Pagination is Dead

Pagination is dead and has been for some time.

Modern frameworks make it trivial to append asynchronous data to the DOM. It's a better user experience, they say. They have a point, I guess; scrolling is easier than going back and forth between pages.

But what is the user experience I actually want? Maybe it was naive of me to think I was creating an archive on these social media sites. That would imply easy access to my data. I want to see the early photos my favorite photographer took without five minutes of swiping or my browser freezing¹. I want to see all the dumb shit I posted a year ago and not need an app or plugin.

If your site has endless scrolling then please provide an alternative. There's room for both, it doesn't need to be an XOR.

Context is everything. A social feed is transient and soon to be refreshed whereas a user profile is historical and bounded.