Beneath The Outer Shell

i have had ENOUGH! 2 things mark the subject of my rant. 1) latest and greatest ads and pop ups on the Internet, and 2) the abundance of misspellings, poor grammar, and plain ignorant mistakes one will find on the Internet today.

first i'll talk about the ads we see today. they are so intrusive i feel sexually violated after being interrupted by the way they work. do ya like the new version of a pop up that is hidden from plain view when you first arrive at a website? i think it's called an "expandable ad". you get to the site and your reading and then the page starts to move and your almost lifted off your seat. a big expandable pile of dung stretches and covers what you are reading. at that point i'm a little perturbed and start frantically looking for the oh so small "x" to push to "close" the ad. by the time you find it and close it, you have to start all over. it's as if you have a dial up connection and just arrived at the screen. beautiful. also, there are the "fade in" ads that appear a good 60 seconds into your visit to that page. see, they wait for you to read the main article and then a sheer pop up fades in and blocks a main portion of your article. if you scroll down and try to ignore it...it comes with you like a lost little devil puppy. oh, so cute.

the other type of add that has REALLY bothered me for a while now is the "audio only" ad. i go to a lot of sites where you can watch full streaming movies and tv shows at the click of a button and every time this becomes a serious issue where i have to keep searching for that web page that is actually usable. basically it goes like this. click enter, arrive at site, look for the button to start the movie, and WHAM...there it is. an obnoxious voice with lasers and and explosions in the background doing a commercial for deodorant. every time this happens and after searching like a madman on the entire page for the source, i wait for the commercial to stop. 30-60 seconds later when the dramatic ridiculousness stops, another voice instantly starts talking. THIS is the one that gets to me...it's a complete full length SHOW (mainly about health, or some related unimportant issue). and i have to say, i have looked extensively and found that there is NO way to stop these audio ads. even Google doesn't help. if you refresh the page, it all happens again. can't hit mute on your computer because you're about to watch a movie/show. doesn't matter if you hit a button, move you mouse, or nothing at all...it will always happen regardless. this amazes me because this form of advertising completely makes that web page unusable for it's intended use. it serves no purpose other than to spam that initial commercial to that brand new first time (and last time) visitor. fantastic.

the other issue that has been rampant in my recent online excursions and adventures, is the amount of errors i see EVERYWHERE. this past week i have been searching for a new laptop and have been to SO many sites where there are reviews and articles written about laptops. it's roughly about 1 in 2 so called "consumer reviews" have some kind of grammar error, misspelling, or sometimes...a complete word or 2 missing. sure, we're not perfect. look at me! i can't even cApitaLize things aPPropriately...BUT these people are writing between 2 and 10 sentences. i don't know, but i would also think that computer geeks would actually be good at typing fast AND accurately. i wish i had kept a diary of all the screw ups i have seen in the past 7 days. oh, and YouTube? WOW. go to YouTube and read through just a few of the comments on any particular video. i PROMISE you there will be one you'll see within 30 seconds of reading. try it! i've just been thinking about how poor we have been treating the English language since the Internet, since Ebonics, since texting, and since Twitter. it's embarrassing. are the languages of other countries in the world under attack as much as English is? shoot, everyone complains that we all need to speak English in this country, but when you think about it English has been slowly ripped to shreds over the past 20 years. you watch...in the year 2025, the English language will resemble something like this: