stevenpiziks (![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stevenpiziks) wrote2017-06-04 01:48 pm
stevenpiziks) wrote2017-06-04 01:48 pm
Entry tags:
Ad Blockers and Me
I use ad blockers on my web browser. Web sites hate this, of course. I'm not seeing their carefully-placed advertisements with bouncing boobs that want me to order pizza or waggling bikini butts that demand I buy Smucker's or tumbling titties that tell me to get Tonka Trucks. This makes me happy.
But some sites have started taking notice. At certain sites, I'll be there for a few seconds and suddenly the screen switches to a blank screen surrounding a passive-aggressive plea. "We notice you use an ad blocker. We wouldn't DREAM of telling you not to use one. Totally not. But maybe if you rethink it, we'll let you look at our site."
There are workarounds to this. I just reload the site and hit the STOP function before the reload finishes, which usually halts their detection software. Other times I just select the entire page quickly and paste it into a blank document so I can read what I want. One thing I don't do is shut off my ad blocker.
I don't object to the concept of advertising on-line--or anywhere else, for that matter. Someone has to pay for all this "free" content, and there are goods and services that I want to become aware of. I wouldn't know about the Wonder Woman movie, for example, without advertising. However, nearly all advertising is sexist, racist, intrusive, homophobic, heterocentrist, or manipulative. And so I do my best to cut it out of my life.
I become unhappy that I've been taught since I was a child that I'm supposed to go cuckoo for Coco Puffs, that Eggo waffles, McDonald's fries, Cookie Crisp cereal, and Lucky Charms are so delicious I need to steal them, that Ford trucks are tough as a ram (whatever that means), or that big-titted women will want to blow me if I drink Coor. Internet ads are even worse than usual. So I avoid them.
If advertisers want me to look at their ads, they should make their ads tasteful and watchable. Since they don't, I will continue to block them.
But some sites have started taking notice. At certain sites, I'll be there for a few seconds and suddenly the screen switches to a blank screen surrounding a passive-aggressive plea. "We notice you use an ad blocker. We wouldn't DREAM of telling you not to use one. Totally not. But maybe if you rethink it, we'll let you look at our site."
There are workarounds to this. I just reload the site and hit the STOP function before the reload finishes, which usually halts their detection software. Other times I just select the entire page quickly and paste it into a blank document so I can read what I want. One thing I don't do is shut off my ad blocker.
I don't object to the concept of advertising on-line--or anywhere else, for that matter. Someone has to pay for all this "free" content, and there are goods and services that I want to become aware of. I wouldn't know about the Wonder Woman movie, for example, without advertising. However, nearly all advertising is sexist, racist, intrusive, homophobic, heterocentrist, or manipulative. And so I do my best to cut it out of my life.
I become unhappy that I've been taught since I was a child that I'm supposed to go cuckoo for Coco Puffs, that Eggo waffles, McDonald's fries, Cookie Crisp cereal, and Lucky Charms are so delicious I need to steal them, that Ford trucks are tough as a ram (whatever that means), or that big-titted women will want to blow me if I drink Coor. Internet ads are even worse than usual. So I avoid them.
If advertisers want me to look at their ads, they should make their ads tasteful and watchable. Since they don't, I will continue to block them.
no subject