Google, trying to convert me to Christianity isn't kosher
I don’t mind ads on the web. In fact, I even appreciate them since I know they fund so much of the awesome free stuff on the web. So yeah, they can be annoying (Always Pads Are Absorbent! 434 times! I can recite the ad by heart. And so can my kids.) and advertise things that are totally irrelevant to me (why I should vote Republican. As a non-American. Yes, really.), but as long as it’s not offensive, I’m willing to play the game. I know that an ad-free experience is dreamy, yet I have resisted until now out of respect for our mutual relationship: I allow you to plaster ads all over my browser, and in return the web gives me cool free stuff.
But now I must say goodbye, and install the Chrome Adblock extension since you have stopped respecting boundaries. Slowly but surely, I’m starting to see more and more sneaky banner ads about how fabulous Christianity is, and why I should convert. Sneaky, because they never come right out and say it. They dance around the subject with messages about love and light and more love. Those ads make me grit my teeth, but I could deploy my ad blindness and ignore them.
Today, the straw broke the proverbial camel’s back, poor thing: a YouTube video ad with a guy talking in Hebrew for over ten minutes about how he saw the light. And love. And, oh by the way, love and light and Jesus is our savior.
I have nothing against Christians and Christianity. You believe in Jesus as the messiah, I believe in the Messiah as the messiah. It’s all good. But it’s not all good when you start butting in to my religious life. Did you ever see a Jew try to convert a non-Jew? We don’t do that. You have your beliefs, we have ours, you’re welcome to join if you want to stop eating bacon or using your phone on Saturdays, but if you don’t, gezundteheit (Yiddish for…I’m not sure how to translate it. But it kind of means “go ahead and be well”).
Unlike Facebook that allows you to click on a simple X on ads you don’t like to make them go away, Google doesn't offer me that. I understand that some people see that, but I don’t. I don’t know if it’s because I’m not in the US or am using Google Apps or some other reason, but it’s simply not there.
And yes, I went in to my Google Ad settings, which I could barely find within my dashboard, but there was no way for me to indicate that I don’t want to see certain types of ads, or ads from particular advertisers.
So Google, as an accomplice to these attempts to butt in to my religious life and the religious life of my kids who are also exposed to these ads, you have violated our relationship. If you don’t respect my boundaries, which are generally quite flexible and open to a huge amount of your crap, then I can’t respect you anymore and will no longer uphold my end of our bargain.
Hello AdBlock, the “most popular Chrome extension,” and welcome to all our computers. Sayonara Google Ads. 434 Always Pads ads are fine by me, but one ad trying to convert me to another religion is just not kosher.
