Making It Hard by Design
Frictionmaxxing is reminding us of an important part of community design
Editor’s Note: A bit late to this, was sitting on this and it probably should have gone out like 6 weeks ago ha.
Convenience gave us access, not attachment.
We made everything swipeable, tappable, and delivered in under 48 hours, and now we’re shocked that nothing sticks.
But somewhere along the way, we went against the long-standing agreement, things of value are hard. If you want relationships, communities, or outcomes that mean anything, you have to make them a little hard to get. Not impossible. Not gatekept for sport. But rather create a (positive!) barrier to entry.
It’s what we used to know before convenience became a religion.
The Paradox We Built
When we started MAEKAN, what seems like years ago, we built too much friction into what we were doing. A hard gate when nobody was used to paying for content (at time, USD $10, hard gated), an audio-story first format that meant discoverability was difficult and pretty complex stories and interviews about the psychology of creativity.
As a first-time founder, it was a textbook example of product creation. We created MAEKAN under the belief that you felt needed to have every single bell and whistle to show you were visionary, versus the one the world may have actually needed.
Expensive lessons were learned.
But all these hoops did something unexpected, as they became rites of passage. If you made it through, you weren’t just a “reader.” You were part of a small tribe with shared scars. When I mean scars, I mean more like the sheer effort it took to understand this really weird media product. But some of my friends from back then are still people I’m connected to on the regular today, each go months on end without speaking before picking up where we last left off.
There’s a kind of respect that only shows up when the door doesn’t swing open on the first push.
I used to think the problem was friction itself. Actually, no, that’s not it. The problem is fake friction. Pointless hoops that waste time versus real effort that changes you while you do it.
Capitalism Loves the Low Branch
We didn’t get here by accident. We optimized for low-hanging fruit. Cut the steps, flatten the entry, remove the pain.
Tech promised to “simplify your life,” and we didn’t ask questions. Things like one-click checkout, same-day delivery, infinite scroll… all were meant to make things as effortless as possible.
The companies building this stuff had their own math to solve. Tech doesn’t win by being good for 1,000 people. It wins by being good enough for 100 million. Scale is the only thing that matters when you’ve got VC money breathing down your neck, demanding those hockey stick graphs in your pitch deck. Once again, not revelational, but just a little tentpole in the arc around the role friction should play in our lives.
But low-friction was the perfect drug for both sides
The problem is we confused “easier to access” with “better for you.” We flattened everything that required effort and called it progress.
While there’s a bit of a logical leap from tech UX/UI to just the state of affairs around us, I still see it as a dominant shift. The ease of “checking-out” and “not committing” had done its part to shift culture. The biggest downfall is the lack of commitment to mostly everything, it seems because entering and exiting was easy since meaning and connection was so fleeting.
Sneakers Before the Buy Button
Sneaker culture back in the day taught me this better than anything else. If anything, pre-marketplace sneaker culture has arguably been a textbook representation of community building.
Back when I was into sneakers, you did your research. You knew where to find sneakers that were slept on, you knew what parts of the Internet corners to lurk for different things (SuperFuture vs. ISS vs. NikeTalk vs. Crooked Tongues vs. HYPEBEAST Forums). The Internet was luckily a lot weirder and nuanced back in the day.
You built relationships (and beef) by showing up and contributing on forums and the information was currency.
Then came the era where you could buy your way to culture through StockX, GOAT, and resell apps. The value of a sneaker became a clean, optimal force ranking function. Incredible if you love shoes, but it changed the game when accessibility defaulted to bank account size of the buyer.
Ownership got cheaper in effort but also cheaper in meaning. Things that previously required community investment by showing up, contributing, helping others out, were all dismantled because access came down to simply punching in your credit card numbers.
Friction Isn’t the Enemy
People assume friction means gatekeeping. It doesn’t have to be.
Good friction is a ladder, not a gate.
Sports have built-in skill friction. No one “buys” a jump shot, the ability to hit a 60 yard pass, or a kickflip. You earn it with reps, coaching, and humiliation (lots of it) until your hands/feet know what your head can’t articulate yet.
The friction is the practice. The practice makes a person actually value what they’ve just overcome.
The question isn’t “How do we make this hard?” It’s “What filters for the people who actually care?”
Three Places to Add It Back
If you’re building something, add meaningful friction on purpose.
Make a contribution the price of membership. Ask people to share something real: a story about their worst moment, their favorite artist and why. Something that makes them vulnerable to semi-strangers. Preference is to have actual answers, move past the yes/no ease of entry.
Create recurring moments that cause a little discomfort. Early calls, live critiques, in-person meetups when it’s raining. Friction becomes story fuel.
Make engagement require effort. If something takes time to unpack, the people who invest that time leave as connective tissue.
If you want stickiness, you need shared effort, shared risk, and shared memory. Those three bind faster than any loyalty program.
Sneakers used to ask for this. Sports still do. Your thing can, too.
The people who stick around after they’ve overcome friction? They should be seen as special to you and the community, for their presence is a bond.
So pick one thing you’re building and make it a little harder on purpose. Not punitive. Not for show. Just hard enough that finishing it means something.
The friction is the point.
Never complain, never explain.