By (O)CT(O)PUS
Has anyone noticed an invasion of intrusive advertising taking over Cyberspace? Some pop-up ads have held my browser captive and literally took over my computer.
At the Huffington Post, an Ebay advertisement blackened my computer screen and held my browser captive for eight seconds. No big deal, you say? Not on my computer, not in my home -- if you value your life!
If you click on videotaped reports at the CNN website, you will be forced to watch a 30 second commercial. Canceling the commercial message returns you to the headline menu: If you are unwilling to endure the message, no news report.
At the weblog of our friend and colleague, Rational Nation, a message from the Advertising Council disabled the comment function. Even after several attempts, I was forced to give up.
In many instances, advertisers have made Internet sites inaccessible and useless.
For my part, I intend to boycott those advertisers that encroach upon freedoms I formerly took for granted. I will boycott Ebay, boycott CNN, boycott the Advertising Council, and boycott any web site that capriciously mistreats its readers.
Send the f*ckers a message. May the BACKLASH begin!
LET'S GO VIRAL!
Send the f*ckers a message. May the BACKLASH begin!
LET'S GO VIRAL!
Marketing of Marketing, saith the prophet -- all is Marketing.
ReplyDeleteAdvertising permeates all space, like a Higgs field. Not much you can do about news reports that make you watch an ad other than to use a different one. CNN is hardly worth the time anyway, but there's Ad Block for your browser that does a good job with popups.
Not much you can do about all those phone calls or the ads that keep crawling across the TV screen. Use a DVR and you won't have to watch commercials any more and I screen my calls with caller ID. You do what you can do and it's not enough because these days they just won't let mass shootings go unnoticed. I mean I don't condone such things anyway. I understand them, but I don't condone them.
Advertising really does permeate all reality. The news, the opinions -- it's all there to sell ideas and products and candidates and parties and ways of life. Our hopes and fears have been instilled in us as a form of advertising, or propaganda if you prefer. Our language has been rigged to sell and to make it harder to express a coherent opinion or critique those of others. Fine distinctions aren't possible any more since anything means anything, just as Orwell warned us. Someone told me last week that it was important to annunciate properly. " Ecce ancilla Domini?" I replied.
Our politics, our religions, our tastes and preferences are all part of an overarching markiting scheme: our hobbies, our passtimes don't grow out of us, they are installed. Our ideas of beauty, our food choices: it's all the push and pull of competing market forces and the only choice we ever have in life is the side we choose -- and even then.
Long ago, I once wrote a Sci-fi story about a world where even people were used -- paid to wear clothes with flashing messages, their nervous systems wired to force gestures that represented products and ideas. Our phone calls required us to listen to messages - our e-mails: everything was tagged with marketing ploys like the graffiti on subway cars in the 1980's. I never did anything with it because it all seemed so obvious as a view of the future. I think it still is.
Anyway, since pop culture is advertixing, I don't think you'll ever get enough resistance to matter in the least.
I have noticed an uptick in annoying pop ups. And yes CNN is one of the more annoying. My solution? I have flip chart on my smart phone browser which give me a wide array of nres sites as well as other items of interest. I select articles I like, e-mail them to my hosting e-mail and no problems with pop ups.
ReplyDelete