🔗 The Tyranny of the Marginal User

The Tyranny of the Marginal User - by Ivan Vendrov

How is it possible that software gets worse, not better, over time, despite billions of dollars of R&D and rapid progress in tooling and AI? What evil force, more powerful than Innovation and Progress, is at work here?

… I call this force the Tyranny of the Marginal User.

… a company with a billion-user product doesn’t actually care about its billion existing users. It cares about the marginal user - the billion-plus-first user - …

Of course, “Marl” [marginal user] isn’t always a person. Marl can also be a state of mind. We’ve all been Marl at one time or another - half consciously scrolling in bed, in line at the airport …

By contrast, consumer software tools that enhance human agency, that serve us when we are most creative and intentional, are often built by hobbyists and used by a handful of nerds.