Conclusion and Coda
Implications of this Research
Benefits of Understanding Mêtis
Cryptography means "secret writing,"" and it is the technology of making interpretation of a text impossible for those without a key and trivial for those who have it. In the field of cryptography, a substitution cipher is one of the simplest methods of encoding a message. It works by substituting the letters of the alphabet of the original message (the plaintext) for letters of another alphabet (the cipher text).
If the receiving party has the key (i.e., knows the algorithm by which the text is encoded), decoding it is a trivial task, but if the receiving party doesn't know the algorithm, the message remains meaningless. While simple substitutions, with only modest modifications, can be difficult if not impossible to crack, far more sophisticated methods of encryption exist.
Since all communication is symbolic, a kind of encryption is always in operation between people as they use signs, whether graphical (text, symbols, images), aural (sounds), or gestural (embodied), to stand in for or to signify ideas, relationships, and meanings.
To take this metaphor a bit further, miscommunication happens when the plaintext message is not decrypted properly; that is, when the receiving party does not assign the proper values to the given signs. This can cause the message to become compromised to some degree, either garbled or completely unintelligible. If I ask you to "hand me that wrench," and the meaning I assign to "that wrench" doesn't correspond with the meaning you assign to it, then you'll probably hand me the wrong thing.
A deceptive interface, in keeping with this analogy, deliberately introduces errors into the process of interpretation. Certain signs are encrypted incorrectly; their meaning does not correspond with the meaning they are supposed to have, and so even when the receiving party decodes the message using the proper algorithm, errors result. It's as if I ask you to "hand me that wrench" while pointing at a screwdriver or a different tool.
Obviously, passing the wrong tool isn't a big deal, but this is the fundamental basis of all deception: One or a group of things that are being made to stand in for other things are not as they purport to be. In fact they are the opposite: Imposters of meaning that can exist only because we are always already accepting that one thing stands in for another thing.
Communication depends on symbolic substitution, and deception depends on it doubly so, first for its surface meaning and second for its true deeper meaning. It is the ambiguity of substitution that provides cover for all deception: If the letter A can be the letter X, then why not Z? But it is only when the message is fully decoded that we realize the error and see the true meaning of the signs beyond their surface appearance. Dark patterns are the algorithms that encode faulty representations into deceptive interfaces.
Understanding that dark patterns are informed by mêtis allows us to bypass the question of intent, where other theories of dark patterns have been stymied. Since there is no way to know with certainty a designer's intent, methods based on identifying dark patterns by their intent to deceive will never be reliable. But understanding mêtis allows us to set aside the question of intent. Is a given interface or statement deceptive? Is one thing pretending to be something it's not? If so, then the interface is deceptive, regardless of whether the designer intended it.
It's not about intent to deceive or about establishing the truth value of all statements; it's about whether or not the interface exhibits the features of deceptive communication: subversion, disguise, camouflage, and reversal. If it exhibits these things, we can call the interface deceptive, whether anyone intended it to be or not. In other words, it's less about the intent of the designer, which we will never know, and more about the intent of the design itself.
By the same token, understanding mêtis allows us to bypass another problem: namely, the weakness of logic to anti-logic. As Erik Hane (2018) noted, "[i]t is one of fascism's goals to monopolize our attention. It would like to shrink our imagination. … Fascism welcomes our attempts to play logical 'gotcha' with its inconsistencies because it knows we will lose—not because we won't find a fallacy but because the fallacy won't matter" (p. 1). We cannot defend against dark patterns by identifying them one by one: We must use them to expand our imaginations.
Defense Against Dark Patterns
What makes dark patterns dark, then, is the same as what allows deception to work: a fundamental reliance on disguise. Instead of illuminating, it darkens; instead of revealing, it conceals. Dark patterns, like sophistic rhetoric, can be identified by the construction of their masks, by the place reality has gone askew.
When one reality is made to stand in for a different one, we know that we aren't party to a good faith effort to persuade, but instead we're being duped by a wily mind hoping to lull us into a false sense of security—the better to rob us blind. But this darkness is not bad or evil; it is the stuff of all communication, of all perception.
