Advertising on the Internet...

I've made a point previously that, in my opinion, the internet is becoming worse from day to day. I recently tried to sell something on Ebay to find that there is little seller protection on the site. You can't even leave negative feedback for someone who has messed you around. As such, the only people who seem to sell on there now are big companies or independent stores. It is now very hard to get a bargain.

Facebook, Youtube and other major sites are now host to borders of adverts that systematically get as much (inaccurate) information from you as possible in order to sell you junk.

Corporations have hijacked every corner of the web, popups have been entirely replaced by whole screens that jump in front of your eyes to lock your PC, and you can't even watch a video without first having to sit through 30 seconds of advertisement.

Previously, clicking in the wrong place whilst browsing was a mild inconvenience; easily solved by pressing the 'back' button. Now, an incorrect click can result in you downloading something entirely unpleasant onto your PC. Even legitimate download sites are plastered with banners such as these that only promote confusion:

Circled are no less than three 'download' links. Of which two undoubtedly lead to bad porn.

People often think that because a guy is surfing the net, he is looking for porn and thus, any advertisement that leads to smut is going to be appreciated. I'm sorry to say that this is not true. Whilst 90% of a blokes time on the internet is undoubtedly spent looking at porn, the other 10% usually has a purpose and having the worst kind of depravity thrust in your face at every opportunity is never appreciated.

Don't believe me? Well see how you like it the next time this appears on your screen whilst you're trying to show your nan how to set up an email account:

And believe me, that is not the worst there is. For those of you who have not heard of 'Rule 34', it is a widely accepted internet rule that states "if it exists, there is porn of it." I have no doubt that it is true and you will undoubtedly see evidence for yourself if you surf the net for long enough.

I understand that hosting advertisements is sometimes necessary for a website in order for the maker to get a steady cash flow. It pays for the upkeep of the site and in some circumstances, it may even be welcomed by the person browsing if they are actually looking to buy something. But, I ask a simple question:

Has anyone EVER bought anything that was sold to them through an invasive pop-up or browser diversion?

I expect that few people have. The reason is simply because in this day and age, nobody trusts something that is thrust into their face. It's the same feeling when visiting an Egyptian market. If a person comes up to you with their wares and shoves it in your face and announces that you should buy it because it is what you like then you are immediately going to walk away. Even if you actually liked what was being sold, you would not buy it because it stinks of 'seller desperation' and human nature is to disagree when someone tells you what you should like.

The worst culprits are the advertisements which prey on sad, lonely or vulnerable people. Whilst browsing (on non-porn related) websites and forums, I have seen the following popups in the corner of my screen:

Now, it's not the 'look' of the models that I'm calling into question, nor the fact that the model that claims to be 30 looks younger than the one claiming to be 18; it's the fact that not a single one of them has got any reference to anything remotely 'Stokey' in their usernames. Much like similar advertisements for 'dating sites', I would expect real Stokies to have usernames such as 'Oatcakelass69', 'Pottersforever1' or at least some reference to the magnificent museum we have. I've even seen a picture of a girl posing in front of palm trees with a note underneath claiming she is from Stoke.

If you've never visited Stoke, I will ruin the fantasy for you now. There are no palm trees.

One day, I would really like to be able to use the internet without getting sidetracked by an advert, tricked by a banner, or accidentally downloading 'Interracial Granny Midget Trannies 5' instead of the finale of Breaking Bad.

... and guys, if you are looking for porn I'm sure there are far safer sources on the internet than the suspicious pop-up in the corner of the screen. 

Why the 'Golden Age of the Internet' Has Already Passed...

I write this post in frustration.

I see adverts on TV telling me how awesome the next generation of Internet browsers will be and online its easy to find sites where you can legally watch and download TV shows, movies and music. Finally, you have the wonders of Steam and Origin that let you download and play games without having to go through all that trouble of leaving your house. To someone who is new to the Internet it seems like a wonderful, fun filled place.

Except its not.

