BREAKING: Site reverts its own redesign after the only feedback received was 'looks like an AI landing page'

The project began with a visual reference sent by the person in charge. The reference had a poster, narrow typography, hard borders on everything, and an offset shadow with no blur — which, according to the brief, was "the spirit of the thing." The team replicated the values one by one, with the discipline of someone who believes fidelity equals correctness. The deliverable was ready on time, which was promptly recorded in the minutes as the first sign of a problem.

The page that went up had an opening block with three buttons, a side card explaining what the site is, and a section for each topic, each one ending in see all →. According to the inventory attached to the ticket, there were seven sections and eleven arrows. None of the arrows led anywhere the reader was not already.

"Looks like an AI landing page," says the only review on record. The defense that followed claimed intentional high contrast, a narrow font, and a graph-paper texture somewhere in the footer. The next comment had nine words and was reproduced in the report without edits, preceded by an "lol" the team unanimously interpreted as closing the subject.

The root-cause report, produced in forty minutes by whoever built the page, points to three converging factors: an opening block with more than one call to action, a card explaining the site to people who are already on the site, and one section per topic in the order the topics came up in the meeting. "Each piece was defensible on its own," says the document, in the section titled The problem was not any one piece.

Designers reached by the outlet — the same three, in three sessions — say the pattern is recognizable in two seconds. "It is not the code," explained one of them. "It is the vibe. A big block, a promise in 56-point type, and a button asking for something. You have seen this four hundred times this week and you know exactly where it is going to end."

The next ticket asked to "go back to how it was before, plus something else." The responsible area replied that "plus something else" is not scope, which stands as the only estimate met in the entire project.

The rollback was completed in an afternoon, in a single commit, with a forty-word message — less text than the original brief, a result the board classified as "a good sign."

A committee was created to review the redesign process. At its first meeting, it decided the next one will start from a problem, not a reference. The minutes record two abstentions and no disagreement.

The previous version is still live. It has fewer sections, fewer buttons, and no card explaining what the site is — which, in the most recent review, "solves almost everything without writing a line."

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This is a work of satire. Characters, companies, numbers, and the met deadline are invented. If you recognized your own redesign, the problem is your environment.