I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again and again and again; advertising ruins everything.

What other industry is so arrogant that it feels it has the right to force/trick people into looking at stuff we really didn’t want to look at in the first place? The internet is only the latest place that advertisers are doing this. Remember when you used to get junk mail in plain brown envelopes so you opened it thinking it was something important only to find it was an ad? I’ve got books on copywriting that talk about this like it’s the greatest thing ever thought of. Trick someone into looking at your ad when they didn’t want to and you’ve won! And that’s where pop-ups came from.

The same books actually see the internet (all of it) as a single advertising billboard. You’re told that if you’re not selling something you have no right to post your own content online. Granted, these books are quite old and came out when blogging was just becoming all the rage, but that attitude persists. Advertisers see the internet as theirs.

And it’s that combative attitude and it’s mixture of ignorance and arrogance that still prevails now and results in all the whining about TV recorders and ad blockers.

Anyway, I should probably rant about this on my own page instead of taking over yours.

Such fun! :)