I'm not going to pretend things were better when you had to 'dial up' to get access to the Internet; obviously it has come forward leaps and bounds since then. But what I am going to say is that the Internet was an awesome place only 5 or so years ago. Why? Well, I'll tell you:

1) Games Didn't Rely On the Internet (as much)

This seems like a strange one. Online gaming was just as popular a few years ago as it is now and if you bought a game, chances are it still needed to connect to the Internet to activate. So what has changed?

Well, now it is very easy and appealing to buy a game online because you can just click on a 'Download' button, pay for the game and have it downloading straight away. At first glance, this appears to be far quicker. I can tell you, it most definitely is not.

Whereas before you could just download the game from the CD and then activate it (which took a maximum of 15-20 minutes) now you have to do one of the following:

- Download Steam or Origin (10-30 minutes)
- Download the game (Steam seems to take anywhere between 24 to 48 hours to do this, Origin takes about 6-12 hours)
- Activate it
- Update it (anywhere between 30 mins to 12 hours)

Or, if you have bought the game:

- Upload the game from the CD (15-30 mins)
- Download Origin or Steam (10-30 minutes)
- Activate the game
- Update the game (30 mins to 12 hours)

Now, I know some people have super-fast Internet that may reduce these times, but I have a good, standard Internet connection and these are the speeds I look at. You see, its got less to do with the speed of your Internet and more to do with the servers available to you. In the UK, we have only a couple to choose from, and all of them are painfully slow.

Not only this, but in order to get these games in the first place, you have to sign up to any number of services and clients in order to get the damn things in the first place. Each game company seems to have a preferred client and each one requires a number of personal details before you can use the service.

But the altogether worst thing about these clients that allow you to download games is that they're putting game shops out of business. As such, it is not as easy as it once was to go out and buy the CD, you now either have to order the game from Amazon or Play.com (and wait for it to be delivered) or download it. It's hard to judge which option is quicker.

It is important to note that I recognise that some games are simply too large to fit onto a CD and that is why we download them online. But why, oh why, do the companies providing these games not improve their server speeds to accommodate for this?

This game now takes 2 days to download. Fact.

This leads me onto the next problem:

2) We Don't Actually Own Anything Anymore

Here is my second gripe. You spend half your life downloading the game or movie or music and then its available to you. There's a problem with this though. You may have paid a lot of money for these services but they don't actually belong to you. Many of these sites have terms and conditions that basically tell you that you don't own the products and that the service can be revoked at any time. In turn, even if you do own the product, if that company goes bust and their servers go down then you can no longer play the game.

For music, iTunes pesters you every time you switch computers (often telling you that you have a limited number of computers you're allowed to authorise) and despite paying for the music, you can't give it to other people to listen to.

In the gaming world, if you switch to a new PC then you will have to go through the ridiculous download times all over again. Oh, and if you own the CD, you have to find ways to 'trick' your computer in order to download from the CD and not from the painfully slow gaming servers that are set as a default download. Bear in mind too, that each time you're downloading for these ridiculous time periods, you will barely be able to use your Internet for anything else.

I still have games from pre-2000 that I play on a regular basis and I have to thank my lucky stars that these were produced before the Internet really took off or I would not be able to even access them now. Truly depressing.

In some ways, it is worse with movies. You download them and you 'rent' them for a period of time and then they are taken off you. Often, finding a site that even allows you to properly download a full film is difficult (and companies often try to trick you into downloading something that is not the actual film) and as a result, piracy has become a serious problem... because the simple fact is it is far easier and quicker to illegally download a film than it is to buy the damn thing.

In real life 'The Matrix' would have terrible lag. Everything would be bullet-time

3) You Better Have a Big Hard Drive

Gaming is always likely to take lots of space, though having an option to run smaller games from CD would be nice, however for things like music and films, you don't have any choice but to fill your hard drive with some of these massive files. If you try to move them to CD, the format won't be recognised or won't play. It is a massive pain in the dick to even get your music back onto iTunes in the event that your computer goes down. The only way to do it without causing a migraine is to move the music from a folder in your iPod and fiddling around with a number of settings before the computer can import it into your iTunes library.

Like I said, a pain in the dick.

