Pop Ups In On-Line Articles

‘People Are Less Informed Today Than They Ever Have Been!’ said the headline of an article I tried to read before two ads and four videos got in the way. Two ads and four videos that had nothing to do with the article I was trying to read. You cannot read an article online without have to press X on about seven things. A recipe, a picture of a new rappers teeth, the stats of all the left turns made by every bus driver in San Francisco, stuff that has absolutely NOTHING to do with the article.

The way to get away from ads years ago was to read. You didn’t want to watch an episode of ‘Cops’ and have to see Cheez Whiz ads? Pick up ‘Cops: The Book’ and read about those shirtless backyard chases without having to see melted down plastic dyed orange be twirled in a jar. ‘Cops: The Book’ had no pop up ads. Just pop up man drunkingly tumbling through a bush. It wasn’t an assault on the senses. It was a jaunt through fun times.

Now to get around pop ups in articles, you have to subscribe to the paper of the article you’d like to read. Which how do they get you to do that? Another pop up. Try to read an article, get a bit into, you’re finding out that there is a dangerous cannibal in your city who is attacking people who wear…

‘SUBSCRIBE TO THE DAILY GUT PUNCH TO CONITUNE READING!’

Are you wearing what attracts the cannibal? Higher chance you’ll be eaten in rain boots or that Mets hat? Will cost you a dollar a week to find out. And it’s not as if that is a lot of money, but the subscription is the thing. Why do we have to subscribe to the whole thing? You can just buy A paper. You subscribed to the paper years ago if you didn’t want to put on your banana slippers and walk down to ‘Chucks Feed And Fill’. But if you DID want to show off those chiquita feet you could buy ONE paper. Just one. No subscriptions to anything. Why can’t this be done with articles? Let me buy this one I want to read for a penny, or ten cents or whatever. I don’t want to subscribe to everything here. Don’t need horoscopes or the editorial or the ‘Janices Love Hostel’ section. I want THIS article. The one about the cannibal guy eating people wearing certain things because I’m about to walk out the door in rain boots AND a Mets hat and will I be eaten?!

Or the paper WILL let you finish the cannibal article (guy eats people in plaid), and they’ll even let you finish that one about the new Air Fryer luggage (‘Fry While You Fly!’), but then you go back to read ANYTHING else, and there is another pop up letting you know you’ve reached your limit. You are allowed to read a certain amount of articles, which still have pop ups in them, before this ‘Subscribe’ pop up pops up. The site lets you know that you read two articles. They gave you a taste. NOW they want that twelve cents a day before you can have anything else. Fully 80’s street dealered you. Now? If you can’t even close the subscribe pop up to be given a video pop up to interrupt the article.

There were no videos playing in a newspaper. A video. A video! In the middle of an article that is for reading. Just a full movie starts to play in the center of it. Usually before that video starts playing it has an ad! An ad that plays before the video that you don’t want to see and have to close as is. Close the ad to close the video to finally be able to read that article about the health benefits of not taking your toaster into the tub with you. And there are a LOT of ads to videos to ads to close before you can know whether or not heating up that bagel while you bathe is a good idea.

Some articles are not even articles. You click on a headline, and it takes you RIGHT to a video. A video of a news piece or segment. Nothing to read. It’s an article to watch. Before the video article? An ad. During the video article? Pop ups about things not related to video article. Trying to read and now you’re watching something. When you open the book Jurassic Park it doesn’t start playing the movie. It should play the soundtrack, though.

People would have been less informed years ago as well if every time they went to read the newspaper or a book someone came up and starting singing a jingle in their face, or pushed a TV in between them and their paper, or interrupted to tell them that for just a dollar a month they could read this book as much as they wanted.

‘Liked chapter 2? Well you’ll LOVE what else the book has to offer! Just pay me once a quarter and you can fini…’

‘Will you get the hell out of my face, Steve!’

Please know I tried to put a ton of pop ups in this but sadly, Cheez Whiz is scared to run ads here.

