“Counting is difficult” was amusing the first time.
Not after endless repetition.
Now it has become an annoying irritant.
I do not want to start my day being told, over and over again, every day, that “counting is difficult”.
I am currently a premium member, but I’m unlikely to renew while this is in place.
I basically never see “Counting is Difficult”. Once or twice in the last year, I imagine. I’m wondering why you see it so often.
What a very minor thing to not renew over!
It’s one of those things that slightly irritates me too (not enough to cancel my paid sub, the only thing that has ever made me consider canceling is the auto-renewal for paid subs with no courtesy email reminder). I see it literally every time I use the iPhone app, which is countless times per day. Every time I open the app, every time I refresh it, etc. It hangs up for 5-15 seconds (sometimes more, but usually not) with that phrase at the bottom of the screen.
I see it a lot as well, but smile everytime I see it. Maybe being a math nerd, it reminds me of how true it is. Though sometime I do wish it would throw in a “Math is hard, let’s go shopping” just to spice things up.
In the application I work on, we felt very clever to have a “go” button that said “Make it so!”. Even the most nerdy of the developers got tired of it over time. Lesson learned. For stuff that people will see (and use) over and over again, clever stuff is often just distracting. We now reserve our most clever inside jokes for only the really rare error messages that we hope no one ever sees.
I enjoy seeing it… it’s a nice personal touch.
I’ve never seen it, not once.
Now I want to see it.
i find it insulting that when deleting a feed or folder i get asked, “Really delete?”
i clicked the delete button didn’t i? do you think i’m an idiot?
And the one time the mouse glitches and clicks ‘delete’ instead of what you meant to hit…?
On the plus side, it emails you the opml file the first time you delete something in some set amount of time, so that fail-state is less catastrophic now.
I like the quirky character of things like “Counting is difficult” and “Really delete?”. I think the people saying they will cancel over your copywriting are full of it.
If that is going to stop you renewing why fix it? Next it will be “I don’t like the name NewBlur, change it”.
Seriously, how do you cope everyday? The sun rose 2 minutes too early today, the radio is not playing the playlist I sent them, the newspaper is not in my favourite font, the traffic light is still using the old green light after I specifically told the council I wanted fuchsia, damn it McDonalds I told you I wasn’t going to buy another BigMac until you used my special sauce recipe!
Good luck telling Feedly they need to change there website to suit you.
i guess my sarcasm wasn’t that apparent 
i wouldn’t cancel NewsBlur over something like that. like I replied ^
that was sarcasm, but here is some hostility in here so…
As an observer, it seems to me that this is the real problem: “I see it literally every time I use the iPhone app, which is countless times per day.”
It’s the waiting that’s bothersome, and they’re just deflecting. Maybe they prefer to see a pretty spinning circle or hourglass to distract them?
I love all the quirks and nuances of Newsblur - happy to support this wonderful service! Newsblur wouldn’t be the same without you Sam.
I noticed something this morning. The little spinny animation when fetching is accompanied by the phrase “Everything is on its way” and that phrase not only seems appropriate, but actually helpful. So many of these Ajaxy apps have spinny widgets and you don’t really know what you are waiting for. That, in itself, can be irritating. “Everything is on its way” seems to me informative and helpful. “Counting is Difficult” on the other hand makes me want to say back “don’t tell me your troubles, just get me my stuff.” I have no explanation for the difference between those two reactions. It’s not even conscious, at least until a minute ago.
Hi Samuel,
I’m late replying because I didn’t have GetSatisfaction notifications turned on, and I didn’t know that they weren’t turned on, so I didn’t know that I had gotten a reply. I’m just now checking back to see if anything had happened.
I understand that you like the phrase…
However…
…I’m motivated to pull out my credit card to pay for things that I like, not things that you like 
If you like the phrase and want to keep displaying it, and you’d like me to become a paying customer again, make it an option that I can turn off.
Because that’s all I care about. I don’t care if you see it, or if everyone else sees it, I only care that I’m forced to see it.
These days I’m using Feedly. I don’t like it as much as Newsblur, but it doesn’t hit my irritation button every time I open the app… so that’s what I’m using now.
Andrew