Do You Even Wordle?

If you’re on social media, chances are that you are one of two kinds of people; those who post their Wordle results every day or those who are extremely annoyed by the yellow and green boxes flooding their feeds.

What is it about this word game that took the world by storm and made it so popular (at least until the next trend comes along)?

There are plenty of takes out there, but it seems to me that people find Wordle so wholesome because it stands in contrast to so much of what makes the toxic parts of the internet so toxic.

Unlike most apps and games out there, Wordle isn’t spying on you, it isn’t trying to drive engagement, it’s not addictive, and it isn’t trying to suck you into playing for hours every day. In fact, by only giving one word a day, it sets a pretty tight limit to how much time you can waste on it every day.

A lot has been said about the toxic parts of internet culture, and the large tech companies have been blamed for putting shareholder profits over the well-being of their users.

In Parshat Mishpatim, the first Parshah after the Jews got the Torah at Mount Sinai, the Torah goes into great detail about the laws of civil liability and the responsibility we have for damages caused by our actions and our property.

Just as a person can’t say “I just let my goat graze; it’s not my fault she ate up your tomato patch,” similarly, we can’t absolve ourselves from responsibility for the products and the technology we create.

Sure, profits are important, but they can’t come at the expense of the first principle; don’t be evil.

P.S. Really? “Knoll”? What’s up with that?