What Not To Read: Advertising Links

I love the advertising brochures on the ferry boats.  Yes, we have legal weed in Washington. And Teatro moved to the eastside 

The internet is full of wonders. And advertising, because baby needs a new pair of shoes. 

I don't carry ads on this blog. This is no shade on anyone that does; I used to participate in a Mom/Dad Blog group that did embed ads, and I think over the course of the years I got....a dollar.  

What stops me is clickbait. You know, you click on the blog page, you click on a picture, and suddenly a host of pop up windows open like a swarm of locusts. My goal on this blog is to be as easy to read as possible, and as nonannoying as one can be when one is me. Therefore, I don't do the ads. I have links to my shops on Spoonflower and Craftsy and that's annoying enough. Also why I don't keep comments with ad links. Or comments from bots. Bots don't sew for themselves. Yet. 

This ad is right next to the regular content download button. Guess which one pulses? 

The website at work has Google Ad Sense links that inevitably screw some poor bastard up, because you cannot choose AdSense ads, you can only complain about them. Knock down one pulsing "Download Now" button next to your more sedate "Download" button (for content the user paid for), and another three appear. A real part of my job is just using the website to patrol for this stuff. 

I subscribe to and participate in Bloglovin' because it's handy. Several times a week, it sends out a roundup of style blogs, which I never go look at. For this post, however, I did click on one (and it doesn't matter which frankly, but it was about styling with sneakers) and the page won't stop loading. I have Ghostery on my browser, so I can see what inbedded ad trackers there are (because I do analytics on pages and I love to see what people are using) and that purple list is longer than the page is tall. 

The worst is Threads. Love you guys, but to watch the videos, I have to turn off Ghostery, and that means I open the door to the pop ups.

At the bottom of the Threads webpage,  there's two rows of photo links. The second row is Threads material from the same website. The first row is all faux stories/clickbait.

Reader: I fell for it.

And this is embarassing, because you've heard about this one: What Mature* Women Shouldn't Wear

From the website: It’s great when we feel much younger than we are. But it’s not great when it appears we are trying to look a whole lot younger—and not pulling it off! Sometimes we need to come to terms with our stage in life and begin to dress more appropriately. That’s not to say that we can’t have fun, but there’s nothing more aging (and embarrassing) than wearing trends that make you look silly at your age.

If you want to be classy and mature with grace, try avoiding these trends in this slideshow.

1. DANGEROUS DENIM: Low Rise, Bedazzled, Flared, Super Skinny Jeans
2. SEXY STILETTOS: Hooker Heels, Stripper Shoes
3. Silly socks
4 .Tacky tshirts
5 -   -  at this point, every time I click on the slide show, the site starts to add more popup windows, and I do not care for that sort of shenanigan. I love my tacky tshirts. Who are you, my mother? Oh no, you're an advertising farm. And no, grace is not in my rubric.

Hey, edited here! I went onto Threads just now and they have labeled those two rows of content, so that they are clearly identified as fish and foul. But check it out! 70 trackers! And the page keeps reloading and reloading so that it does not remain static. It's almost self-clicking.

On this topic: go read I Will Wear What I Like.  I love you, Man Repeller, but there is no such thing as Menocore (although the comments are a crackup). Don't fall for the bullshit. Get in on Visible Mondays. And of course, read Anne at Spygirl (keeping her in the roll as she belongs)

Wear what you want. If you wear it with your whole heart, you'll be amazing. 

There ya go. No ads. All links are clean, no subroutines, and hand pulled for freshness. 

*well of course. Mature? Me? 58, yes. Mature? Hell, no.

I have two trackers (I don't run Google ads and I don't know why that's there) and there they are. Technorati is eulogized here. If it's dead, why is this still here? Will report later. Gotta go mend some stuff)