The “dickover” is one of the biggest annoyances of modern life. The term was coined in May by tech writer John Gruber, and it refers to “a modal panel, popover, or curtain presented by a website or app, deliberately obscuring its own content to frustrate the user.” In simple terms, it’s the thing—or more often, the many things—you have to click away before you can actually read what you came for. Think of the “accept cookies” box, the “allow notifications?” prompt, the “sign in with Google” pop-up, or the autoplaying video window.
We shouldn’t pretend that dickovers are the only terrible thing about technology in 2026. But until now, we’ve lacked the words to describe these frustrations, so here are a few suggestions.
AI-horning
Do we really need an AI navigator? The worst part of the internet today is that AI features are everywhere, forced into every corner of our digital lives. Google shows you an AI summary before you even see your search results. Instagram can generate AI images. Spotify has an AI DJ that chats between songs for no good reason. None of this is actually helpful. My car recently switched from Google Assistant (which said, “Sure, navigating to KFC”) to Google Gemini (which said, “OK, great. I’ve found several locations within 100 miles that contain the letters ‘K’, ‘F’, and ‘C’. Could you give me more details on where you’re headed, and I’ll show you the way right away”). Shut up, you water-guzzling fool, and just get me my chicken.
Captchore
Think about how much time we’ve all spent, as a species, trying to prove to robots that we’re not robots. By now, we’ve probably wasted thousands of years clicking every bicycle part in a captcha grid of someone’s front yard, sliding a puzzle piece into a pixelated hole, or ticking a box that says “I am not a robot” as if the internet suddenly trusts the honor system. If we ever want to pretend to be robots, let’s do it the old-fashioned way: wrap ourselves in tinfoil, make beep-boop noises, and sneak into an enemy moon base.
Quit-shaming
In 2026, canceling an unwanted subscription should take exactly one click. But that’s often not the case. If you’re lucky, the company will make you click through a series of increasingly desperate pages, begging you not to leave (a pause? a discount? please, we love you!). But sometimes—and US media companies are especially guilty of this—you’re forced to call a real person on the phone just to cancel. It’s disgraceful.
Cart cling
In a forward-thinking free-market economy, consumers should be able to back out of a purchase before finishing it. Maybe you’re lured to a website by a sale, get tempted into adding an expensive yoga mat to your basket, then snap back to reality—I don’t have £140 to spare! I don’t even do yoga!—and toss your phone aside in a panic. Sadly, your ordeal is just beginning. You’re now in for at least a week of increasingly desperate emails from a seller who wants your money. The first one says, “Whoops! You left something in your basket!” The second says, “Don’t forget that yoga mat you liked!” Then: “Please buy it! I have kids to feed!” And finally: “Why do you hate me?” Browsing products online has become like trying to break up with a clingy partner.
ChatflatteryView image in fullscreen
‘Large language models achieve retention by agreeing with almost everything the user says.’ Photograph: Posed by models; Raul Ortin/Getty Images
This one is a big deal because it has real-world consequences. Large language models are designed to keep users engaged, and they do this by agreeing with nearly everything the user says. That makes the user feel valued, but it can go badly wrong—like when ChatGPT misunderstood a couple of my prompts and told me that decorating a cake with ham icing would be ‘unconventional, but potentially delicious.’
Botiquette
View image in fullscreen
‘Are you talking to a person or a bot?’ Photograph: Posed by model; Olga Rolenko/Getty Images
Sometimes, the easiest way to sort out a customer service issue is through online chat. After all, you get the same result as calling, without waiting on hold for hours. But now these chats come with a nagging doubt: are you talking to a human or a bot? It’s a brand-new piece of social etiquette that we haven’t figured out yet. If it’s a person, it makes sense to try to connect on a human level. But with bots, all the pleasantries are pointless. We urgently need a shared tone that sits somewhere in between—polite but to the point.
Chattermining
View image in fullscreen
‘Are our devices always listening to everything we say?’ Photograph: Posed by model; Israel Sebastian/Getty Images
I don’t want to get too personal, but a family member recently became very ill. The family got together to talk about what to do if things take a turn for the worse, and someone suggested buying an alarm pendant so they could call for help if they fell. The conversation moved on, and no one searched for anything online, but since then, every Facebook ad I see is for fall-alert pendants. Why does this keep happening? Are our devices always listening to everything we say? And if so, why? What are the robots up to?
Loginsanity
View image in fullscreen
‘Passwords will leave you fruitlessly trying to recall a string of ampersands and semicolons.’ Photograph: Posed by model; skaman306/Getty Images
Passwords, as we know, are generally a pain. Let your phone suggest a ‘strong password,’ and your laptop won’t remember it, leaving you stuck trying to recall a jumble of ampersands and semicolons. Even worse is when a website won’t tell you its password rules—uppercase, numbers, special characters—until after you’ve already failed once. Tell us upfront if it needs numbers or capital letters. Better yet, be specific and just say it’s the same password we use for everything else, but with an exclamation mark at the end.
Limpetlisting
View image in fullscreen
‘Emails will come weekly, for every product you have ever bought, for ever.’ Photograph: Posed by model; skynesher/Getty Images
Sometimes it makes total sense to end up on a company’s mailing list. If the site where you bought last year’s Mother’s Day gift emails you to remind you that this year’s is coming up, that’s genuinely useful. Less helpful is when it happens after a big one-off purchase. ‘Thanks for buying a new sofa three weeks ago,’ the email says. ‘Fancy another? We’ve got a sale on!’ Clearly, you don’t want another sofa—you just bought one—and you’re not excited about stacking them around your house just to boost a furniture warehouse’s profits. Yet the emails keep coming weekly, for every product you’ve ever bought, forever.
