After my last email newsletter goes out, my bro who serves as background IT support writes, “are you trying to test your readers?”
I could almost feel the zen tech koan.
See when he opened my last email about work unfinished and undone, the images didn’t load and the link to “view on website” went nowhere too.
…which in my parlance, is so meta. You could also call ironic: the title, the breakage, and the follow up.
Yet for me, everything worked just fine, in the tech sense anyway. The email loaded, all the images were viewable, and links “worked,” even if that rushed email was not the most elegant piece of work I’ve ever put out.
So, here’s a general PSA that the web simply doesn’t look – or work– the same for everyone.
I know, it should. But it doesn’t.
Perhaps this is what the WWW was bound to become: a shape-able set of information that is available to some, but not everyone. With people “pulling levers” to amp up certain feeling and trigger your “buy now” finger.
Okay, back to my poorly constructed email.
So, why isn’t the web experience the same for everyone?
Email for one: Your email settings may prevent links from working at all. Depending on if your individual settings allow for rich html or not, or other email your-client-specific settings you have in place. Also, your individual spam settings may prevent you from getting many things in the first place, because some emails get flagged as spam. Also, the underlying routing of emails has been changing the last 2 years, and it is such a complicated mess it may as well be a ball of rubber bands to generalist-futurists in the field. Get yourself an expert if needed.
Browsers for another: Your browser settings may have restrictions around following links. Also you have privacy settings, pop up blockers and more, although these should not come into play with my meek and mild emails.
Load time and file size: Any given email may be just “too big” (meaning the image sizes may be too large to easily squeeze through your email server, so gets truncated), or the entire size of any given email may be too large – like if it is too wordy.
Yeah, guilty as charged: wordy ;)
SSL Certificate Issues: sometimes the SSL on a given website is configured as a “wildcard” or a free Let’s Encrypt certificate instead of what the “big boys” use which is dedicated SSL. I use the inexpensive products, because, well, this site isn’t earning enough money to justify the bigger spend.
Another layer of why web content may look different to you than to others:
Other tech products, like your social media feeds, browser link suggestions, and the ads you are served, are shaped based on the tracking the internet has collectively ascribed to your cute little IP-associated self. You know, your data profile as a reader, looker, buyer and connector. Even your data as an AVOIDER. Those things you scroll by fast are logged as having emotional charge for you, even in a disdainful way.
Even with VPNs and workarounds, the fact that you even use them is a data point. If your computer isn’t run like a smart animal covering its tracks, any little tracking cookies stuck in there can create an aggregate of data about you that can later be harvested depending on how you run things.
And of course, and your search history tells a tale, always has.
Also, our data, and our behaviors as social media scrollers, likers, commenters, followers and unfollowers also has an impact on what we see and how the web works for us.
And there is no Wizard of Oz hanging out controlling your experience, changing stuff up and trying to do anything in particular in regards to you, but there is an aggregate of products, settings, behaviors and tracking that affects what you see. And there is a boatload of tech folks experimenting and observing as well. And there are copious vendors (like hosting companies, plugins, servers, email routing, open source stuffs, and rogue makers) that have products that may or may not play well with others, or be worth what they charge.
That’s the bigger picture.
Now, back to smaller picture. If you are experiencing tech issues of any kind viewing this site or my weekly email, please clue me in. I’m working on making this experience better for everyone. And, I don’t know what I don’t know.
Also, if something IS working for you in any particular way (like a good idea is inspiring you, or giving you the courage to create and share, or an email sparked a new awareness, etc. ) please let me know that too.
Many thanks, drop me a line anytime.
FOOTNOTES & SUB-SUBTEXT
Thank God for libraries, by the way, where the experience of information seeking is consistent and overseen by actual humans who want to help you find what you seek.