4) Companies Own EVERYTHING

I remember a time when Youtube videos streamed within seconds. Now, they've improved the quality of them, but as a result you have to wait a seemingly ridiculous length of time to actually watch the full video. This can mean you have to watch the video in 'bits' whilst the damn thing buffers. It actually reminds me of how things used to be with dial-up Internet.

Of course, this loading time is assuming that you haven't already had to sit through an advertisement for something completely unrelated to your video. The least they could do is develop a way for the video to buffer whilst they are forcing you to watch their tripe. I hate the fact that advertisements load 10 times quicker than my actual video, regardless of the length.

The other problems with companies owning everything is that you're spied on all the time. I've been on forums before and had some random advertisement pop up telling me that I can meet some beautiful girl in my local area. It then shows some tanned, blonde girl sitting in front of a palm tree with the announcement "Hi, I'm Chelsea, 23 from Stoke-on-Trent."

Bullshit. Show me a fat tart stuffing her face with oatcakes and I'll believe you.

I remember the days when the worst advertisements were pop ups. Nowadays, you have all manner of crap to sift through when you're surfing the net. You have the aforementioned ones that spy on you, you have the ones that pretend to be something they're not (Click here to download!) and you have the ones that try to get you to fill in surveys or that fill your screen and make you wait 10 seconds before bypassing them.

I hate advertisements and a few years ago, there was a lot less of them.

Ahh, the good old days.

5) Everything is Blocked

A few years ago, the Internet was a lawless place. This was not always a good thing, but in a weird way, it kind of governed itself. Many people who downloaded illegally did so out of desperation and some would only download to 'taste' the product before going out and spending hard cash on it.

In fairness, downloading illegally did do good things for the entertainment industry as it forced the greedy companies to reduce their prices to a more realistic level. Prior to online downloads, I remember CD's going on sale for between £15 and £30. A ridiculous amount of money for 12 songs, and hardly any of that profit went to the artists. Now, thanks to illegal downloads, you can pick up music CD's relatively cheaply.

Obviously, this 'lawlessness' had to come to an end and whilst some of it had to happen to adhere to the law, much of it is just taking things too far. Multiple download sites have been shut down due to 'copyright infringement' making it ridiculously hard to get even legitimate downloads of obscure TV shows or films. In turn, sites like Youtube blocked any videos that were deemed to breach copyright or any number of other random laws.

The worst thing about this is that in blocking the most well-known sources of entertainment, they are simply driving people to go to the truly dodgy sites that operate with absolutely no regard for the law. It seems far easier to block something than it is to create a new service to fill the much-needed void. It is also hard to see where this will end, with sites like Wikipedia being called into question due to the way their information is displayed and linked to other sites.

I genuinely believe that the golden age of the Internet has passed. Soon, we will be looking at a strictly-enforced place which kills high street stores, is painfully slow, is in your face and is strictly monitored to prevent you from getting anything for free. Indeed, I believe that everything which makes the Internet great may soon be in jeopardy.

... And this fucking game is still only at 89% after almost 30 hours of downloading.

Buried Alive by Porn...

Recently there has been quite a bit of emphasis on the ease in which children are able to get their greasy little mitts on the worst filth the world has to offer. Many broadband companies are having to implement new rules and barriers to prevent minors from being able to access 'adult' material online. The only problem with this is that I thoroughly believe it is impossible to protect children from adult material. To be honest, I think it's unnecessary and I shall explain why.

When I was about 10 I had a friend who lived very close to me and had some very open-minded parents. This was a very good thing and I feel I should say that their openness and love towards each other has kept them together to this day. It was, however, a point of interest to us as ever-curious youngsters because we could see hints of their bedroom antics occasionally around the house in the form of the occasional saucy bit of underwear or erotic chocolate treat. I must stress however, that as 10 year-olds, we really didn't care about such things or want to know what was going on behind closed doors.

It is worth noting that no matter what you do to avoid such things they will, occasionally, jump out and smack you in the face when you least expect it. That is exactly what happened to my friend...

