Roach Motels
A roach motel is a deceptive pattern to which it is easy to sign up for a service or subscription, but extremely difficult to cancel. This pattern usually involves hiding or obscuring the cancellation option, requiring users to call customer services to cancel, and in turn, makes the process of cancelling overly complex and time-consuming. This pattern can cause users to give up trying to cancel, and continue paying for the service for a longer period that they do not necessarily want to pay for any longer.
These roach motels are not the kind you book that are not clean and are not great to stay in or the ones that trap those nasty little bugs that may crawl around a house or business but these are nonetheless just as gross. The roach motels that are laid out all over to trap users into and like the Eagles said:
You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.
Here is a couple examples.
Fun huh?
The pattern with roach motels focuses in on wearing a user out. Making you so tired, exhausted, irritated, mad, angry so that you give up and just say to hell with it, that you are not going to unsubscribe because it is a pain in the ass. Period.
That pattern, to trap you, to make you think twice. To make you stop and say, “Is it worth the hassle&quest” That stopping cue is what these companies don't want you to access or find.
Roach motels rely on a blend of cognitive fatigue and emotional pressure. The more friction a user encounters, the more their mental resources drain. At a certain point, anxiety rises (“What if I mess something up?”), frustration spikes, and shame creeps in (“Why is this so hard? Is it just me?”). This emotional cocktail is exactly what the pattern relies on to keep you trapped.
Deceptive patterns like “roach motels” are not just annoyances — they’re part of a larger ecosystem of manipulative design that exploits cognitive fatigue, shame, and decision friction. These patterns weaponize user psychology in subtle ways, and the result is often emotional exhaustion, frustration, and a breakdown of trust in digital products.
Why These Patterns Work
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Cognitive Fatigue: People give up when their executive function is depleted.
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Decision Friction: Intentionally adding micro-obstacles increases abandonment.
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Loss Aversion: “You’ll lose access to ___” prompts trigger anxiety.
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Shame Activation: Feeling “irresponsible” or “incompetent” makes users hesitate to continue cancellation.
Forced Continuity
Forced continuity is the operational engine behind a roach motel. Once the user is trapped, continuity keeps them there — through auto-renewals, hidden opt-outs, or the removal of natural stopping points.
This goes hand in hand with the roach motel, as well as other deceptive patterns. Infinite scroll again, for example. That forced continuity when the stopping cue (in this case the “load more” prompt or button) and the developer/designer has you in the palm of their hand.
You are forced to continue the pattern you did not want to go down and find yourself exhausted, frustrated, angry, mad by the time you get to where you need to go but you have either given up and left or you have just said, “To hell with it” and you are done. Or you're so exhausted you don't remember what you were doing and you just give in and stay subscribed, or you keep scrolling, or you keep clicking, or you keep doing whatever it is you are doing.
Forced continuity is your captor. The roach motel is where you are being kept hostage.
The Stopping Cue
The stopping cue is that point in the interaction where you are stopped. Whether it is an infinite scroll that the developer or designer has taken away (I will get to that in another post soon) or a roach motel that wears you out so you stop. That's the cue we need to get rid of regarding these patterns.
Anti-pattern or deceptive pattern, that cue, needs to go if it is used for nefarious reasons and they usually are used just for that. From an interview with Aza Raskin, the inventor of infinite scroll;
“I regret that I didn’t think more about how this thing would be used,” he told The Times. He compares the feature to a study in 2005 that gave users bowls of soups that constantly refilled via a tube underneath the bowl. Participants ate 70 per cent more soup than those with normal bowls and did not even notice.
“I know as a designer that by taking away the stopping cue, I can make you do what I want you to do,” Mr Raskin, a former head of user design at the browser Mozilla, said.
Mr. Raskin went on to say; “I contributed to this and I have been complicit,” he said. “This story that we had all been telling ourselves that we were making the world better with technology, that story has been undone, I can’t tell myself that story any more.” He added: “This is a profound moment in our species. We are losing control of the tools we made.”
Stopping cues are the natural pauses in an experience — the end of a page, the bottom of a list, the confirmation of a completed action. When designers remove these cues, the user’s brain loses its moment to reset. Infinite scroll, autoplay, and friction-filled cancellation flows all target this vulnerability.
Examples of Stopping Cues
Pagination
Example: A “Next page” button at the end of search results.
What it does: Forces a conscious choice: “Do I want to keep going?”
Removed version: Infinite scroll keeps feeding content endlessly, removing the reflection point.
End of an Article or Section
Example: Reaching the end of a blog post.
