I just noticed something weird! My last many posts have zero images. Not a screenshot, not a meme, not even a random cute image. The culprit isn’t a new minimalist aesthetic or a sudden allergy to color; it has to be the swap I made last year, from the visual, button-happy WYSIWYG editor to a blank Markdown file. In the old tool, adding an image was a two-click party; tap the landscape icon, drag anything from the desktop, watch it bloom in the draft. The interface begged me to illustrate every thought. Markdown, meanwhile, greets me with a blinking cursor and a moral dilemma; do I break my writing flow, type alt, hunt for a royalty-free file 😬, resize it, upload it, paste the link or just keep typing?

Guess which one wins every time?

I used to believe that behavior was 100% internal; my habit, my discipline. Turns out it’s 50% me and 50% the shape of the doorway I walk through 🤪. Give me a wide, well-lit entrance and I’ll cart in flowers, rugs, and wall art. Hand me a narrow service hatch and I’ll squeeze through with nothing but the manuscript clenched in my teeth. So this isn’t a post about “images bad, words good.” We blame our tools for misuse but maybe they are often designed to elicit one behavior or another. Switch the tool, switch the habit, sometimes before you even notice. I miss the WYIWYG canvas. Until I find a Markdown workflow that feels as friction-free as drag-and-drop, my posts will probably stay plain. And that’s okay; the words are still here. The environment is quietly coaching me every keystroke of the way.

UX isn’t just what we see; it’s what we end up doing without ever deciding to.