The fuck off contact page
Concept and client dynamics
- Many agree the “fuck off contact page” pattern is real: a contact page designed to deflect contact, not enable it.
- Several think an honest, numbers-based explanation to clients (“this will reduce leads and revenue”) can help, but others warn such messaging easily sounds scolding or self‑aggrandizing.
- Commenters highlight internal politics: decision‑makers may be obeying a boss, protecting prior recommendations, or optimizing for “looking big and professional,” not outcomes.
- There’s debate over a consultant’s role: some see it as their duty to push back hard if UX undermines business goals; others say web devs aren’t hired to set support strategy.
Customer support, loyalty, and economics
- Multiple anecdotes praise AWS/Amazon for good human support even for tiny accounts; that support is cited as a major reason for long‑term loyalty despite other criticisms.
- Others counter that at scale, human support is brutally expensive, especially for low‑value, low‑frequency customers; many big companies deliberately gate access to keep costs down.
- Some argue large, highly profitable firms could afford better support but choose not to, prioritizing margins over service.
Patterns of hostile or gated contact
- Common “fuck off” tactics mentioned:
- Contact options hidden behind layers of FAQs, bots, or QR codes.
- Only sales reachable; support and billing are practically unreachable.
- Contact pages or ticket forms only available after login and credit‑card verification.
- Overlong, mandatory-field forms that feel like self‑qualification filters.
- AI/chat agents that endlessly loop back to documentation instead of routing to humans.
- Examples cited include ISPs, cloud providers, investment apps, Udemy, and some web hosts; contrast is drawn with smaller or indie products that publish direct emails or simple forms.
Email vs forms, spam, and fraud
- Some strongly prefer a plain email address: transparent, gives the sender a record, avoids opaque “message in a bottle” forms.
- Others defend forms + CAPTCHAs as essential to limit spam and abuse, especially for hosting providers where free signups invite crypto mining, spam, and illegal content.
- Technical workarounds mentioned: JS‑obfuscated emails, proof‑of‑work checks, or login‑gated ticketing to balance abuse prevention and accessibility.
Site design and meta-notes
- The blog’s retro, pixel‑art, windowed UI wins a lot of praise for originality and nostalgia, but many find it hard to read or navigate, calling it itself a “fuck off article design.”
- There’s a toggle to switch to antialiased fonts; some only discovered it after resorting to reader mode or CSS overrides.
- A hidden, joking prompt‑injection snippet in the HTML (about Mariah Carey lyrics) was noticed and discussed as an Easter egg targeting LLMs.