An Experiment With Spam

I have already given up in trying to get rid of spyware and all that crap. This morning, I decided to do a little test to see what would happen if I just ignored the ads entirely and let them stay open.

Well, after being greeted with a glitch in Neopets preventing me from logging in, I counted a total of 20 windows outside of the one browser I was on to type this and do my usual morning run.

That's right. Twenty windows were open in the background, most of which came from MouseInfo.com. That's excusable since the owner is trying to cut costs down, but I did find it ridiculous that a new pop-up ad came up every time I clicked on a new page. The only thing that could top those are the ads that just appear when you are doing nothing but reading an e-mail or a message board post. You don't even hear the clicking sound the computer makes when the page refreshes or any kind of fair warning! It just appears!

A note to any advertisers that are spying on me right now, because I know one of you installed a key recognizer for all those night I Google in something. First off, don't bother reading my passwords. I have nothing of value to you unless you want to get approximately half-a-million in fake money. Secondly, when you advertise like this (using pop-ups), you make your potential buyer angry. When they are angry at your product, they won't buy it. They don't care if it works or not. If you annoy them into trying to buy it, they won't. People like to buy things when they are happy, not when they are forced to. I know my computer has spyware and I should do this and that, but honestly, I wouldn't have the damn spyware if you, Mr. Advertiser, didn't secretly put it on my machine with your ads saying how your software is the best or how I should use some stupid patch to lose ten pounds without changing my diet! You are stupider than the people that actually click on the "You are the 1,000,000th visitor to this site! Claim your prize!" ad if you think that this tactic of advertising works! It only aggravates your target audience to no end. That's why instead of buying your software, they go for the ones that are passed by word-of-mouth. Oh, and get this! The software they are downloading and using are the ones designed to stop your advertising! Now, I would assume that you would hire your own programmer to get around these programs, and some do. But that's an overhead, a cost, something to eat away at your little profits. Don't do it if you love making money so much.

If I had my way, pop-up ads would be illegal. Advertising on the web should be strictly banner based just like on my blog. No pop-up advertising. The only pop-up windows I want to see are when I want to watch a Flash animation on Newgrounds, play a game on Neopets, or get a rare gift event on Gaia. Other than that, to hell with all pop-up ads!!