Nearly two minutes had gone by of incessantly clicking to find some arbitrary detail—Something I should have known but you tend to forget little things like that—when it happened. I was “researching” ancient Mesopotamia’s irrigation techniques, in the middle of a sentence. Suddenly, my screen was engulfed in darkness and blasted with an obnoxious popup advertisement for “discount cruises.”
A WINDOW POPPED-UP WITH FLASHING “DISCOUNT CRUISES” WRITTLED ACROSS THE SCREEN IN CAPS LOCK.
Congratulations, you’ve been selected for…what exactly?
Some sick twisted sale that nobody would ever want to buy: holiday scams that will happen to you in the future when you least expect it, CUYYYYYYSE.. I just don’t understand what society has become if this is how we have to pop up messages..
That stupid popup advertisement made it sound like I just won something when I’ve done nothing but suffer at the hands of these intrusive pesky popups. It’s like a little digital paradise. One click down slide you go into advertisement hell.
Pop-ups used to be annoying, sure, but they were just little boxes that appeared on your screen you could easily click away. They were like telemarketers that you could aggressively hang up on after saying “thank you for your time.”; nowadays, pop ups have evolved into proactive aggressive salesman that don’t take no for an answer. They follow you home and then sujdictuously crawl through your windows and set up shop inside of your own living room.
Consider the newsletter popup you often see when first landing on a website. I have stumbled across plenty of sites that will, within 3 seconds—giving you NOT EVEN enough time to read the title—generate a big ugly banner telling me to “STAY UPDATED!” with their content. What’s crazier is that they ask this of you with no option to approve or deny.
How am I supposed to know if I want to “stay updated” if I don’t even know if their content is something I want to read! My friend Margaret patiently taught her father, who is in his 90’s, how to use email. But the other day she tossed her glasses across the room after she saw seven pop-ups on a cooking website.
It’s as if some stranger is asking me to “check back in” with them in three months when I wasn’t even granted the decency of an introduction or a name, let alone a conversation. “I only clicked on a recipe for roasted chicken,” she said, as if she was reciting some horror story from a war-torn country I had no knowledge of. Her voice sounded empty, as if she too had heard what happens when you click on those little boxes on the Internet.
“NO, that’s not what happened. Rather, I was offered the ability to sign up for a newsletter, take a survey about my cooking skills, watch a video about non-stick pans, allow notifications, sign up for a contest to win some sort of kitchen appliance I didn’t know I wanted, adjust my cookies preferences and verify that I was in fact not a robot.” After she finished her internet nightmare, all she wanted to do was read about cooking. By the time she was done ensuring she was human, her chicken had been roasting for long enough that it had begun to preheat to a temperature that could probably cook a steak.
The worst interruptions are the ones that trick you into thinking you want them.. “It’s called dark patterns,” they say when you Google how these interfaces are purposely designed to trick you into clicking on things you don’t need.. as you frantically click “no thanks” on every popup that’s attempting to save your life on accident.
Isn’t the “X” always placed in close?? Right where the actual window where you can click stuff SOMEHOW becomes the non-clickable window?? And don’t get me started on those light blue button styles that disguise the word ‘active’ and place it on a plain off-white background so you barely know if it’s something you can click or not.
The polite words “no thanks” and “yes” are thrown out the window as too much politeness gets lost in the word PLEASE ACCEPT. And you can’t even say they tricked you into clicking because, well…they’re bad at tricking you. Outlined boxes and tricky wording should make someone who knows technology and all its foo supposed to trick you an expert at clicking everything.
Not my 13-year-old nephew. He too has fallen for the traps.. He’s hovered over the same article three times now, and each time he’s been welcomed by another popup.
One asked if he would be so kind to turn off his ad blocker, (which for the record, he does NOT have.) Another told him he should download their mobile app, (when he is already on his phone.) And from the same website he just so happened to click for the very first time, he was asked to “take advantage of this special popup exclusive!” If pop-ups benefit the site anyway, whether it’s through reading cookies or clicking “no thank you” hundreds of times throughout the day, then they must be doing something right..
Videos even come packaged with their own set of disturbances. Pre-video ads, post-video ads, mid-video ads, banners, sponsored content and automated “you may also like”s that have nothing to do with you and everything to do with a company paying big bucks to be at the top of the suggestion box. The internet has been programmed to give us ads.
Every now and then we are graced with something called content. Ever been reading an article about current events? POP-UP.
Looking into a new sensitive topic? You better bet there’s a popup with “related readings.” Searching through recipes? You get the point..
POP-UPS!!! But go ahead and try to find information when you need help avoiding them the most. Say you want to learn how to cancel yourself out of a website that’s more prison-coded into your browser than it is of an actual service..
One missing “helpful” popup stands out. It’s almost as if your sales associate at your local retail store watches you, helps you find every possible item you may need, you turn to leave and they conveniently “need to take a return to the back.” Not only does the store disappear, but so does every employee, shaming you for not needing anything else. My neighbor Tom, this will apply to everyone but bear with me..
Tom loves the internet. Everyone tends to become softer around people who are discriminated against. Racism, sexism, classism, we’ve all been hacked at some point by the demons of society.
But why should we feel bad about the internet forcing us content we do not ask for or want? Why are they able to shove things we don’t need into our default browser? ?
Because THEY WORK FOR THE INTERNET. Basically. “DON’T CLICK ANYTHING THAT EFFECTIVELY MOVES ON IT’S OWN.” Tom told me last Saturday while we were both checking our fence line.
