that all those unsafe, tiny-URL generator sites has proven is that if you actually give a fuck you can make your URLs tiny, no matter what. Only the morons choose to NOT do this. And, as we’ve well established, the world is full of these fucking types of morons.
The best way to combat this idiocy is to just stop fucking using any hyperlinking at all. I mean nothing. Just write out the URLs in your sites and content. People can always just click on the link and everyone will know exactly what they are clicking on. Is your URL a little on the long side? Fine, put it in a related section and refer to it rhetorically. Besides, you just want people to focus on your content, right? Not click through at the first link that shows up. That reminds me …
Hyperlinking brings out the worst in human research behavior. Yes we are “squirrel” creatures who cannot fucking focus for one minute and will click on that link right away. But is that good for us? Imma say no. It’s better to read through a little more and then decide if you want to follow the links, not fucking bail in the middle of a paragraph. As Ryan Dahl said, “You know those things that you think are cute? Yeah, no, don’t do them. You’ll always regret them.” And that is exactly what hyperlinks are, fucking “cute” in the worst way. I wish I could go get a Ph.D just to prove how fucking, fucked up hyperlinks always were.
Based on this, it is always better to describe the entry point to a source of information and rhetorically describe what to look for there. This way stuff can move around (and content is naturally supposed to do) and you can just find it at the source there.
#rant #hyperlinks #web