Hard dates

The problem

Your mom died on a March 14th. Every March 14th you wake up and the day weighs differently. Social networks don't understand that difference — they push cheerful "memories" at you, ads, pings. And even though you want to remember, you don't want it shouted at you.

What Anecdotario does

Hard dates get different treatment from the rest:

• Default off. It doesn't notify you unless you explicitly ask. Anecdotario knows the date (you marked it), but by default it doesn't break the day with a push.
• If you turn the reminder on, it doesn't suggest "send" or "share" or "publish." It opens a private screen with all the anecdotes where that person appears — ordered however you want to read them.
• Silent reading. The editor disappears, social actions disappear, no progress bars. Just the text. When you're done, you close. No one sees you were there.
• No metrics. We don't count how many times you came back, we don't tell you "it's been two years since you read this." Return time isn't information we need to monitor.

Types of dates

• Anniversaries of losses. When someone died.
• Birthdays without the person. The birthday of someone who's gone — optionally with the tradition of "what you would have told them today."
• Personally hard days. The day someone left you, the day of the diagnosis, the day you were fired. Anecdotes from those days can be grouped to come back to when you need.

Why it matters

A fast social network turns pain into content. A slow network treats it as what it is — private memory worth keeping but not displaying. Anecdotario is a place where you can come back to hard things without the app trying to extract likes from them.