Web bloat isn't anything new. While it may have taken different shapes and forms over the years, I'd wager it's been with us since the beginning (hopefully some of my readers are old enough to remember the <blink> element). So long as the internet is a blank canvas for what humans can do (as opposed to what they should do), bloat will be the darkest shadow cast by our brightest hopes for innovation on the internet.
I say this, of course, knowing full well that I'm a web-bloat professional: a Drupal developer and web marketing consultant who's responsibilities focus less on reducing bloat and more on navigating the various bloated swamps marketers have to wade through. In an ideal world we'd drain the swamps, hit the dry cleaners and never go back. That's not reality, though. Swamps happen. Even if we can't get over it, we suck it up and move forward.
That doesn't mean we should all turn a blind eye to the elephant in the room, though. The first step in improving web-bloat is to look it straight in the eye--to understand what it looks like, how it works, and how it impacts our businesses. Consider this a passive intervention, then: let's talk about bloat.
Design Without Demand
The <blink> element was a now thoroughly deprecated HTML element that made text blink in your browser. At some point, a group of developers somewhere along the line said: "I wonder what we could do to cheapen the marketing power of websites so low that they sink to the level of corner mini-markets, strip clubs and back-street casinos?" Thus was born the internet equivalent of a blinking neon light. If it ever had a useful application, only a divine entity could have made it work. It was innovation for the sake of innovation--and, utterly pointless.
This is, I think, the defining characteristic of web-bloat. It often feels like it fills a void, but doesn't actually cater to a specifically fundamental need. Nobody is really asking for it. Instead, bloat catalyzes businesses, organizations, and in some cases, industries to reshape their needs in line with whatever shape it takes.
The <blink> tag was only a small example of this. With no way to use it in a meaningful way, webmasters simply used it for the sake of having something "flashy" on their sites. The technology fostered a small but notable trend in budget web-design that was annoying at best and abusive at worst. As you might imagine, the <blink> element didn't last all that long; its legacy lives on, though, in the form of JavaScript alerts and pop-up overlays/windows.
Ballet and IT Orchestrations
While we're looking back to a younger internet, let's stop for a moment and revisit one of the golden years: 1997. What a year!--unemployment fell below 5%, Steve Jobs returned to Apple Computers, WinNuke circled the globe, and James Cameron released Titanic (highest grossing film, ever--until Avatar, at least). I was 16 at the time. Some of you may also remember this as the year that Luc Besson released The Fifth Element. This is still, to this day, one of my favorite movies (although, at 16, I don't think I was particularly into it for the plot). It's not one of the great masterpieces of the 20th century, by any stretch, but it touches rather carefully and craftily on some deeply philosophical themes--one of those themes being corporate bloat.
In one particularly memorable scene of the movie, the good guy priest (played by later Hobbit, Ian Holm) pays a visit to the bad guy weapons merchant and antagonist of the film (Gary Oldman). Oldman's character, Zorg, is a corporate big-wig (and unrepentant psychopath) with little patience for the priest's sanctimonious ideals (the priest has one of those 'drain the swamp' kind of personalities--I guess). Upon meeting, Zorg decides to serve the priest with his own flavor of sermon:
Life, which you so nobly serve, comes from destruction, disorder, chaos. Now, take this empty glass: peaceful, serene, BORING. But if it is destroyed [pushes a glass from his desk]. Look at all these things, now. [robots emerge to clean the glass from the floor] So busy! Notice how each one is useful. What a lovely ballet ensues!?--so full of form and color!
Now, think about all those people that created them: technicians, engineers. Hundreds of people who will be able to feed their children tonight so those children can grow up big and strong and have little teeny weeny children of their own, and so on, and so forth. Thus adding to the great chain of life.
Maybe he meant to say the great chain of bloat!? Zorg is obviously proud of the robot ensemble cleaning his floor. He goes on to toast his guest and immediately chokes on the cherry in his drink--necessitating a strong slap on his back. The priest doesn't immediately rush to his aid, and instead offers a sharp critique of Zorg's ideals. His response is essentially this: "you've built an empire based on needless destruction, but what's it all worth if there are no robots to save you from choking?" [I'm ad-libbing here, of course]. What saves Zorg's life isn't his bloated industry or immense power; rather, it's someone who actually sees what he needs: a slap on the back. Had Zorg focused his energy on building trusting relationships instead of absolute power, someone would likely have his back; the "power of love" is is an obvious theme in the movie.
In the end, the beauty of this exchange is that we all, to some degree, can level with Zorg's character. The only reason we don't fully buy into his logic is because we can see past the metaphor: he's a weapon's dealer, so the needless destruction he's talking about is quantifiable human life. Economic prosperity isn't a valid trade for human life. For most of us, killing group A so group B can put their kids through college is a hard pill to swallow.
It's a powerful scene--a moral judgement on what I'd argue is just another, higher, level of bloat: industry for the sake of industry; needless destruction for the sake of profit. Zorg's sermon and it's deceptive logic illustrates a very real danger with bloat: it's perfectly capable of convincing us we need industries and products even when we don't. In some cases, the idiocy of bloat is obvious (fidget spinners?--really?); in other cases, particularly when bloat masquerades as innovation, we cling to it as if the future of humanity hung in the balance.
Questioning True Value
I've been on a lot of calls with quite a few vendors over the years: people selling web-marketing services, applications, integrations and more. They're very quick to boast what their services can do. That's not a criticism, necessarily; that's just part of presenting value in their product. In most cases, however, it's incumbent upon the buyers of these services to decide whether that shiny product is actually applicable or necessary to their marketing goals. One of the fundamental disadvantages that most buyers have, particularly in regard to web marketing products and services, is that they don't fully understand the language of the pitch. API's, conversions, integrations, leads, frameworks, scalability--they're all shiny keywords aimed at convincing buyers that they need a given service. With so much "innovation" in "new" technologies and "new" solutions, the buyer stands at a tremendous disadvantage. If something's "new", that can also mean it's "untried" and "untested".
In the end, the best way of coping with bloat, regardless of industry, is probably to know what you need. In order to know what you need, you have to know what your customers want. To know what they want, you could certainly ask them--it doesn't hurt. Although, to know what they really want, you may need to go a step further: you may need to focus on building trusting relationships. No matter how innovative the web gets, that's the one thing that it can't really replace--the one need that it's not really capable of fulfilling. If the rise of social media dynasties has taught us one thing at all, it's that the internet, in all its bloated glory, isn't a proxy for human connection.