Web companies are becoming more complex, intrusive, intertangled, and degrading to humans. But their sites are getting so much simpler to use!
In the modern web, optimal progress is made when there's something else you no longer have to do, regardless of if you didn't mind doing it.
The optimal onboarding process is one where the user already has an account before they've even visited the page.
The optimal search engine knows what you are searching for before you even ask.
The optimal smart-home device is curved and unexplorable, with user interaction focused to terse voice commands.
The optimal user is an anxious dullard, who alternates between catatonic depression and a stress-induced breakdown. It is someone who does not want the burden of choice, or feels they do not have the time to make their own decisions.
It is for this person that the modern web is designed, and it is this type of person the modern web encourages all of us to be.
In the modern web, the optimal design is a gaslight.