Dickovers, baggravation, botiquette: the new words we need to describe daily life with tech
A tech writer just gave a name to those infuriating pop-ups blocking the page you wanted to read. Turns out, naming the annoyance is only the beginning.
Key points
- John Gruber, a tech writer, coined the term "dickover" in May 2026 to describe pop-ups that deliberately block website content.
- A dickover covers cookie consent boxes, notification requests, sign-in prompts, and autoplaying video overlays.
- The Guardian identified at least 18 new words needed to describe modern technology frustrations.
- None of these irritants are new, but until now most people had no shared language to complain about them precisely.
You land on a news article. Before you can read a single sentence, three boxes stack up: one asking you to accept cookies (small text files websites use to track your browsing), one begging you to allow notifications, and one nudging you to sign in with Google. You click them all away. Then an autoplay video slides in from the corner.
That whole experience now has a name.
What is a "dickover"?
Tech writer John Gruber coined the word in May 2026. His definition: a pop-up panel or screen overlay that a website or app puts in front of its own content on purpose, purely to frustrate the user into doing something. Cookie banners. Notification prompts. "Create an account" curtains. All of it.
The word is blunt because the behaviour is blunt. These are not accidents of web design. They exist because companies discovered that blocking content until users click "agree" is a reliable way to collect consent, data, or email addresses.
Why does naming this stuff actually matter?
Shared vocabulary turns a vague gripe into a specific complaint. Once you can say "that site hit me with three dickovers before I could read anything," you can compare notes with a friend, write a clearer review, or make a more pointed complaint to a company's support team.
The Guardian rounded up 17 more terms beyond dickover, covering the full catalogue of tech misery most of us endure but rarely articulate. The exercise is partly comic, but the underlying point is serious: the friction built into everyday digital products is not random. It is designed.
What can ordinary people actually do?
Not a lot, in the short term. Cookie banners, for instance, exist largely because of privacy laws in Europe and elsewhere that require websites to ask permission before tracking you. The laws meant well. The implementation produced one of the most universally hated user experiences on the internet.
Browser extensions that auto-dismiss cookie pop-ups exist and work reasonably well. Beyond that, the most direct pressure comes from users publicly naming bad behaviour, which is precisely what a shared vocabulary makes easier.
One honest takeaway: Next time a site buries its content under a stack of pop-ups, you now have the right word for it. "Dickover." Use it in a review, a tweet, or a letter to the company. Companies do notice when a specific, mockable term for their bad design starts circulating.
Survivorship bias is worth flagging here too. The websites most people visit and complain about are the big ones with legal and marketing teams that have decided the friction is worth it. Smaller sites, often run by individual writers or shop owners, rarely pile on dickovers because they have no one forcing them to. The design sins of the web are concentrated, not universal.
