Remember Me

What’s going on, psychologically speaking, when we check a “remember me” checkbox?

“Remember me” is first-person command. It implies a relationship between the person wishing to be remembered, and the entity doing the remembering.

It also implies the possibility of failure. We all want to be remembered, but most of us will be forgotten (if not by the Wayback Machine, then by popular living human consciousness). Most of our actions will be forgotten too. Most people we want to remember us, will actually forget us. Mostly.

So it’s only mildly annoying when we revisit a site that should remember us, but doesn’t. After all, the site never promised that it was going to remember us. That memory was merely requested. And so, having failed already to leave an impression, we check the same box for the second time, or the third, or the fiftieth. As if a repetition of the request will somehow make it more viable.

Maybe it’s not so unrealistic. Which is why we tolerate it.