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Check out comedy special 'DOWN WITH TECH' here

Everyone Has Anxiety. Stop It.

Been seeing a lot of people on-line with posts detailing how they recently have been diagnosed with anxiety. The posts are full of descriptions of how this completely explains everything! Why they have been weird at parties. Why they’re scared to reach for a grocery cart at the ‘Shop & Toss’. How now they understand that odd feeling they get inside when another human being slips off their Crocs in front of them to ‘rock out with their Croc out…’

‘I’ve finally figured it out! I have anxiety! This one thing solves ME!’

Have you? DO you?! Have you and this doctor finally cracked the code on why you felt a way about going to that Grade 8 dance as a kid? Or. OR. Is it POSSIBLE, you there, anxious Andy, might have what we ALL have? That you’re no different than any person riding a cross town bus with a crotch in their face? That a doctor told you that you WERE a bit different and can treat that difference with a pill?

We’re all anxious. Everyone. At one point in time or another. Being anxious is part of being a human being. We get anxious about first dates, job interviews, posting, walking, thinking, sex, the lack of it, the lack of walking to a job interview for sex while posting. Lots of stuff. Just about EVERYONE gets anxious about going to a party where there will be tons of people they don’t know and have to meet. The only people that don’t are the ones at the party who everyone else is secretly talking about.

‘Who’s Johnny loud mouth beaking in front of the hummus?’

‘Don’t. Know. How many buttons are NOT done up on that shirt?’

And even that guy has anxiety from time to time. His pecs deflate a little? Another button comes undone on that already down to three button shirt? He stares into his creatin filled eyes and feels something.

Anxiety levels of all of us have for sure gone up over the last few years. How could they not? Just about everyone is trying to become a famous influencer/CEO/Chef/Author/Doctor/Gym owner with a fat ass, jaw line that can cut a tomato and a stomach flatter than Saskatchewan. We’re glaring at screens filled with idiots showing us how THEY got their tum down to Regina sizes.

‘I just drank some kind of tea you can buy with this promo code and stopped eating… oh and surgery! But get the tea with promo code ‘I Didn’t Say Those Other Things’! Tummy Tea. You’re food processor will be flatter than a dead guys vitals monitor in no time…’

We’re all seeing what more and more people are doing around the world. Everyone of their (for the most part) pages are the happiest, glowing, ‘look at me and my brother who never fight we just air juggle each other for views’ things. There are eight year old millionaires out there. Child millionaires. Not ONE. MANY.

‘Hi, I’m Kyle. I was literally born yesterday. I made twenty seven million dollars the day before that playing video games with my umbilical cord. I’m sponsored by Mountain Dew and you drink it. You’re over thirty and can’t afford a yacht? Barf on god fam you’re gross get my tea.’

We’re all connected to hell. We’re all more anxious as a result. Nobody is off grid. Even the off grid people! The people who go off grid start YouTube channels detailing their off the gridness!

‘Hey! Welcome back to ‘Out Of Bounds Outhouses’ the channel where we shit on convention! This week, I’m going to show you have to build a toilet out of a pile of sticks and a dead squirrel. Hint, the squirrel is the handle… before we get going I want to thank today’s sponsor, ManScaped! You don’t want to be out here with long bag hair. My first day my packages perm got caught on a rusty gate. Thank god for Manscape!’

Now. The off grid people who live on YouTube. You don’t think they have anxiety? You don’t think they peel their kale shoes off and argue with the other person they talked into believing this was a good idea about ad revenue? About views? About the future of the channel? What are we calling this? Wood disease? Off Grid obsoletism? It’s anxiety. It is two people holding a dead varmint having anxiety about their future. The way we all do.

Then there is a general anxiety of the world itself. Jobs, housing, I mean housing alone!, price of eggs, inflation, that creepy person behind you on the street dragging a katana. All things to have anxiety about at any given time. If you went to a doctor they might prescribe something.

‘The guy was just LUMBERING down the block with a sword! Scratching it on the ground!’