Dark patterns are indeed dark, but not because they are evil. They are dark because the darkness is necessary to effect their disguise—they are dark because their art is precisely to make their art invisible. Cunning works only when unseen. Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant (1978/1991) wrote, "the individual who is endowed with mêtis" must:
adopt an oblique course and make his intelligence sufficiently wily and supple to bend in every conceivable way and his gait so "askew" that he can be ready to go in any direction. In other words, to use the Greek term, you could say that the task of the agkulomētēs one, who possesses twisting mêtis, is to devise the straightest way to achieve his end. (p. 6)
To get others to see something, you always must cloud their sight: to show it correctly, you have to first draw it wrongly. As Rudolf Arnheim (1974/1991) wrote, we make "things look right by doing them wrong" (p. 115). This property of mêtis, its crookedness, is a property of all communication.
Detienne and Vernant wrote: "the only way to triumph over an adversary endowed with mêtis is to turn its own weapons against it" (pp. 42–43), to be "even more multiple, more mobile, more polyvalent" than the adversary (p. 5). We have learned the ploys of cunning from cunning itself: It effects a reversal, it seizes opportunity, it takes shifting form, and it connives with reality to dissimulate, to seem opposite of what it is.
These same aspects can guide us to defending against deceptive interfaces: After all, Athena's most powerful technology was not her sword, but her shield Aegis, which transformed the beholder to stone and ended all possibility of movement. The gorgon on Athena's shield is the dissolution of mêtis: It fixes it, allows it to be observed unchanging.
Being turned to stone is like being caught in the most powerful snare, total and never to be escaped. To fix mêtis in our gaze is to undo its power, and to do this our mastery must encircle mêtis as mêtis would encircle its adversary. We must trap it in its own net, reach through its illusions and grasp its core, and hold on fiercely to whatever might come.
As we've come to learn, the key to defeating deceptive interfaces lies in understanding the nature of their cunning: a reliance on disguise and a corresponding weakness to observation. In each of the historical examples of online deception, the piercing of the disguise marks the end of the ploy and the defeat of the malicious actor.
From calling out trolls on social media to outing catfishers (or spear-phishers for that matter), from detecting trojan horses to mapping the membership of bot-nets, neutralizing the threat of deception relies on identifying and piercing the disguise. So the question becomes: By what means can we reliably identify and pierce such disguises?
The answer, in a word, is rhetoric. When trolls get called out, when catfishers are exposed, when fake news is fact checked, members of the audience are able to detect duplicity in the discourse of the deceiver through analysis that is fundamentally rhetorical in character. The same is true of deceptive and misleading charts and graphics: When the method of their disguise is recognized, their true character is revealed.
And the same is ultimately true of deceptive interfaces composed according to dark patterns: Once we pierce their disguise, they're powerless. Once we understand how the disguise has been constructed through language, we can see the way to its undoing. This means we must understand the technical mechanism by which the disguise is effected, and here is where dark patterns are particularly instructive. Dark patterns provide a series of isolated examples that illustrate the different ways disguises are constructed.
Directions for Investigation
Importantly, mêtis does more than underlie all deception. Ultimately, mêtis is revealed as the generative force that animates not just deception but all perception itself. Mêtis is the source and seat of rhetorical agency, the font of all techne, the true name of rhetorical kairos and true mother of phronesis, prudence, and decorum. At the heart of the deception proves to be a fundamental truth: that deception is the truth, all reality is composed of illusion.
Perhaps, as Jean Baudrillard (1994) despaired, the precession of simulacra has begun and all signification is liquified, yet, what is liquefied can be made solid again and if deception is at the heart of this thing we call reality, what of it? We have no other and indeed it is all the more marvelous (thaumata) and amazing (in the original sense of the word) for being so comprised.
The implications of this understanding for digital rhetorics, rhetorical activism, and rhetorics of science, technology, mathematics, and medicine prove to be extensive. The concept of mêtis as generative could contribute discussions of agency both in terms of human and nonhuman actants, and in terms of activism and hermeneutics. Mêtis in visual design could contribute to discussions of the misuse of data.
Such understandings of mêtis could also also contribute to discussion of fake news, privacy jacking, memes, and the rhetoric of the so-called Alt-Right movement evident in, for example, the tweets of Donald Trump, which are themselves an archive of mêtis in their own right.
Reclaiming mêtis means acknowledging the explicitly moral character contemporary rhetoric has come to assume and questioning why we made this choice and what it costs us as a discipline. And perhaps it means revisiting this choice in order to better face new threats without compromising the virtue our allied rhetorical disciplines have rightly come to value.