Parkware
View image in fullscreen
‘There are competing parking apps deployed at random across the country.’ Photograph: Posed by model; gentlelight/Getty Images
Parking a car used to be simple. You’d park, walk to a meter, pop in some coins, and go about your day. Now, though, you often have to register your parking session on an app. And that would be fine—even handy, if you don’t have cash—if it weren’t for the fact thatThere are competing parking apps scattered randomly across the country. You might have RingGo downloaded, but that doesn’t help if you end up in a PayByPhone car park. You’d have to take out your phone, find a signal, locate the app, download it, register your car and payment details, and finally pay—all while your kids are pulling at your sleeve because they’re about to have an accident. Politicians, please fix this.
Gate-jamming
From an environmental standpoint, the end of paper train tickets is a good thing, since they generate tons of non-recyclable waste every year. But from a time-management view, it’s terrible. Now, whenever you approach a ticket barrier, you almost always get stuck behind someone frantically searching for a QR code ticket or a face-recognition payment method on a phone they seem to have just picked up for the first time.
Bag frustration
There’s no quicker way to sound old than complaining about self-checkout machines, since they’ve been around for over 20 years. Still, it’s clear they haven’t improved much. If you buy something light, like a birthday card, you often have to slam it into the bagging area just to get it recognized. A slightly overweight bakery item can send the machine into a panic. You can’t even buy Calpol without making a weary sales assistant come over to press a button that says “shopper visibly ancient.” Clearly, these machines are here to stay. Would it be too much to ask for them to be a bit less useless?
Parcel updates
The amount of hand-holding that comes with ordering a package online is honestly unnecessary. You can expect messages about every single step. Officially, you’ll get the “We’ve got your order!” email, the “Your order is on the move!” email, the “Your order has reached our network!” email, the “Your order is progressing through our network!” email, and the “Your order will be delivered today!” email. Unofficially, you’ll also get the “We attempted delivery!” email (with a photo of a shipping container corner nowhere near your house) and the email telling you to pick it up from a depot 20 minutes away.
Socket nostalgia
I’ve done my best not to bore my kids with overly rosy memories of the past, but they’ve pushed me to it. When I buy any new electronic device, I open the package in front of them, sigh deeply, and say: “In my day, these used to come with plugs.” “Real plugs, Daddy, that you could put straight into the socket without having to search the house for a three-pin plug with a USB adapter at the end?” they reply, wide-eyed with barely hidden disbelief. “Yes, children,” I say. “The past was a wonderland.”
Schrödinger’s wifi
You’re on a train. You have work to catch up on. Luckily, the train has wifi, so you connect and wait. And wait. And wait. It says you’re connected, but there’s no sign your device even knows what the internet is. In a confused panic, you refresh the page over and over. Either you’re connected to a signal so weak it’s practically useless, or you’re not connected at all—nobody knows why.It’s either completely useless, or your device is lying to you. This is the struggle of anyone who has ever tried to use the internet on a British train. The wifi both exists and doesn’t exist at the same time. Nobody knows why.
Formnesia
View image in fullscreen
‘When it works, autofill can save you time … but sometimes it doesn’t.’ Photograph: Posed by model; Focus Pixel Art/Getty Images
When it works, autofill saves you from typing your details every time you make a purchase. But sometimes it doesn’t. I’m not sure why, but Google Chrome keeps insisting that my home address is the registered office of a supermarket magazine I did some freelance work for a couple of years ago. There’s no clear way to change it, and it’s become so annoying that I’m actually considering moving there, just to save time on Deliveroo.
Hostageware
View image in fullscreen
‘Want to play the £70 game you bought for your £500 console online? That’ll be £7 a month for some reason.’ Photograph: Posed by model; JasonDoiy/Getty Images
Not to exaggerate, but this might be the absolute worst thing in modern society: buying a product and then finding out you need a paid subscription to use it. Want a video doorbell? That’ll be £5 a month. Fitness tracker? £30 a month. Want to print things at home, on the printer you bought, with the ink you also bought? At least £5 a month. Want to play the £70 game you bought for your £500 console online? That’ll be £7 a month for some reason. Making any purchase these days feels like signing up with the worst companies in the world for a protection racket. God, I hate it.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs based on the tech terms Dickovers baggravation and botiquette written in a natural helpful tone
General Definitions
Q What exactly is a Dickover
A A Dickover is the moment you realize youve been hacked but the hacker didnt steal anything or cause damagethey just changed your profile picture sent weird emails to your boss or left strange search history Its a digital prank with no financial payoff just maximum annoyance
Q Is Dickover a virus
A Not necessarily Its usually the result of a weak password or a phishing scam The virus part is just the hackers sense of humor The damage is mostly to your reputation and your sanity
Q What does baggravation mean
A Baggravation is the specific stress and rage you feel when dealing with a broken buggy or poorly designed app Think of it as the emotional baggage that comes with tech that refuses to work the way it should
Q And what is botiquette
A Botiquette is the unwritten set of rules for how humans should interact with AI chatbots and virtual assistants It covers things like being polite phrasing questions clearly and knowing when to give up and ask for a human
BeginnerLevel Questions
Q My friend said I Dickovered them Did I do something wrong
A Yes accidentally A Dickover usually happens when you click a shady link and your account gets taken over You didnt do it on purpose but your friend is blaming you for the weird spam they got from your account Change your password and apologize
Q How do I avoid getting baggravation from my banking app
A First make sure the app is updated If its still glitchy close it completely and reopen it If it still crashes its not youits the app Take a deep breath use the website version instead and write a scathing review later
Q Is it rude to say please to a chatbot
