This will be unpopular.
I understand that every time I visit any given website, my browsing costs the site owner money. It's only fractions of a penny, mind, but I'm aware that data transfer, file storage and server maintenance aren't free. Every single page I look at is taking money out of the pockets of whoever was kind enough to put their creation online.

So, at least nine out of ten of these webmasters will seek to recover some of their expenses via ads, be they text-based, graphical, or even (shudder) Flash.

If a site uses too many Flash adverts, it puts my CPU usage up to 100% and my machine struggles to keep up. Unless it's a site that I truly do enjoy surfing, I tend to just leave and never return. Likewise with those annoying ads that take up the whole page until you click the button that says "Yeah, yeah, whatever, not interested, let me look at what I wanted to look at in the first place."

Anyway, most webmasters aren't silly enough to use ads like that, because they know that legitimate viewers will leave the site and never return. And, of course, selfish twats will install ad-blocking software.

There are spam websites, spam E-mails, and spam users too. These people are the traffic you just don't want - the users who take and never give anything back, even when doing so costs them nothing. You put something online, pay your hosting bills, and run a couple of ads so that you're not actually paying money to share your work with the world, and then the world says "No, sorry, I know it doesn't cost me anything but I'm not going to help you out. I just don't like adverts, you see. They hurt my precious little eyes. I'll just take what you've given me without so much as a thankyou - oh, and expect a bill for the data transfer, too."

What, mister AdBlock user, are you so fucking special that you think you're allowed to somehow "opt-out" of this economy? You tight bastard. You're not just the guy who watches the street performer and doesn't pay, are you? No, you're the guy who gets his cameraphone out and starts recording after pushing his way to the front of the crowd, and then fucks off as soon as the act is over without so much as a penny in the jar.

If you're honestly bothered by the ads on a website, simply close the window and never go back to that site again. But don't fucking leech resources from the people whose work you enjoy. And if you do, put your hand in your pocket and PayPal them some money to pay them back. If someone's doing something that you think is ace, and you visit their site all the time, then give them money, don't cost them money.

This little rant was brought to you by a player of a PBBG I'm running. She'd never donated, she played every day - to the extent that she ended up downloading five to ten megabytes of fucking text every day, and on this sort of game I'll start maxing out my CPU on the dedicated server long before I run out of data transfer - and actually boasted about blocking my ads. Cheeky fucking bitch. It's not even like she's a nice player, she just beats up newbies all day.

Apologies for length, lack of funny, and arrogant arseholeish soapboxism. Rant over. Grr.
(CavemanJoe lives on improbableisland.com, Tue 6 May 2008, 2:32, 4 replies)

I'd take you more seriously
if you had an icon
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Tue 6 May 2008, 2:48, closed)

Allow ads,
OR donate. Doing both is going above and beyond. :)
(CavemanJoe lives on improbableisland.com, Tue 6 May 2008, 2:53, closed)

What's the point?
Even if people didn't block the ads, you know they're not going to actually click on them. FFS, who actually thinks they're going to get a free XBox 360/PS3/cell phone from guessing Eminem's real name?

I honestly don't see the point of your rant. People aren't going to buy the shite the ads are advertising, so it doesn't matter if they see the ads or not.

Are you also this upset with people who can fast forward through TV commercials because they have DVR cable receivers or TiVO? Trust me, there's more money at stake for a company to pay for a 30 second spot during primetime of a popular show than a PBBG. Do you feel obligated now to go buy everything you've ever seen a commercial for simply because it's the principle of helping pay for the TV show?
(StupidAmericanTourist, Tue 6 May 2008, 3:44, closed)

Bandwidth
And what about those of us that live in places that have shitty bandwidth limits? Blocking ads serves some purpose in extending the quality of our service from the ISP before we get downgraded to near dial-up speeds.
(Swarve, Tue 6 May 2008, 3:55, closed)