When I was younger I used to go fishing with my friend and we fancied ourselves as avid fishermen and were always eager to learn more about the sport. Upon discovering that there had been a large number of carp released into our local canal, we decided that we would try to catch one of these beastly fish, but in order to do so we would need advice. So, when my friends parents were out, we went searching for fishing magazines that we knew his Dad had, with the intention of learning the art of catching carp.

Bob Nudd, make me proud!

The search in the garage yielded no results and there were none in the downstairs cupboard so we commenced our search of his parents bedroom. Sure enough, in the top shelf of his Dad's wardrobe, we could see a picture of Bob Nudd -- a championship angler -- poking out from a pile of magazines. We had found the motherload and smiled in anticipation at learning how to fish like a pro. My friend, being the taller one, reached up and grabbed the magazine, pulling with all his might. This was when it happened...

With a yank, the whole pile of magazines collapsed out of the cupboard and fell onto my friend, literally knocking him back onto the bed behind as they poured out of the closet. The fishing magazine was buried -- along with my friend -- amongst the most humongous pile of porn magazines I have ever (and will ever) see. One magazine even landed, open, with a centre page spread on my friends chest.

My point here is that we were not looking for smut, nor were we interested in it, but our childish search for fishing magazines instead led to my friend being literally buried alive by porn. When my friend lifted the centre page spread from his chest, his reaction was not, "Whoa, that's nice" but "What the fuck is that?Urggh!"

Yes, my friend. That was a vagina.

We frantically pushed the magazines back into the cupboard, ignoring the pages that appeared to be stuck together and tried to assemble them into the same order as before. There was no curiosity to look into the unknown any further, we just made off with Bob Nudd and tried to wipe the experience from our minds. The funny thing is, my friend was pulled up at a later date by his Dad who had apparently kept an 'order' to the magazines and had guessed that his son had found the stash. His assumption was that he'd searched for it; the truth was it had almost killed him.

Children are not interested in porn until their teens and when we were introduced to it at a young age, rather than being aroused, we were put off it for a good while. There is no way to completely 'protect' children against porn and there is no need to go to extraordinary lengths to do so.

Obviously, times have changed and now the internet is the worlds largest library of pornographic material. The ease in which people can access porn, even accidentally, is quite staggering. I always used to joke that anyone could find a picture of a naked lady within 30 seconds of logging on, even on a blocked PC. I've not yet been proved wrong.

A good example of this was experienced during my time at college. I was 17 and studying Geology. Most of our time was spent in the classroom studying rock types and formations however we did occasionally get a chance for a field trip or, on this particular day, a trip to the computer room. We were learning about igneous intrusions and our tutor urged us to use the internet to find examples of them and in doing so, he managed to accidentally get every computer profile in the class blocked for a week.

An igneous intrusion is where rock strata has had magma injected into it, leaving a 'blob' or 'sheet' of volcanic rock surrounded by softer rock. There are many types of these and when searching for batholiths, sills and diapirs we quickly found what we were looking for. When it came to dykes however, our results were inconsistant at best.

Some of us found this:

Whereas some of us found this:

Obviously I had not wanted to search for porn but that was exactly what I found. It is worse with the modern internet search engines because it seems that typing in something as innocent as 'tea cup for girls' is likely to bring up results '2 girls 1 cup' and all fetishes related to cups. Despite this, I don't think young children are going to be tempted to click on the more filthy links and if they do, boy will they regret it.

Teenagers on the other hand will search for porn. They will search for it and they WILL find it and nothing in Heaven or Earth can stand between a teenager and porn. Even if he doesn't find porn in the strictest sense, anything with any iota of flesh showing will do: FHM, Art websites, African tribes, science websites anything and I mean ANYTHING will do. All this means is it's completely futile to try and stop a teenager from accessing porn and preventing access or making it difficult to get hold of will only add to the fun of trying to find it.

So what do I say to parents trying to discourage their children, or teenagers, from accessing porn? Show them the most sordid, horrible, disgusting, foul material you can get your hands on. Show them the horrors of the internet and suddenly, it might not seem quite as much fun.