I’ve been deleting many blogs from my blog roll over the past week. It is becoming very common for “bloggers” to simply link to another person’s blog entry or to simply cut and paste the article with maybe some effort to identify the originating source. The copied blog entry is then framed in ads, click through requirements and other money grabbing experiences, all so that the “blogger” can make ad revenue with little effort.
This irks me.
What happened to the time not so long ago when people generated original content and shared it through a blog or other sort of medium? Do people no longer have the will to think? Do they rather to be fed the same drivel repeatedly until it becomes the truth?
I’ve mentioned many times before that I am not a fan of advertisements. I don’t mind a static ad in a magazine or a newspaper. I’ll even tolerate ads in the margin of a web page, but when the entire page is blocked by an ad or I’m forced to answer a survey or I have to search for a “close” button to get an auto playing video to stop blaring at me, I lose* all interest in consuming whatever I was intending to consume by falling for the click bait.
I think one of the reasons that we have such stupidity front and center in media these days is because people keep regurgitating the stupidity in an effort to grab more ad dollars. Every time I read a headline that says, “you won’t believe it when…” or “your jaw will hit the floor when you see this…” or “what happens next will astound you…” I want to slap the three closest people to me across the face and/or throw a lamp across the room and scream “please stop the insanity!”
The fact that my Facebook stream has become a constant source of this idiocy, despite my best efforts to hide, delete, muffle, silence or stomp out this sort of thing adds fuel to the fire that makes me want to throw a lamp. One of my recent revelations about my childhood is that there were a fair number of idiots that were part of my past. The regurgitation of the idiotic has amplified this. I miss my ignorance.
There is no solution to all of this because it’s just going to continue and no one has the gumption to stand up to this sort of content presentation on the Internet.
Get rich quick by doing nothing. Welcome to the 21st Century.
*please note the way I spelled that word.
Everyone I know seems to hate click-bait links so much, and yet there seems to be an ever increasing amount of them. I REFUSE to follow any link that even remotely feels like click-bait.
And Facebook: I can’t seem to rid myself of it thanks to what I do, but I having been trying to not sign on except once a week, and even then I’m not doing any back-scrolling…
I have Adblock Plus installed, so I rarely see anything that isn’t page content. And I certainly hope that my blog isn’t serving up crap because I would be very annoyed.