Rant #6: Ads

Originally posted: June 16, 2009 (old site)

ANNOYANCE LEVEL: 4 (before AdBlock Plus for Firefox) - 2 (afterward)

You know what's starting to piss me off? Advertisements! In like 1990 and stuff, there were TV ads, radio ads, and billboards, and there weren't even that many of them. It's 2009 now, and the level of advertising that hits us every single fucking day is RIDICULOUS.

I got on MySpace the other day and this huge fucking character from the new game Prototype jumped down in front of my bulletin space, and I went to click around him and accidentally hit him and went to the ad. Seriously, as a gamer, do I really need to be told about this game? You'd think I already know about it, which I do. It looks good... if I had money, I'd get it, sure. Don't force me to look at the fucking ad!

DVDs are getting gay about this too, the ads that start at the beginning of a movie that you CAN'T SKIP, and it's all about other movies. Sure, trailers are nice, but at least give us the fucking option to skip them.

Also, YouTube is getting bad about this too. Popup banners at the bottom of videos getting in the damn way, and now they're making you watch an ad AFTER the video on occasion. This is fucking bullshit! If YouTube is that hard up for money that they feel they must bombard us with ads, at least give us a YouTube Premium option to give us ad-free YouTubing! Shit I'd pay it, $40 for a year or something is totally reasonable for ad-free video-watching, as long as it's no ads anywhere on YouTube. It's bullshit!

Right now they're spamming the holy hell out of that new Flip camcorder on nearly every video I watch. Yes, I'm going to get one, (no, actually, I'm not, but was planning to at the time I originally wrote this) now stop showing me the fucking ad. Also, there should be a code or something you can put in, once you buy something, you won't see anymore ads for it or anything similar to it. I remember when browsers first started doing pop-up blocking, well next they need to work on ad-blocking. Get to it, Mozilla! (Guess what, AdBlock Plus for Mozilla Firefox -- I never see YouTube ads EVER... or any others for that matter)

TV commercials are also ridiculous. I remember TV shows used to run like 50 minutes with 10 minutes of ads. Now it's like a 40/20 split. And don't even get started on movies on TV! A movie will run on TV for 2 1/2 hours when it's 90 minutes in length... That's over an hour of advertising!! Fuck that. Once a movie came on TV that I owned, I watched about 10 minutes until it went to a commercial and said "Fuck that..." and put the DVD in, and when the movie ended, the TV-version was only half-over. It was retarded, and this was like 3 years ago. It's gotten way worse since then, but I don't care cause I don't watch TV anyway, ever.

But the internet ads have GOT to stop intruding. I understand they generate money for the website that uses them, but at least give us an ad-free premium option if you're going to use them! Especially bad these days is YouTube. Their ads are getting ricockulous! They're putting them in little popup banners at the bottom of videos, popup banners at the end of videos (some of the Google ads are so large that you can't even click the related videos that show up afterward), even video ads at the end of videos! Mark my words here and now, sooner or later we'll be watching ads at the START of videos (Guess what? Without AdBlock, they DO show ads prior to videos now. I'm a freakin' prophet... that, or they're stealing my ideas. Shit.). Anyway, this rant is mostly directed at YouTube, but to them and anyone else that makes us watch huge ads or puts them in obnoxious locations that makes them hard to avoid:

FUCK YOU!

2014 Update: This update comes as an older, wiser version of myself. Ads, while they are annoying, they are the lifeblood of some websites/YouTubers. Without them, they cost the site owner money to run (well, not YouTube, but production costs, if any, and such). As far as THIS website goes, I don't care if it generates profit or not. I don't know if the site runs ads, if it does, it's not on purpose (yet. I may change that one day), but as far as YouTube goes, if you use AdBlock on YouTube, you should read this: http://blog.chkilroy.com/post/36918679935. It changed the way I view AdBlock on that particular site, especially since I have and try to make some money from it now and then.

Make a free website with Yola