Rant

My neighbor moved and forgot to cancel or move his subscription to GQ magazine. I found several issues on his former mailbox and since no one is living in this house and I don’t have a way to contact him I grabbed one and decided to read it. This is what I found.

Out of the 192 pages the magazine has, only 22 are content. The rest? Ads. The first 72 pages are ads, then an index for the articles inside the magazine, the more ads for another 30 or so pages. Then finally an article, mainly pictures and no text, sort of like more ads.

What the fuck? People pay for this?

Personally I hate ads. I hate commercials and I hate anything that is keeping me from reading, viewing or enjoying the content. That’s why whenever I have the choice between a free, ad-supported site and one I payed for and ad free, I pay.

Why would people agree to pay for a subscription to a magazine or buy each issue separately and get 170 pages of ads? Worse, this is becoming the standard, in EVERYTHING. Today more and more you are paying for subscriptions to news sites, blogs, etc and STILL you get a page full of ads.

That’s why the first thing I do when I install a new OS is to install ad blocking plugins for the browser, along with script blocking and flash blocking. I know this might hurt the site’s owner, but fuck it. If I am paying for content I want content, not fucking ads.

That’s why I also got rid of cable. Most of the channels have commercials. I can buy a full series out of iTunes and get it commercial free. Moreover buying all the season on all the series my wife and I watch over the year on iTunes cost us less than paying for cable AND it’s commercial free.

So, magazine publishers, blog writters, newspaper editors: please do something about it or soon you’ll find yourself with less and less customers.

Fuck all the ads and commercials. And if you don’t like the fact that I am saying FUCK, here it is again: FUCK!