A number of the sites I visit on a regular basis have messages about how I'm stealing content if I leave AdBlock on or what-not, and I've been thinking about that now that I have to use Chrome for some things (seriously, the suggestions you guys have been giving about how to get my yahoo mail to work are great... but none of them are working. I'm glad they're working for you, though!). Chrome doesn't have an AdBlock extension that works automatically, yet -- as opposed to one you have to click every time you reload a page -- and so...

Well, it's been on my mind.

It occurred to me that I wouldn't be so quick to destroy those ads if so many of them didn't run up my CPU usage with fast, irritating animations. I mean, a lot of ads are quite pretty. Even though I don't have any interest in 99.99% of them... well, I'm me. My parents have told me that, once upon a time, I paid no attention to the television shows which were on and focused *laser*-like on the ads. This only got to be more of a factor of my existence as I got older -- until it reached a kind of critical mass when I and a handful of my peers participated in something like an advertising deconstruction unit as part of my school's 'gifted and talented' program.

(Every. Single. Student. Needs to participate in programs like that. I can't stress enough how much of a difference in my capacity to approach media critically came from that program -- and it was all the better that I got to have it when I was in third grade. For a fat, geeky, Black girl? That shit is priceless in this society.)

Anyway... yeah. I'd like to be able to help support these sites. I really would. I love watching innovations in advertisement, because they're often a bellwether of overall societal change. (Hey, have you noticed that interracial couples are starting to pop into ads more often? Isn't it freaky how *long* that took? Hell, I've often wondered about my personal addiction to interracial slash, and how much it has to do with the fact that I was just *programmed* to think 'black guy + white guy = fun times!' by commercials.)

But supporting these sites... *shakes head* It's not going to happen until more of them make a pact to *only* use static ads -- insanejournal is, so far, good about this, and I have, in fact, clicked on a few of those ads -- and I really don't think that's going to happen anytime soon. After all, moving pictures catch the eye, and that's exactly what these ads *need* to do in a medium where there's always something more interesting a click away.

I don't know, though. It's possible that there could be a successful backlash against these bouncing, flashing, epilepsy-inducing monstrosities. It's possible that advertisers will come to realize that, in some ways, simple is better --

Or it's possible that I'm the only one clinging to the past.

Either way -- AdBlock stays right the hell on.

*

Also, thanks to everyone for the suggestions about blog sites! Jack's food blog is currently in production. It looks gorgeous, and I'll be pimping it around *just* as soon as ze lets me. (We decided to go with wordpress.)