Oddly enough, I didn’t understand half of what he told me so scrolling through Facebook was my whole encounter. ‘GREY OUTWARDS, DOCTRINALLY LOWER SECTION..’ was the last sentence I read before I murdered democracy. Look for the network cover that doesn’t move, that’s the weakest link.’
Welcome to the struggle of the internet.
We are all fighting a battle where the Internet is trying to sell you something. Or as the saying used to go, it’s trying to take you for a ride. Whether that ride is filled with effort or none at all, it takes some dedication to not let pop-ups get to you.
I, for one, am extremely guilty. I’m talking about when you first get to a website and are greeted by a popup banner that asks if it can track your browsing habits. “ACCEPT ALL” is cleverly crafted to be the most visible button.
It’s bright, eye catching, and designed to look like a button that’s almost vibrating at you, begging you to click it. On the complete opposite side of the page, hidden away is Manage Preferences’. It’s gray, and dull.
You’ll have to venture through rows and rows of checkboxes and cookies-dreams just to simply say no to half of the preferences “ACCEPT ALL” tells you you’re allowing. Sites used to not allow you to browse with-out defaulting on one side or the other.. I remember when cookies pop-up told me I could accept cookies or decline cookies and continue browsing, WHERE I WAS before the cookie interruption began.
What a concept. I decided I didn’t want websites to track my browsing behavior. I scrolled back down to my article as I was reading when I realized I forgot why I was reading that article in the first place.
The worst pop ups come when you’re about to leave. You attempt to click the back button or anywhere above on the page for that matter, and suddenly you’re saluted with a “Don’t leave! We have a special offer for you!” popup.
“What if I gave you 10% off? !” Sorry pop-up lovers, but this is like your clingy boyfriend chasing after your car as you drive off.. Yes, Internet.
EXIT INTENT POPUPS ARE HERE. Exit intent popups have created an entire browsing experience out of convincing you to not leave their site. I went into Walmart one day to simply buy groceries..
Obviously I got sidetracked on stuff I didn’t need thanks to move redirects but we’ll get into that.. Point is, I tried to checkout. There were approximately five pop ups that wanted either information from me for my “free trip” to checkout.
Sign up for rewards? Sure, why not?! Opt into texts and we’ll give you a lower price?!
Okay… Browse through some related departments? Sure, why not WHILE I’M ALREADY ASHERE?? Wrap my items?
I don’t NEED to leave the site but OK! Before you go, let’s double check everything you wanted to buy! Skip back and forth trying to outsmart these popping interruptions into leaving me alone with my shopping I was.
I’ve even come to realize this stupid phenomenon has become. They all start the same, “Before you go…”
Robot voice insiders. “This browser is detecting that you have an ad blocker enabled.” Sound familiar?
Like your parents catching you with your thumb in your mouth? Okay fine, they don’t say that, but I bet if they could they would. After they catch you with your virtual mouth open, they fill it with..
“Don’t leave yet!”Come on sales folks.. We all know about FOMO. Fear Of Missing Out.
The internet and their advertisements have created a brand new fetish for leaving we’re comfortable. My coworker Sarah from marketing unawked me one night after a couple drinks.. “I hate pop-ups too!” she screamed through gulps of wine.
“BUUUUUT…” and with that she raised her shoulders and accepted her fate at work. “They work,” she miserably chuckled. “Too many conversions.” “Isn’t that such a shitty long-term strategy?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she exhale deeply. “People say they hate pop ups, but you know what they do? Click.”
Let me just say that again..
CLICK. Okay, we can pause ad blockers for a second. Ad blockers are great, but not perfect.
And alot of sites won’t even show you content unless you disable the plug in. Some browsers have a ‘reader’ feature that hide what we pay for.. The words..
Give me a break.. Sure there are sites out there with subscriptions you can pay to have a ad free experience. But that’s a workaround, and creates more inconvenience and expense.
Plus why should we have to pay for a service just to see something we didn’t ask anymore ads?! We have too many interruptions these days. Enjoying something without popovers is bliss.
We were promised information at our finger tips. Add take that information and sprinkle it with interruptions and we have only met about half of that promise. Reading an article online is like going to the library where all the books talk to you and try to sell you stuff, or having a salesman kick in your door while your reading the newspaper.
I don’t want to be cynical about everything being ad free. I’m sure there’s a place for ads. We all get paid to do something we love and for advertisers that’s their job.
I don’t have a problem with someone making a living off their passion. But there’s a huge difference between seeing a billboard next to your favorite show and watching your show get interrupted every five minutes to watch “something you may like like…” My doctors even told me I should take a screen break to help with my eye strain.. “I hear reading a physical book helps too!” Hey look, fix advitaminus pop up problem.
The last book I read didn’t offer me coupons. It didn’t make me fill out a form on how my reading experience was. No pop-ups in the middle of a chapter to tell me I can “SUBMIT” my opinion..
When reading a book I begin on page 1 and finish on the last page. I don’t get junk mail and I don’t get popup ads. When I get to the end of a book there’s no “DISCOUNT CRUISE!” banner popping itch mid-word.
Maybe the downfall of society’s technological advances: the better technology gets, the more distracted we get from technology that actually matters. Like books.. Books don’t popup..
While I research ancient Mesopotamia’s agriculture techniques from a REAL book about farming, I’ll enjoy my popup-free reading experience and how organized everything is in a book.
All in alphabetical order.. guys..
Ancient Mesopotamians created intricate irrigation systems to help prevent their crops from flooding. Maybe we as internet users can figure out a way to prevent these pop-ups from taking over our browsers.. Until that day comes, we will have to live digitaily.
Declining, closing pop ups, emptying out our bookmarks trash folder in Safari, or yanking off ours glasses like Margaret when we just can’t take the pop ups anymore.
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