It was 1:47 AM.

I had 42 pulls, a credit card that was dangerously within reach, and two banners staring back at me. On the left, the character everyone said was meta. On the right, the one I actually liked. Both were limited. Both would disappear in a few days.

I did what any reasonable person does in that situation: I opened a coin flip website.

Then I closed it, because a cookie banner asked me to accept 847 partners.

Then I opened another one. It wanted an account.

Then I opened a random number generator that looked like it had been designed in 2003 and had a 3-second ad before showing me a number.

And somewhere between the third pop-up and the fourth "accept all", I thought:

Why is the simplest decision in the world the hardest thing to do on a computer?

That night, I didn't pull. I opened my code editor instead.

The tiny problem behind the big project

The gacha dilemma is silly. I know that.…