About

Purposefully Bad Volume Sliders is a fad on the subreddit /r/ProgrammerHumor in which users post GIFs of the least-intuitive design for a computer's sound-level control they can create.

Origin

On June 2nd, 2017, Redditor PM_ME_YOUR_WATERMELO posted a GIF of a simple, unintuitive volume slider with the title "Who can make the best volume slider?"^[1] The post gained over 10,400 points on the subreddit.

Spread

This was the first of dozens of posts in the subreddit in which people posted various unintuitive volume sliders, many of which gained tens of thousands of points. The most popular, posted by MrTarantula,^[2] made the feature similar to a manual window roller, and gained over 39,100 points (shown below).

Other popular posts include one by BMJ that showed the volume being launched like a catapult that gained over 35,000 points (shown below, left) and another post by MrTarantula that showed the volume being increased via bicycle pump that gained over 26,000 points (shown below, right). The posts began drawing media attention a week after the trend started. News outlets to cover Purposefully Bad Volume Sliders include SelectAll,^[3] Motherboard,^[4] and DesignerNews.^[5]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References