This Title Brought To You By Starsky & Hutch (Buy on DVD TODAY!)
There were glory days once, before the internet bubble burst, where webmasters could put a single unobtrusive ad on their page and still make enough money to justify their existence. It was a simpler time; a time when anything seemed possible; when every day brought a new start-up company selling some useless, intangible idea; when, most pertinently, advertisers were much, much stupider.
How much things have changed. Nowadays, the only websites seeing profit from the internet feature scandalously bare-breasted college girls shaking their doctorates at nearby webcams. For the rest of us, the answer to generating ad revenue has sadly become sheer, shameless volume.
First it was stationary ads: positioned to the right of articles, on top of articles, underneath articles, in the middle of articles. I could deal with this. I never clicked on them; but then, the sort of person who clicks on an ad with a picture of Tom Cruise and the words “TAKE OUR GENIUS IQ TEST! THIS IS A PICTURE OF [ ] TOM CRUISE [ ] RON BRUISE” probably isn’t eating too many bowls of Special K without swallowing the spoon anyway. Ultimately, if the last avenue available to you in proving your intellectual dexterity is answering trivia where the reward is you get to buy things, chances are–get this–you’re an idiot.
Luckily, it’s exactly these sorts of people who keep the internet running. We might scoff at the person who actually tries the internet ad shooting game in the hopes of winning big cash prizes. But the truth is, if no one was clicking on them, the internet’d be out of business. The next time someone forwards you a letter instructing you to forward it along to five friends for extra-lucky soul-karma, be sure to thank them for picking up enough consumer slack that your favorite sites don’t get shut down.
After the stationary ads came the flashing strobe light ads, mainly because it’s scientifically proven that people only buy things when a company makes them very angry. After the strobe light ads came the pop-up ads, which were incredibly successful in giving thousands of people lightning-quick window-shutting reflexes. Then the full page ads you had to watch before getting redirected to the link you’d actually clicked on.
Just when I thought I’d gotten used to the worst of it, along comes a foul piece of villainy straight from the red-hot anus of Satan. I just experience my first roll-over ad over at ign.com. I was trying to read an interview with Jonathan Frakes, hoping for details of hair-pulling on-set catfights between Geordi LaForge and Data or Dianna Troi popping unexpectedly out of her one-piece costume (sadly, Frakes keeps these details close to his chest).
I say “trying to read” because every time my cursor came within a half-foot of the giant Starsky & Hutch ad in the middle of the screen, three full-media pop-up windows immediately sprang to life with offers of DVDs, special offers and a fully functioning flash Starsky & Hutch pinball game taking up the entire screen; and all of this at once, every time you accidentally wave your mouse near the ad. It was a lot like trying to read something while a Warner Brothers executive shrieks the words “Ben Stiller!” over and over while peeing directly in your face.
Now, I can live with commercials, because they help pay for the products I like to see and read. But when the commercials actually make reading the product impossible, I can’t help but get the vague suspicion that the internet’s passed from the necessary evil of site-sustaining ad revenue to the dark side of preposterous supervillainy.
The worst part of this is: I’ve already seen Starsky & fucking Hutch. I gave at the office, you assholes. I paid $13 and saw it, and I didn’t much like it. I don’t want your DVD, and even if I did, I’m not a Luddite. I enter video stores and talk to people about movies. I hear ads on the radio and see them in magazines and have to look at building-sized posters of Vin Deisel outside my window. I wouldn’t be able to escape knowing about your blockbusters if I tried, because you already do everything short of crawling up my ass and putting up small billboards to entice my blood cells to see it. I’m covered, okay?
I didn’t see Hulk when it came out last year, but it wasn’t because I wasn’t aware of it. As it is I can tell you that it was directed by Ang Lee and stars Eric Bana as a scientist having family problems with his military father Nick Nolte, all while romancing the deliciously perfect-breasted Jennifer Connelly. You fuckheads saturation bombed me to the point where I could give alien visitors a reliable explanation of the plot, stars, director and production costs, and I didn’t even see the movie. Your problem isn’t that you’re not reaching me. Your problem is that you’ve become so aggravating I’m going out of my way to not buy your products.
“There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” I would love to prove that wrong. Imagine if the next time you got a piece of penis enlargement spam mail, everyone in North America simultaneously agreed to purchase every company’s penis enlarger but that one’s. How long do you honestly think spam would continue if that trend took place? I’d say about five seconds.
Take back the night, netizens. Only buy Acme brand penis enlargment pills… for FREEDOM!