Confessions of a Button Stealer

There comes a point when enough is enough. Remember the movie Network? There’s that unforgettable scene where the fed-up news anchor reaches his breaking point and lets the world know exactly how he feels. Lately, that’s been me every time I open a web browser.

The internet used to be this strange, wonderful place where people built weird little corners of the web simply because they could. Today, it feels like every site is trying to sell me something before I’ve even read the first sentence. I can’t visit a webpage without declining cookie banners, closing newsletter popups, dodging autoplay videos, or accidentally clicking an ad that’s somehow larger than the article itself. After a while, you stop browsing and start feeling like you’re running an obstacle course.

I’ve had enough, so I’ve become a button stealer. Not the kind who raids your grandmother’s sewing kit, either. I steal buttons from websites, and as ridiculous as that sounds, hear me out.

I recently discovered a browser extension called Button Stealer, created by developer Anatoly Zenkov. It doesn’t promise to make me more productive or use AI to transform my life. It has absolutely no practical purpose, and that’s exactly why I installed it.

Every time I visit a website, the extension quietly steals a random button from the page and adds it to my growing gallery. It might be a Subscribe button from a news site, an Upgrade to Pro button from a software company, or a bright green Checkout button from an online store I’ve already forgotten. It quietly goes about its business while I go about mine.

After a few weeks, my gallery started looking less like a pile of stolen buttons and more like a time capsule of the modern internet. BUY NOW sits beside Continue with Google. Join Now shares space with Manage Settings, Accept, Agree & Join, Analytics, and Read thank-you message. Looking at them all together, you realize just how much of the web is spent asking us to click something before we can finally get on with what we came to do.

My growing collection of stolen web buttons. Somehow this accidental collage says more about today’s internet than I ever could.

The funny thing is, those buttons have a history. The first buttons on the web weren’t flashy Buy Now or Subscribe buttons. They were humble gray Submit buttons attached to simple HTML forms in the early days of the World Wide Web. Nobody gave them a second thought. They weren’t trying to sell anything. They just helped people send information from one place to another.

Somewhere along the way, the humble button became a salesperson. Now every click comes with a request. Subscribe. Upgrade. Accept. Allow. Start Your Free Trial. Buy Now. The web stopped asking us where we wanted to go and started telling us what it wanted us to do.

Then comes the dreaded “I’m not a robot” button. I click it, and suddenly I’m taking the SATs… for robots.

“Select every square containing a bicycle.”

Is that a bicycle? Half a bicycle? A bicycle reflected in a puddle? Does the shadow count? At this point, I’m convinced the test isn’t proving I’m human. It’s trying to convince me I’m not.

Maybe that’s why Button Stealer feels so satisfying. Every stolen button feels like reclaiming one tiny piece of the internet. It’s a silly little act of rebellion, but in an online world that’s constantly asking me to click one more thing, I’ll take my victories wherever I can find them.

Collecting these buttons reminded me of something I once read about crows. People who regularly feed them sometimes receive tiny gifts in return. Buttons. Beads. Paper clips. Scientists believe it’s one way crows build relationships with humans.

Apparently, I’ve become the crow. Only instead of collecting gifts from nature, I’m bringing home little pieces of the internet. Every stolen button feels like a digital souvenir from another stop on my online travels, whether it’s a forgotten government login, a streaming service begging for another subscription, or an online shop convinced I need one more gadget.

What surprised me most is that I’m not alone. People online have embraced Button Stealer because it captures something we’ve been missing for years. It reminds us of the early internet, when developers built wonderfully strange little projects simply because they made them laugh. There were no engagement metrics, no growth strategies, and no quarterly reports explaining why a silly idea needed to exist. Someone built it because they thought it would be fun.

The community has even suggested a Global Mode, where stealing a button would actually remove it from the live website for the next visitor. Imagine trying to buy concert tickets only to discover someone halfway around the world stole the Continue button five minutes earlier. It’s a terrible idea, which is probably why I absolutely love it.

Browser extensions usually make me nervous, but Button Stealer is refreshingly straightforward. It runs locally, doesn’t harvest your browsing history, and quietly minds its own business.

Looking at my little gallery of stolen buttons, something finally clicked. Almost none of them exist to help me anymore. They exist to persuade me, interrupt me, upsell me, or collect something from me before I can do what I actually came to do. Somewhere along the way, the internet stopped asking us to submit and started asking us to surrender.

Maybe that’s why I enjoy Button Stealer so much. It’s silly, it’s pointless, and it won’t change the internet, but every stolen button feels like reclaiming one tiny piece of it.

Maybe that’s what I’ve really been collecting all along.

Not buttons.

Little reminders of the internet we used to have.

Now I’m curious. What’s the strangest app you’ve ever installed? Would you start your own button collection, or should I hand back my internet license? Let me know in the comments.

Tony M.

If this article made you think, brought back a memory, or made you see something differently, I’d love to hear from you. Send me an email at sandboxworld@gmail.com. I read every message personally and, with your permission, may feature your thoughts in a future article because the best stories are the ones we share.