I’m learning to hate the internet

I’m learning to hate the internet. Vacuous content, bad information, reposting reposts, pictures instead of words, videos that play automatically, ads, and the affront that put me over the edge – ads that overlay the screen and can only be closed after running their course, like food poisoning.

The internet started as a platform for the exchange of academic research. Bulletin boards, and usenet followed, allowing people with common interests to share through the virtual community. Then came browsers and the provider/portal wars between AOL, Compuserve, Prodigy and others. As the HTTP protocol and free browsers matured (Netscape Navigator,) free access to information grew and the internet as we know it exploded. A casualty of the growth of free access and free information was the loss of the gatekeeper. The ink and paper equivalent of an editor and publisher.

Print publishers would never let writers put out whatever they wanted, unsupervised and without direction. The financial cost is too great. But the internet backbone, access and software are utilities with almost no cost to the writer or content provider. With no cost to publish and an absence of supervision, we now have effluence, 9^th grade C- papers, and scrap books being offered as “content.” There still remains a small cost to get the information out, but an even greater opportunity to earn money doing it. Ads paying fractions of a dollar, Euro, or Renmimbi per presentation, accumulate thousands of views, clicks and page loads. The math is simple, get thousands and millions of fractions of a cent and you’re talking real money.

What started as classified style ads, grew into banner ads, footer ads, body ads, video ads, pop-up ads, splash screen ads, and now – floating ads that force you to watch and wait, stealing your bandwidth, time, and patience. Even if you want to read the C-report of a poorly sourced, seventh grade quality piece of “journalism” you must suffer the intestinal discomfort of the ads while they run slowly, load slowly and stall with their burdensome scripts.

Even content is now advertising driven with “articles” presented 100 words at a time or as graphical images in a slide show which demand that you click for the next bite, and suffer the attendant page load with new ads. We take it and suffer.

I have no problem with content providers making a buck, but the user experience has reached a tipping point. I refuse to suffer through advertising refuse. I’m looking for a text only browser to starve the beast. I should not have to wade and wait through interminable ads. If the content was worthwhile, I’d pay for it – Wall Street Journal, Kiplinger newsletter in the day, books! I won’t pay for amateur, tabloid information drowning in forced commerce.

Let the internet devolve into the putrid, ad ridden emesis of TMZ, Yahoo, and Honey Boo Boo. I’ll pay for my information wether buying it, subscribing to it, or … getting it from the library. I will starve the content providers of their ad revenue.

I write. I think. I appreciate accurate information. But, I’m learning to hate the internet.