Originally published at: This project shows the nightmarish state of today's web | Boing Boing
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Now all we need is Clippy the paper clip to round out the experience.
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Yeah, that got tired much quicker than I thought it would.
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A while ago someone (in marketing, I assume) coined term “Attention economy.” I immediately thought “No. It’s the opposite. It’s a distraction economy.” Every thing is designed to distract you from what you are interested in. Ads distract you from the article you came to read. The host of the article distracts you with a desperate plea to subscribe before you even know what the site is about, if you came there from a link, which, this being the web, is how most of get wherever we happen to be. (I know that’s a bad sentence.) I wonder how many subscriptions I would have if I had said yes to all of them . . .
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Really guys, we’re gonna post this article unironically here? 
EDIT: Please note, this is not an “I’m disappointed at Boingboing” post or a gripe or invitation to gripe. It’s more a “the web has gotten into this sorry state for everyone and that’s sad that this is the only way to make enough to survive” post.
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When I went to close the tab, I got this:
Well played.
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Two words:
Firefox. Plugins.
I use Privacy Badger, HTTPS Everywhere, Decentraleyes, NoScript, uBlock Origin and Contrast Fix.
The last one darkens text on pages that employ the fad of light text on a white background.
Got the browser settings locked down, too.
It is jarring to see the same sites on someone else’s computer. Why do people put up with this shit?
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Welcome to boing boing, Mr. 2021.
With all the tech savvy brains behind boing boing, should one would think that their “irony dial” would have a setting of 11?
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Exactly. I really feel for great sites like bOing bOing who have to figure out how to pay writers and admins (‘member when they tried to block ad blockers a few years ago?), but this is more a symptom of the current web economy and until people figure out alternatice revenue sources, I fear that all irony will be lost.
Otoh, it’s not like there aren’t options (many of which were floated here on BBS to no avail):
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I would be remiss if I didn’t also give a link this brilliantly terrible game:
Previously:
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I feel like BB has some work to do in this arena. For what ever reason, its main page (Blog | Boing Boing) just saps my computer ram and CPU. I dunno if its ads or scripting or what, but I will kill a Firefox process hogging resources and that tab crashes.
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I’m a little sorry the chat doesn’t do anything, but “this content is not available in your country” was a nice touch.
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My own setup is NoScript and uBlock Origin. It can sometimes be very tedious (NoScript in particular), but, like you, I’m rather shocked at what a shitshow the web can be without them.
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I give to Wonkette every month. I value their service.
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I have noticed that ads are not nearly as intrusive in Japan. (The ads of course use location trackers to target you.) They are there, but they are not aggressive.
It might be a good idea to get a good VPN and just make the ads think that you’re viewing the site from a country where they have nothing to sell to you.
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Every time I look over my BF’s shoulder at something online he wants me to see, there are approx 50,000 ads. I’ve sent him links to FF and chrome adblocker extensions, but he’s never bothered installing 'em. He bitches about it while I’m standing there, rolling my eyes as I wait for him to close the ads. I occasionally gently remind him that I sent him those extensions, but other times I have to walk away and ask if he can just send me the link instead.
I will never forgive FF for The Great Update a couple years ago. There used to be brilliant extensions that let users remove not just the typical ads, but whole blocks of annoying text crap wherever it was on the page. Now I have to do battle with my adblockers to convince them to block the things I don’t want to see, and try to figure out how the hell to unblock the stuff for which I’m visiting the site!
Something quite efficiently blocks the avatars and usernames of folks on tumblr. e.g.,
this
has become this
Disabling the adblockers makes no difference, and besides, I never blocked that stuff! I haven’t a clue what is doing it. I have an extension which allows major tumblr tweakage, but it has no features which remove usernames and avis.
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I use NoScript, uBlock Origin, SponsorBlock, and Decentraleyes.
of all of these, Decentraleyes is the most interesting. It intercepts requests to CDNs and injects local resources into that stream. And as far as I can tell, it’s seamless. Never seems to screw anything up. It helps reduce tracking and lowers bandwidth used.
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Yep. I’m sure many of us would happily pay a small monthly subscription to sites like BB.
I use Brave which does a good job of blocking a lot of the crap. It’s a shame BB haven’t signed up to Brave Rewards though as they’d get a bunch of tips from me each month.
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That’s what boingboing looks without adblocker?!
Oh how I dread the day my adblockers won’t work anymore.
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