![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Sep. 7th, 2001 03:53 pmThere are some serious problems in the world. This rant isn't about them.
I'm starting to get seriously annoyed at the current state of Internet advertising. It's not just the technique of pop-ups, now invading "reputable" web sites such as Amazon and even the Motley Fool fergadsakes. It's not just the immature scare tactics of "Account Overcharge, Click Here!" or "Your Internet connection is not optimized, Click Here!" It's not just the technique of moving the pop-up to the side of the screen so you have to move it to get rid of it (or just do Alt-F4).
Applets of distinction have also launched their own, frightening nagware. I don't mind a shareware program nagging me to register, it's shareware, I didn't pay for it, and that's the price. I do mind a formerly reputable and useful utility like RealAudio taking over automated tasks, such as inserting the RealDownloader without my permission, and then lying to me twice -- once when I installed RealPlayer and unclicked the Downloader, and once when I went through thirty-seven screens to find the uninstaller which it said it uninstalled the Downloader, but lied to me again. I had not only to remove the startup from the registry and systray, I had to remove it _again_ from the Startup menu for "All Users". (Don't even get me started on the Microsoft-inspired business standard of "that fringe applet is essential to the normal operation of our core product!")
Advertising is in trouble on the Internet. No one seems to click banners, no matter how entertaining. Instead of innovating, advertising has reduced itself to the level of used car ads celebrating President's Day price cuts: in-your-face annoyance and repetition. This is the least common denominator of advertising in the traditional sense, tactics formerly used only by the rank amateur, for example, home-grown porn sites on the web, or on TV by the furniture store owner with a low budget and a home video cam.
Tech stays one step ahead -- I can block most popups by routing the most common domains to localhost in my host file, or by downloading dozens of popup-preventing applets devised by enterprising hackers.
Chasing the problem exposes it: advertising has crossed the line into the need for active avoidance. In the normal course of life and recreation, a billboard is passed, a newspaper page is turned, radio/TV commercials say their peace and return to the program. Internet advertising has now become the advertising medium requiring the most active effort to avoid, moving things around, clicking windows other than the active one (occasionally having to chase their demon spawn), and sometimes outright investigation and problem solving, just to return to the original business. This dubiously primary position of "most active avoidance required" was once held simultaneously in the magazine industry by perfume ads and those cardboard insert ads for commemorative celebrity plates.
What bothers me apart from the essential silliness and global uselessness of Internet advertising is the ready intrusion, the easy impoliteness. The treading on the sanctity of an individual's ability to recreate without imposition. This may not be a problem as easily recognized as world hunger, but the casual impingement on individualism is being seen in other areas in life as well, from politics to human rights.
Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalties as 'empty,' 'meaningless,' or 'dishonest,' and scorn to use them. No matter how pure their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best.
--Robert Heinlein (as Lazarus Long)
I'm starting to get seriously annoyed at the current state of Internet advertising. It's not just the technique of pop-ups, now invading "reputable" web sites such as Amazon and even the Motley Fool fergadsakes. It's not just the immature scare tactics of "Account Overcharge, Click Here!" or "Your Internet connection is not optimized, Click Here!" It's not just the technique of moving the pop-up to the side of the screen so you have to move it to get rid of it (or just do Alt-F4).
Applets of distinction have also launched their own, frightening nagware. I don't mind a shareware program nagging me to register, it's shareware, I didn't pay for it, and that's the price. I do mind a formerly reputable and useful utility like RealAudio taking over automated tasks, such as inserting the RealDownloader without my permission, and then lying to me twice -- once when I installed RealPlayer and unclicked the Downloader, and once when I went through thirty-seven screens to find the uninstaller which it said it uninstalled the Downloader, but lied to me again. I had not only to remove the startup from the registry and systray, I had to remove it _again_ from the Startup menu for "All Users". (Don't even get me started on the Microsoft-inspired business standard of "that fringe applet is essential to the normal operation of our core product!")
Advertising is in trouble on the Internet. No one seems to click banners, no matter how entertaining. Instead of innovating, advertising has reduced itself to the level of used car ads celebrating President's Day price cuts: in-your-face annoyance and repetition. This is the least common denominator of advertising in the traditional sense, tactics formerly used only by the rank amateur, for example, home-grown porn sites on the web, or on TV by the furniture store owner with a low budget and a home video cam.
Tech stays one step ahead -- I can block most popups by routing the most common domains to localhost in my host file, or by downloading dozens of popup-preventing applets devised by enterprising hackers.
Chasing the problem exposes it: advertising has crossed the line into the need for active avoidance. In the normal course of life and recreation, a billboard is passed, a newspaper page is turned, radio/TV commercials say their peace and return to the program. Internet advertising has now become the advertising medium requiring the most active effort to avoid, moving things around, clicking windows other than the active one (occasionally having to chase their demon spawn), and sometimes outright investigation and problem solving, just to return to the original business. This dubiously primary position of "most active avoidance required" was once held simultaneously in the magazine industry by perfume ads and those cardboard insert ads for commemorative celebrity plates.
What bothers me apart from the essential silliness and global uselessness of Internet advertising is the ready intrusion, the easy impoliteness. The treading on the sanctity of an individual's ability to recreate without imposition. This may not be a problem as easily recognized as world hunger, but the casual impingement on individualism is being seen in other areas in life as well, from politics to human rights.
Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalties as 'empty,' 'meaningless,' or 'dishonest,' and scorn to use them. No matter how pure their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best.
--Robert Heinlein (as Lazarus Long)
