It probably doesn't help that the mobile app appears to load a random picture of a cute dog every time I press the "retry" button. So you can guess what I'm doing, trying to get it to load a new "Dogs of Amazon" pic.
Probably should have gone with goatse, reduce the load.
EDIT: do NOT search for "goatse" on your work connection. That alone, even if you've never heard the word, should tell you why I suggested it as an alternative.
Maybe they figure that people who like dogs enough to want to see more will also click the link [1] to find out more about the "Dogs of Amazon", which seems to be unaffected by their problems. There they will find a story about Amazon's dog-friendly offices, 30+ pictures of Amazon dogs, and a video showing many of them. The time to consume all that is time the person is not hitting refresh on the shopping site, so maybe is a net win for Amazon.
Interestingly, despite not being a dog person, I found the first instance of a dog to be a cute, human-relatable inclusion. On later pages I found it frustrating and annoying.
I'm sure there's a fundamental UX principle or two at work there, but I won't pretend to truly know what they are.
Any sources for me to read up on? Googling just gave me the BattleChess duck story, some unrelated UX examples using ducks, and info about how the duck hunt "gun" worked.
I've never heard the term before, but I do recall plenty of people playing duck hunt shooting at the dog when the game said they failed. Although, he kinda earned a laser zapping by laughing at your failures, right?
Probably should have gone with goatse, reduce the load.
EDIT: do NOT search for "goatse" on your work connection. That alone, even if you've never heard the word, should tell you why I suggested it as an alternative.