What if both directions go downwards? That’s even more surprising to the first time user. That moment of confusion.

A hardware limit would be more funny even

A loud audible ratchet mechanism. Just to add to the annoyance.

A ratchet that physically prevents reversing, but still have the firmware support reverse scrolling. I love the idea of a digital product that if broken in just the right way behaves as expected given intuition from the physical world.

The best thing about such a rachet would be that it could still allow a tiny amount of scrolling. Just enough for the user to know that it could scroll up... if the lock didn't kick in

Oh God that's delicious. I just love the idea of physical limitations to software options. So often it's the other way around. I can physically see the path or even map a solution but the software doesn't help.

This is the opposite of that.

I love that entirely.

There’s a lot to do with the general idea. I’ve enjoyed thinking about a garage door opener that uses 4G to open your garage door from anywhere in the world. Technically correct but worse than before!

Or if it had a mood sensor, and scrolled >>rapidly<< downwards if distress detected, with the logic that the user would never be satisfied with the amount of dopamine generated from any amount of doomscrolling performed.