A Post Thanksgiving Gripe

As most of you know, there are no ads on Docudharma and The Stars Hollow Gazette. The are several reasons for that but the prime reason is that I hate ads. Today I’ve been running later than usual because this morning I was busy helping my family deliver the leftovers from yesterday feast to the local shelter run by a very lovely lady and her troop of volunteers. But back to my point.

I pay for subscriptions to several on line news papers. I expect to be able to read those publications without advertisements that take up half the page or block the view of an article I’m trying to read. I especially hate the ones that you can’t make go away.

When I got back from my errands, I sat down prepared to catch up on events and write. Just about every site, whether or not I have a subscription or AdBlock Plus, had ads at top, bottom and sides, taking up half the page and, in the case of one, not only blocking most of the script but some of the links to their own articles. How damned dumb is that? Don’t their owners on-line editors look at those sites? Apparently not.

My other problem with those ads is that many of them are offensive and some are quite graphic going beyond the point of not just bad taste to lewd. And then there are the right wing ads on left wing sites. I know that many of these sites hand their sites over to companies that place the ads without the editors’ ability too reject them. Some of them are really stupid and point out the ignorance of some of these extreme right wingers. A fine example of that is the ad asking if Hillary Clinton should be impeached. Even more stunning, the majority was all for it. Yo, bright lights, she ain’t the president. It really makes one worry about education in this country.

Even worse are the sites that have videos that automatically start and often slow down loading that you can’t turn off. The biggest offenders here are the news sites.

That said, those are the reasons I hate ads. I promise that our sites will remain ad free so long as I own them.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and a good day if you’re shopping. Don’t get me started on Black Friday and retail.

Thanks for the ear and thank you very much for reading.

TMC