Learning to be Unobservant

I've been online for over a decade. I pay my access fee and do very little shopping via the Internet. I'm told shopping online is a wonderful way to outwit the maddening throng and save gas. Great.

I shop mostly in the Clearance Aisles and it is difficult to find what I want online. I also always try on the clothing before I purchase anything because they aren't truthful with the sizing. I can wear anything from a size 6 to a size 12 and have it fit. So I have to try clothing on.

Shopping online is not an adventure for me. I don't have a PayPal or an eBay account. I've used neither – ever.

Online advertisements are an irritating fact of life. Watching television offers one the same delight. The promotional time is when I fast forward my not-TiVo recorded shows or when I get up and hit the kitchen or bathroom, depending on where I was during the last commercial break.

That's not so much of an option with webpages. Instead, I've learned to just not really see the ads. They have flashing crap and five second animations that play over and over and are supposed to draw the eye. Instead, more and more people are learning to simply ignore the distraction.

The really annoying ones are those that scream at me as I load a page. Thankfully, I'm not out there reading Dear Abby while I'm supposed to be working. Those loud ads can really get you in trouble in a cube farm. I'm not sure what the creator was thinking. "Let's make this so horrible that no one will use any site that uses our ads during working hours." Perhaps it was devised by someone who actually owns a company.

Since we all installed Pop-up blockers, they went to Pop Under ads. There you are reading some text and all of a sudden, the page shifts to the IQ for Dummies or something. They tell you they think you are stupid for even looking at the ad and this is supposed to help somehow? TIP: If you leave one pop under ad open, it will just keep reloading and let you read subsequent pages without flashing the screen all over.

Lately, Webshots has been using highly intrusive ads. They usurp the entire screen and make you click something to get to the page that was the original URL. I don't click on anything I haven't selected for myself. TIP: Hit refresh or F5, or simply click on your Favorite or Bookmark again – the annoying thing only loads the first hit of the day.

Why are the ads getting so annoying that the pages themselves are almost unusable? What good is this supposed to do? I understand a recession and downturn of the economy. What I don't understand is making life so miserable for the consumer, they don't even want to use your product. The smaller ads pay by the number of hits, and who will visit a site that becomes so annoying?

People who make ads: Your advertisement is not the feature of the webpage and should not usurp the page in question. Businesses that run websites: Don't tick off your loyal users, because there are billions of pages out there and we may just get too tired of trying to outwit your scheming little hearts.

Protip: Left click and hit close and you never have to see the pop under ad.

The computer is your friend, it's other users you need to watch out for.