Ultimately, reclaiming mêtis means that we become more cunning than our most cunning adversaries, that we become more wise and more wary than the hunter, that we develop our own disguises, our own ploys, so that we may deceive the deceivers and secure the safety of all.
After all, as a discipline, we've long understood the best rhetoric hides itself, obscures its traces, makes itself invisible. Detienne and Vernant (1978/1991) drew our attention to the moment when Odysseus prepares to address the Trojans:
Consider the most subtle and most dangerous orator of Greece preparing, before the assembled Trojans, to weave the glittering web of his words: there he is, standing awkwardly with his eyes fixed on the ground, not raising his head; he holds the staff quite still as if he did not know what to do with it. He looks like a tongue-tied yokel or even a witless man (áphrona). At the moment when he is about to speak the master of tricks, the magician of words pretends to have lost his tongue, as if he were unskilled in the rudiments of oratory. (pp. 22–23)
Odysseus himself saw deception not as a good or evil, but as a tool to be used as the situation warrants. But more fool him were his disguise detected, for all further attempts at persuasion would be sure to fail without a shifting tack.
In the end, dark patterns are poor rhetoric not because they are immoral but because they are so trivial to defeat: You just have to recognize them. And once you've done so, their patent hostility makes them forever unpersuasive. A better rhetoric would not allow the user to know how the deception was effected. It would happen entirely out of the user's sight and without anyone noticing.
References
Arnheim, Rudolf. (1991). Art and visual perception: A psychology of the creative eye (2nd ed.). University of California Press. (Original work published 1974)
Atwill, Janet M. (2009). Rhetoric reclaimed: Aristotle and the liberal arts tradition. Cornell University Press. (Original work published 1998)
Axbom, Per [@axbom]. (2021, August 29). Still the worst example of #confirmshaming I've been subjected to. Image description: Alert window on the MyMedic website with the title "MyMedic would like to send notifications." To opt out one has to click a link with this text: "no, I don't want to stay alive."" [Image attached] [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/axbom/status/1432004956190556163
Bailey, Harry [@HarryBailey]. (2017, June 20). Select the sneaky radio button first or 'just' click 'Submit'? @darkpatterns #darkpatterns [Image attached] [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/HarryBailey/status/877070558034358272
Baudrillard, Jean. (1994). Simulacra and simulation. The University of Michigan Press.
Bösch, Christoph, Erb, Benjamin, Kargl, Frank, Kopp, Henning, & Pfattheicher, Stefan. (2016). Tales from the dark side: Privacy dark strategies and privacy dark patterns. In Proceedings on privacy enhancing technologies, 2016(4), 237–254. https://doi.org/10.1515/popets-2016-0038
Brighton, Jamie [@jamiebrighton]. (2019, January 23). Terrible #darkpattern from @raconteur - to unsubscribe, the "button" is actually a paragraph of text and a click here where you can't tell that the here is a link or not @darkpatterns [Image attached] [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/jamiebrighton/status/1088180780336103424
Brignull, Harry. (n.d.). Deceptive design. Retrieved October 18, 2019, from https://www.deceptive.design/
Brignull, Harry. (2011, November 1). Dark patterns: Deception vs. honesty in UI design. A List Apart. https://alistapart.com/article/dark-patterns-deception-vs-honesty-in-ui-design/
Brignull, Harry. (2013, August 29). Dark patterns: Inside the interfaces designed to trick you. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2013/8/29/4640308/dark-patterns-inside-the-interfaces-designed-to-trick-you
Bronson, Ron [@ronbronson]. (2017, October 24). Amazon graduated from the Godaddy School of Dark Patterns I see. #UX #darkpatterns [Image attached] [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/ronbronson/status/922853986088247301
Campbell-Dollaghan, Kelsey. (2016, December 21). The year dark patterns won. Fast Company. https://www.fastcompany.com/3066586/the-year-dark-patterns-won
Carlson, Erin Brock. (2019). Mêtis as embodied, technofeminist intervention: Rhetorically listening to Periods for Pence. Computers and Composition, 51, 14–30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2018.11.002
Carlson, Erin Brock. (2020). Embracing a metic lens for community-based participatory research in technical communication. Technical Communication Quarterly, 29(4), 392–410. https://doi.org/10.1080/10572252.2020.1789745
Chainalysis. (2022). The 2022 crypto crime report. https://go.chainalysis.com/2022-Crypto-Crime-Report.html
Courtis, John. (1997). Corporate annual report graphical communication in Hong Kong: Effective or misleading? Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 34(3), 269–288. https://doi.org/10.1177/002194369703400
Crosby, Benjamin R. (2009). Kairos as God’s time in Martin Luther King Jr.’s last Sunday sermon. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 39(3), 260–280.
