Acne

Enough is enough. I don’t overmuch care for my looks but as Scott Adam says: “physical appearance is for the benefit of others.” It’s been years now and them comedones (white- and blackheads), papules, pustules, nodules, cysts, and milia ain’t getting any better by themselves. I’ve buried my pimpled head long enough!

I’ve tried several treatments over the years but nothing has really made any difference. Now, I’m going to start following the regimen suggested at Daniel Kern’s Acne.org, where I’ve found hope and, to my surprise, perhaps the best online store I know of.

More than a store, it’s a community and a resource for people fighting acne. A real community and a real resource, not like those crappy, dishonest spamsites parasiting the web. It’s usable and helpful, aesthetically pleasing and modern yet not flashy. Huge effort has been put into countless details across the website — you can tell by being pleasantly surprised at every turn. It’s enormously didactic, deploying at once both excellent copy, ingenious photos, superb diagrams, detailed videos, in-depth tests, and subtle yet effective graphic design.

Overall, the most amazing thing is that in this cynical spam-full age, you (at least I) come to believe Daniel Kern honestly cares about fighting acne.

So, check out Acne.org if you have acne, if you’re interested in online commerce/communities, or if you’re interested in the future of retail medicine.

(Peter Morville narrates an interesting, similar experience finding a kooky cure to his back pain thru the web in Ambient Findability, p 163))