On Side 1 of Television’s 1977 LP ‘Marquee Moon’, you’ll hear Tom Verlaine sneer: “How does a snake get out its skin? Here's a depiction…” The answer is of course ‘Friction’, as the song title has already given away. Use that F word in a tech environment though and people recoil in horror. There are very few concepts more repulsive to a UX designer or Product manager than that of friction. Metrics are dedicated to the elimination of friction in all its unseemly forms.

Every collecting market eventually produces the same short list of things everyone agrees are worth owning. That list is not arbitrary. It is the output of mimetic desire, corporate portfolio management, and an algorithm that rewards thumbnail legibility over depth. Understanding how the list forms does not mean rejecting it. It does mean you can decide whether you are on the list because you chose to be, or because nobody told you there was a choice.