Detienne, Marcel, & Vernant, Jean-Pierre. (1991). Cunning intelligence in Greek culture and society (Janet Lloyd, Trans.). University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1978)
DETOUR Act. S. 1084. 116th Cong. (2019). https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1084
Doctorow, Corey [@doctorow]. (2018, January 30). This mobile ad designed to make it look like you have a speck of dirt on your phone, making you tap on it. https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/7tzwz8/this_mobile_ad_designed_to_make_it_look_like_you/ [Image attached] [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/958430027678351360
Dolmage, Jay. (2009). Mêtis, Mêtis, Mestiza, Medusa: Rhetorical bodies across rhetorical traditions. Rhetoric Review, 28(1), 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/07350190802540690
Dolmage, Jay Timothy. (2014). Disability rhetoric. Syracuse University Press.
Fansher, Madison, Chivukula, Shruthi Sai, & Gray, Colin M. (2018). #darkpatterns: UX practitioner conversations about ethical design. In Extended abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1–6). https://doi.org/10.1145/3170427.3188553
Fitch, Eli [@EliFitch]. (2019, October 7). Wow this is just about the darkest UI design pattern I've encountered recently [Image attached] [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/EliFitch/status/1181264576186322946
Fréour, Simon [@simonfrr]. (2018, January 31). Come on @strikingly, if I'm on a website and I click that little down arrow at the bottom, I obviously want to hide the panel, not be taken to your website! #darkpattern alert [Image attached] [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/simonfrr/status/958781663147888641
Gallagher, John. (2019). Dark interactions: Interfaces and object arrays as surveillance in digital rhetoric. In Jim. Ridolfo & Wiliam Hart-Davidson (Eds.), Rhet ops: Rhetoric and information warfare (pp. 158–169). University of Pittsburgh Press.
Gray, Colin. M., Kou, Yubo, Battles, Bryan, Hoggatt, Joseph, & Toombs, Austin L. (2018). The dark (patterns) side of UX design. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1–14). https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3174108
Greenberg, Saul, Boring, Sebastian, Vermeulen, Jo, & Dostal, Jakub. (2014). Dark patterns in proxemic interactions: A critical perspective. In Proceedings of the 2014 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (pp. 523–532). https://doi.org/10.1145/2598510.2598541
Hane, Erik. (2018, March 30). The year in Trump novel pitches: An agent's lament. Literary Hub. https://lithub.com/the-year-in-trump-novel-pitches-an-agents-lament/
Hawhee, Debra. (2002). Bodily pedagogies: Rhetoric, athletics, and the Sophists’ three Rs. College English, 65(2), 142–162.
Herndl, Carl, & Licona, Adela. (2007). Shifting agency: Agency, kairos, and the possibilities of social action. In Mark Zachary & Charlotte Thralls (Eds.), Communicative practices in workplaces and the professions: Cultural perspectives on the regulation of discourse and organizations (pp. 133–153). Baywood.
Hesiod. (1914). Theogony (Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Trans.). Perseus Digital Library. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0020.tlg001.perseus-eng1
Jarratt, Susan C. (1998). Rereading the Sophists: Classical rhetoric refigured. Southern Illinois University Press.
Kopelson, Karen. (2003). Rhetoric on the edge of cunning; Or, the performance of neutrality (re)considered as a composition pedagogy for student resistance. College Composition and Communication, 55(1), 115–146.
Kostelnick, Charles. (2007). The visual rhetoric of data displays: The conundrum of clarity. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 50(4), 280–294. https://doi.org/10.1109/TPC.2007.908725
Luguri, Jamie, & Strahilevitz, Lior Jacob. (2021). Shining a light on dark patterns. Journal of Legal Analysis, 13(1), 43–109. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3431205
Mallory, Angie. (2019). Mapping the rhetoric–operations divide: Considerations for the future. In Jim Ridolfo & William Hart-Davidson (Eds.), Rhet ops: Rhetoric and information warfare (pp. 200–210). University of Pittsburgh Press.