Stopping cue: A natural break — the reading task is complete.
Removed version: Auto-loading the next article, keeping users from feeling “finished.”
A Confirm or Complete Button
Example: “Submit,” “Finish,” “Place order,” “Cancel subscription.”
Stopping cue: Allows users to finalize a mental task and move on.
Removed version: Breaking the action into multiple hidden steps without confirming completion.
Load More Button
Example: Social media pages showing a limited number of posts with a “Load more” option.
Stopping cue: Users take stock before loading more content.
Removed version: Infinite scroll (removes the deliberate choice to continue).
Checkout Review Screen
Example: A summary of your cart before payment.
Stopping cue: Encourages review, consideration, and intention.
Removed version: One-click purchasing that bypasses reflection and increases impulse behavior.
End-of-Video Playback
Example: A video ends and pauses.
Stopping cue: The user chooses whether to watch more.
Removed version: Auto-play automatically begins the next video, bypassing the decision point.
Session Timeout Prompts
Example: “Are you still watching?” / “Still browsing?”
Stopping cue: Signals a check-in moment and chance to disengage.
Removed version: Sites that never pause playback or activity, encouraging passive overuse.
Natural End of a Workflow
Example: Completing a form returns the user to a dashboard.
Stopping cue: Signals the task is complete.
Removed version: Forms that loop users into upsells, surveys, or optional extras that look mandatory.
Breaks Between Notifications
Example: A notification digest that comes once a day.
Stopping cue: Encourages controlled re-engagement.
Removed version: Real-time, continuous notifications that keep pulling users back.
Physical World Stopping Cues
These can help illustrate your point with a relatable analogy:
The last page of a book
The credits rolling at the end of a movie
The bottom of a bowl (Aza Raskin’s soup analogy)
When tech removes these cues, it removes the user’s natural ability to stop.
How to Avoid the Pitfalls
So how does a user avoid all this garbage? Because once you’re in a roach motel or caught in a forced continuity loop, it feels like the product has all the power and you have none. The good news is: you do have options. Designers may remove stopping cues, but you can reintroduce your own.
Recognize the pattern early
If a service made it extremely easy to sign up and suddenly very hard to leave, that’s not an accident. The moment you see emotional language (“You’re going to miss out!”), multi-step cancellation hoops, or links that keep getting smaller and smaller, you’re in a deceptive pattern. Awareness kills half of the manipulation right there.
Bypass the interface entirely
Most roach motels rely on you trying to find the exit inside their maze. Don’t. A quick search for “service name cancel subscription” often leads straight to the hidden cancellation page. Or cancel through your bank, your credit card, or your phone’s app store. These systems don’t care about the company’s friction, and they let you escape without the drama.
Use your own stopping cues
If the interface won’t give you a moment to pause, create one. Slow down. Step back. Remind yourself why you came to the page in the first place. Infinite scroll, autoplay, and buried cancellation flows all depend on you reacting instead of deciding. When you reintroduce intention, the pattern loses its leverage.
Set reminders before free trials end
Forced continuity preys on forgetfulness. A calendar reminder set at the moment you sign up replaces the stopping cue the product intentionally removed. Don’t give them the luxury of you forgetting.
Use virtual or single-use cards
Some banks and privacy tools allow temporary or merchant-locked card numbers. If the company makes it difficult—or impossible—to cancel, you can simply cut off the payment source. They can’t force continuity if they can’t charge you.
Check your rights
In many regions, companies are legally required to provide a simple cancellation mechanism. Sometimes it’s buried in the footer under “Legal” or “Your Rights.” It may not be prominent, but it exists—because it has to.
Contact support as a last resort
Support agents often have access to a straightforward cancellation tool the UI deliberately hides. A quick chat or email can end what the design tries to drag out.
At the end of the day, avoiding these traps is about reclaiming control—your time, your attention, and your autonomy. If the design won’t respect those things, you have to put the stopping cues back in yourself.
These traps work because they hijack executive function, shame, and emotional energy. The best way to escape them is to step outside the interface — cognitively or literally — and reclaim your control. When you reintroduce your own stopping cues, the manipulation loses its leverage.
For users with anxiety, ADHD, or executive function challenges, these patterns aren’t just annoying — they’re debilitating. What might be a minor irritation for a designer becomes a source of spiraling frustration or shame for someone already struggling with emotional regulation.
When systems are designed to trap us, the emotional cost is real. Anxiety spikes as we try to fight the interface, and shame sets in when we feel like the failure is ours rather than the design’s. Recognizing these patterns is the first step in resisting them — and the first step toward designing something better.
