Invasive internet ads beyond annoying

I'm feeling harassed. My consciousness is filled with advertising clutter and it's messing with my serenity.

I am glad the Justice Department is suing Google after accusing it of monopolizing digital advertising technology. Maybe more competition will force Google to up its game and cease reliance on manipulation and trickery.

To be clear, I don't hate all ads. I laugh at funny ones. I admire advertising brilliance. But like many greed-fueled attempts to make a fast buck on the internet, we now have what feels like the “buckshot” school of advertising. Deadly pellets are flying everywhere.

Where is proof that it works? I think popup ads should be banned. I am a news junkie reading from all sources everywhere all the time. It infuriates me when I'm in the middle of reading something intriguing and, out of nowhere, an ad for a pickup truck explodes into my consciousness and blocks my entire screen. End this hideous practice right now.

The internet can do better targeting. I don't want a new pickup truck, even if it can tow large loads and has a ball hitch. Such a poorly targeted ad was never going to be well-received. I scope out hydrogenpowered vehicles, not Hemi engines. I have nothing to haul in a pickup truck. So don't interrupt me with perfectly useless garbage.

Considering that websites and browsers are constantly raking us for data points, targeted ads should be better.

I find that getting ads off my screen is stressful. The hidden Xs in the upper right corner are impossible to find. I am sure that is by design. They are either tiny, or the color of the X seems to intentionally match the background. Sometimes the ad is jumping around my screen so much I can't click it. Or it won't go away until I've clicked the X at least 15 times.

I imagine a Gollum-like marketer taking pleasure in my struggle to hit the X. Owners of every product in those ads should know I will never, ever reward them by purchasing their product.

Ads shouldn't try to suck me in with grotesque, scary images of protuberances, rashes, pimples, pus, bumps, fecalish piles, oozing sores, mutating human deformities or slices of kidneys or colons that are designed to inspire such fear and loathing that I will click the link to deduce whether that bump on my ankle will ulcerate from a flesheating virus. Apparently advertisers believe that morbid curiosity leads to clicking, but repulsion will never lead to me to pull out my credit card.

I detest spam. If I buy your product once and you force me to hand over my email address, that's not consent to pummel me with emails. Who decided it was a good idea to send daily “product reminders” for an item I purchased months ago? It's narcissistic to believe your product is so interesting that I don't ever want it to leave my consciousness.

Is there really a return on investment for the chumps you hire to write fetching email copy and great subject line text? If I bought something from you online once, liked it and want or need more, I will find you. Flogging does not work.

Sometimes I unsubscribe from a product email newsletter and they reappear like mushrooms after a rainstorm. Companies should make that unsubscribe button work.

If I don't want to hear from you and I go to the trouble of skimming through the email to find the unsubscribe link, I really mean it.

I'm tired of living in a dystopian universe of abuse where trickery and manipulation are the modus operandi. It can't be good for ad-makers or consumers. Advertisers say it's a numbers game, that out of hundreds of emails fired blind into the metaverse, there is one sale to redeem all those diasporic pixels.

Prove it.

David Ogilvy, known as “the father of advertising,” warned that condescending to consumers was perilous. “The consumer isn't a moron; she's your wife.”

Ogilvy's statement is a thought-remnant of a bygone era, but it is the truth.