‘Oh wow… and this made you anxious?The next time an angry samurai pulls his weapon down the street behind you, take this pill, you won’t feel a thing.’

There are some people who have problems with anxiety. Some people have been born with anxiety disorders and can be benefited by treatment for it. Collectively all of our anxiety has been on the rise, but we don’t ALL need pills. We’re not ALL at the mercy of an SSRI to make us not feel a way about responding to a text. We don’t all have a full on anxiety problem. We have a ‘living as a human being’ problem. A lot of us have a being on the internet and dealing with the world today problem, and the way to fix that? Well, that’s easy. You just put some money aside maybe if you can and get off social media but that’s ju… oh whatever give me the pills…

Comedy Special 'DOWN WITH TECH' here

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3 REASONS TO GET INTO DEBT

If you have a hundred dollars and no debt you could be richer than about 70% of America. One hundred dollars. Owed to nobody. On the bus? You’re richer than that guy in the G Wagon beside you who’s chewing on a cigar and getting screamed at by a woman with a BBL. You do. It doesn’t SEEM like it because you’re on the bus, and the person beside YOU has a dead cat in their hoodie and a live cat in their pants (the size of a BBL but still). You, bus man, bus person, non cigar chewer, with a hundred bucks owed to no one is richer than G Wagon. BUT… that is wrong. That is bad. You’re NOT in debt? What’s wrong with you?! This is debt land. Get into it! Here are four reasons you should get off the bus, walk right to a doctor and overdraft your card for bigger lips.

1. THOSE PAYDAY LOANS PLACES / APPS

   One reason to get into debt? To visit your local ‘Money-O-Gram’, ‘Cheque-Today-Fear-Tomorrow’ or ‘Legal-Loansharking’ building. If you’re not in debt you never see these magical fronts of death. These Greyhound bus station-esque places with lights on way too bright where anger and sadness permeates the walls. Only way to get this experience without going into debt would be to be captured on vacation in a Hostel type situation. OR now, thankfully, with an app. See those commercials? Some smiling dystopian person creepily pitching an app that SENDS YOU MONEY FROM NOWHERE… how could anything go wrong here?

   ‘I signed up for PayToday and I get my money FAST. PayToday isn’t even mad!’

   Voiceover comes on ‘PayToday charges 65% interest on all loans sent to customers and if you don’t pay them back within the SECOND they are due a representative from PayToday will come to your house in a ski mask and smoke every member of your family in the head with a wrench…’ as the woman in the commercial is eating cotton candy and riding a ferris wheel. And you could be that woman, if you try PayToday, TODAY!

2. CONSTANT FEAR

   Who doesn’t love Halloween? The Incredible Hulk ride at Universal Studios? Being in a dark alley with a shrouded figure holding a machete? Wouldn’t you like that feeling ALL the time? Well you can have it with debt. Owe money all over the place, bills start coming around, and man! Emotions are running high! Is that a creditor behind you or the Terrifier? Is that ‘PayToday’ coming to collect or a rapid pitbull with a knife? Doesn’t matter! You’re still sweating and living on the edge! Your adrenaline is running high, and it’s not costing you anything except on average 18.9 percent interest…

3. BEING IN THE 70%

   Who doesn’t like being in a group? Who doesnt’ want to fit in with the most people possible? You want to be one of the three in ten out there? Three? You only have two other people to relate to. What if the other seven want to eat you and those two? How are you three going to fight off seven trying to chomp down on your heads? Get on the other side and do the biting. Being in debt is so normalized that it doesn’t seem like a big deal.

   ‘You owe $126k?! Wow… that’s it?! I’d KILL someone to owe that tiny, completely easy to get, nothing to worry about amount of money. Me? $258k. I don’t even know what it’s all for hahahhahahahhaha… anyway taking the wife and kids to Cabo AGAIN this weekend. But guess what? ‘PayToday’ isn’t even mad!’

   Follow me @nathanmacintosh and check special ‘Money Never Wakes’ below named the Best Youtube Special Of 2023 By The New York Times

   Full Stand Up Special 'Money Never Wakes'