Martin, Mario [@hydrosound]. (2017, November 18). Amazing Dark Pattern. This advertisement has a fake hair to be removed by the user...to click the advert! 😱 #UI #UX #UXDesign #ecommerce #Darkpatterns [Image attached] [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/hydrosound/status/932022319291256832
McLuhan, Marshall. (2013). Understanding media: The extensions of man. MIT Press. (Original work published 1964)
@Millstab. (2017, May 24). Some seriously unethical UX design from @tumblr - forcing anyone to untick 350+ boxes in order to prevent EACH INDIVIDUAL AD COMPANY from using our data. Taking the piss. #darkpatterns #unethicalUI #unethicaldesign [Image attached] [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/Millstab/status/999762424994594817
Noble, Safiya Umoja. (2018). Algorithms of oppression: How search engines reinforce racism. New York University Press.
Rickert, Thomas. (2014). Parmenides, ontological enaction, and the prehistory of rhetoric. Philosophy & Rhetoric, 47(4), 472–493. https://doi.org/10.5325/philrhet.47.4.0472
Ridolfo, Jim, & Hart-Davidson, William (Eds.). Rhet ops: Rhetoric and information warfare. University of Pittsburgh Press.
Ryanair: Travel Insurance. (n.d.). UXP2: Dark Patterns. Retrieved January 11, 2023, from https://darkpatterns.uxp2.com/pattern/ryanair-travel-insurance/
Sipiora, Philip, & Baumlin, Joseph, S. (2002). Rhetoric and kairos: Essays in history, theory, and praxis. State University of New York Press.
Steinbart, Paul John. (1989). The auditors’ responsibility for the accuracy of graphs in annual reports: Some evidence of the need for additional guidance. Accounting Horizons, 3(3), 60–70.
Trice, Michael. (2019). GamerGate: Understanding the tactics of online knowledge disruptors. In Jim Ridolfo & William Hart-Davidson (Eds.), Rhet ops: Rhetoric and information warfare (pp. 105–124). University of Pittsburgh Press.
Trice, Michael, & Potts, Liza. (2018). Building dark patterns into platforms: How GamerGate perturbed Twitter's user experience. Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society, 6(3). https://www.presenttensejournal.org/volume-6/building-dark-patterns-into-platforms-how-gamergate-perturbed-twitters-user-experience/
Tufte, Edward. (2001). The visual display of quantitative information (2nd ed.). Graphics Press.
Verhulsdonck, Gustav, & Shalamova, Nadya. (2020). Creating content that influences people: Considering user experience and behavioral design in technical communication. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 50(4), 376–400. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047281619880286
Walsh, Benjamin [@benjwalsh]. (2018, June 2). A classic combination of email @darkpatterns. An almost invisible text colour and the unsubscribe link isn't underlined like privacy policy, goodbye @Lifecake 👋 [Image attached] [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/benjwalsh/status/1002849871236358144
Walters, Tim [@tim_walters]. (2018, July 12). More purposefully confusing #darkpatterns on #GDPR consent notifications. Which position *does not* allow data collection? [Image attached] [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/tim_walters/status/1017395652433674240
Waughray-Dupoux, Neils [@nielswd]. (2019, May 10). So apparently, to stop my (online) subscription @lemondefr, I gotta print a paper, fill my data, then send it like a postcard (and pay in the process). Nice #darkpattern @darkpatterns [Image attached] [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/nielswd/status/1126937732339634176
@waywardsesame. (2017, May 12). @darkpatterns I don't know if this is a #darkpattern or not but this barely makes sense. @Citi [Image attached] [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/waywardsesame/status/863217101644976130
Webb, Kavan [@KyloKav]. (2018, September 12). What the f**k is this @interacting? You've somehow put an event in my calendar to remind me to resubscribe to your service, appearing every 3 months for the next 5 YEARS, that I cannot delete! Angry doesn't even cover how I'm feeling. So much for user experience. #darkpattern [Image attached] [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/KyloKav/status/1039910188613070854
White, E. C. (1987). Kaironomia: On the will to invent. Cornell University Press.
Yablonski, Jon. (2019a). Hick's law. https://lawsofux.com/hicks-law/
Yablonski, Jon. (2019b). Jakob's law. https://lawsofux.com/jakobs-law/
Zagal, José P., Björk, Steffan, & Lewis, Chris. (2013). Dark patterns in the design of games. In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (pp. 39–46). http://www.fdg2013.org/program/papers/paper06_zagal_etal.pdf